
It's Time to Tax Us More - pmoriarty
https://medium.com/@letterforawealthtax/an-open-letter-to-the-2020-presidential-candidates-its-time-to-tax-us-more-6eb3a548b2fe
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cmurf
I think this is the wrong ask. Stronger anti-fraud and anti-corruption laws.
Ethical requirements for politicians, and appropriate sanctions for violating
them. Standing army and war taxes. Some or even all of these things should be
made constitutional amendments so they are enduring, and not subject to
political histrionics. What we really need is better functioning and
accountable government. If we don't have that first, a bunch of money just
gets wasted, and what we're in sore need of is better value, and a better
return for our money.

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jklepatch
Its very hard to believe in their sincerity. Most likely, they feel like the
tide is turning against them and they want to do damage control, by
influencing the way they will be more taxed.

Remind me of an episode of house of cards when Franck (the president) is aware
of a scandal about him about to be released in the press, and prefers to
release it himself first and orientate the story in a certain direction.

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HissingMachine
Why don't they just stop using tax deductions, tax planning and tax havens? It
would bring even more tax revenues than a few percent wealth taxes yearly and
they could do this today without any political lobbying. Moreso if they are
more worried about climate than they are about their wealth, they could invest
in far fetching new technologies that have slim chances of returning a profit,
if they don't care about returning a profit they could be way more aggressive
in investing new technologies and services that might not otherwise be
profitable enough for regular investors. They could even give subsidies to
companies that operate at a minor loss like investors have done with Twitter
or Facebook before they became profitable.

Even more importantly there are activist investors that invest in companies
and try to change their behavior. Why don't they start investing in companies
and demand that they stop tax planning? Is this just a publicity stunt, or are
they powerless to do any of these things already?

~~~
delusional
> Why don't they just stop using tax deductions, tax planning and tax havens?

Given that this isn't signed by every rich person ever. Wouldn't that just
mean that the people left at the top are the assholes? If 10% if the richest
1% (not necessarily the richest 10% of them) stopped using tax havens, they
get punished, while the other rich people her to reap the rewards.

~~~
HissingMachine
But it would be a start at least, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet started the
Giving Pledge, at first it only meant that those two were going to give most
of their wealth to charity, but now there are over 200 members. And like I
said, it doesn't have to stop at the individual level, they have leverage to
pressure the companies they own to stop tax dodging which would have much
larger impact than the wealth tax they are proposing here. And it doesn't even
block the wealth tax from happening eventually. All I'm saying is that they
have tools at their disposal right not, but still they are lobbying for
another tax, which eventually some will evade, so why not start from paying
current ones they are currently evading and not invent a new just to evade it
eventually?

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jmcguckin
The wealthy already pay something like 70% of all tax revenues that are
raised. Unfortunately, even if the government were to outright confiscate the
wealth of the 1 percenters, that would fund the government for just a few
weeks. The middle class is where the real money is and that's why the
government likes to raise taxes that hits everyone across the board - because
the middle class will pay the majority of the new taxes.

Before raising any more taxes, how about curbing the governments appetite for
spending. How about eliminating costly weapons programs designed to fight wars
that aren't very likely with the current crop of frenemies we now have. How
about winding down the war in the middle east and closing many of the 700+
military installations we have around the globe. There is a lot of fat in the
domestic budget that can be trimmed.

It seems to be the standard behavior in government to raise taxes rather than
examine the current budget to see if we can tighten our belt and trim some
spending to raise funds for some needed purpose.

Why not insist that if the government wants to spend 10 billion on some
program, they have to find 10 billion in cuts to other programs.

Here's an example. Everyone pays FUSF taxes on their telephone and telecom
bills. It's for a good cause. When it started out years ago, it was at 6% of
interstate and international telephone fees. Well, over the intervening years
the rate has increased to 24% and they've added more services that FUSF tax
applies to: not just long distance, but MPLS services, data circuits if the
data ever might touch the internet and more. The appetite for 'Free Money'
knows no bounds.. But it's for a good cause - right?

So, before congress raises my taxes again, I want to see that I'm actually
getting a good deal and I'd like to see some of the excesses cut from the
budget.

Joe

~~~
eesmith
You write "something like 70% of all tax revenues that are raised".

Isn't that another way of saying there's extreme economic inequality?

I mean, if 10 people controlled 99% of the wealth in the US, and the rest were
below the poverty line and didn't need to pay income taxes, then those 10
people would pay 100% of all income taxes.

(I say "income taxes" because even the poorest pay sales taxes and other
taxes; sales taxes are at the state level or lower.)

But, even though those 10 would pay 99% of the taxes, that doesn't mean its
unfair.

So, just giving the numbers you gave doesn't really say much about the
situation, does it?

You write "if the government were to outright confiscate the wealth of the 1
percenters, that would fund the government for just a few weeks".

That's .. not right, is it? I mean, the 10 richest Americans, as listed at
[https://www.worldstrendingtopmost.com/2017-2018-2019-2020/ce...](https://www.worldstrendingtopmost.com/2017-2018-2019-2020/celebrities/top-10-richest-
people-america-american-billionaires-men-list/), have a net wealth of $562.9
billion.

"The U.S. government's total revenue is estimated to be $3.643 trillion for
Fiscal Year 2020." says [https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-
government-ta...](https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-
tax-revenue-3305762) .

So, those 10 alone would pay for 2 months of the federal government.

Table 3 of
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w24085.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24085.pdf)
says there are about 635,000 households worth at least $10 million. If I do
the math right, that's enough to fund the government for 2 years.

------
zomg
fundamentally, the question is whether we have a tax "revenue" problem
(dollars in) versus a tax "spending" problem (dollars out).

my opinion is that the government already wastes a lot of tax money and is not
efficient at all. before we give the government any more tax money, despite
where it comes from, they need to be more resourceful with the tax dollars
they have.

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fnord77
fun fact: in the 1950s, the top tax bracket was 91%

~~~
maxharris
Fun fact: in order to get around this, people were paid at least some of the
difference in _perks_ : (company cars, steak dinners, health insurance, etc.)

The excessive taxes of the 40s and 50s were directly responsible for the
_linking of health care to employers_ (which is the direct cause of the
current healthcare mess we're in):

"The idea that employers should provide health care benefits has a long, if
checkered, history. Railroads and other rough-and-tumble firms experimented
with 'industrial clinics' in the late 19th century, and Montgomery Ward, the
mail-order giant, rolled out the first group health insurance early in the
next one. But there was almost no indication for decades that employer-
sponsored health insurance would spread from sea to shining sea.

World War II disrupted those trends. As demand for everything — particularly
labor — climbed, Congress passed the Stabilization Act of 1942, which allowed
the president to freeze wages and salaries for all the nation's workers. A day
after its passage, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order
invoking these powers, which applied to 'all forms of direct or indirect
remuneration to an employee,' including but not limited to salaries and wages,
as well as 'bonuses, additional compensation, gifts, commissions, fees.'

But there was an exemption of massive proportions slipped into a fateful
clause: 'insurance and pension benefits' could grow 'in a reasonable amount'
during the freeze.

As companies struggled to deal with wartime labor shortages, the wage freeze
left them in a serious bind: How could they retain workers if they couldn't
give raises? If they didn't soon realize the allure of fringe benefits,
insurance companies pressed that case through marketing campaigns, as
historian Jennifer Klein has observed.

The Revenue Act of 1942 triggered another rush to enroll employees in health
plans. By slapping corporations with tax rates of 80 or even up to 90 percent
on any profits in excess of prewar revenue, Congress all but guaranteed a
frenzied search for loopholes. Employee benefits, according to the new law,
could be deducted from profits. As an anonymous employer observed in a study
published on trends in health insurance, 'it was a case of paying the money
for insurance for their employees or to Uncle Sam in taxes.'

In 1943, two rulings helped accelerate the movement toward employer-sponsored
health insurance. The first was a directive by the Internal Revenue Service
that employees did not have to pay taxes on premiums paid by their employers.
The second was a decision by the National War Labor Board reaffirming the
exemption of fringe benefits from the wage freeze.

After the war, a series of administrative and legal rulings kept these
incentives in place, despite several attempts to reverse them. Meanwhile, the
number of people enrolled in health insurance plans skyrocketed, with most of
the growth driven by corporate group policies. In 1940, only 9.8 percent of
Americans had some kind of medical insurance; by 1946, the number had grown to
just under 30 percent."

That quote is from this article (note that I can't vouch for the rest of this
article, the only part I read and know to be true is the part I quoted):
[https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-
obamaca...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-obamacare-
health-care-employers-20170224-story.html)

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milsorgen
>A wealth tax could help address the climate crisis, improve the economy,
improve health outcomes, fairly create opportunity, and strengthen our
democratic freedoms. Instituting a wealth tax is in the interest of our
republic.

I think they are vastly overestimating the amount of revenue this would
generate. It would hardly be a panacea, particularly in the hands of a
bureaucracy.

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sneak
If these people believe this, why aren’t they voluntarily donating more tax
money to the IRS?

It sounds like they want them to tax OTHERS more, making the whole selfless
angle seem rather fraudulent.

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smkellat
Dismissing criticisms because they're "technical" in a field of law that is
possibly the most hyper-technical is some of the goofiest yet dishonest hand-
waving I've ever seen. There is no Magic Money Tree. Even if we liquidate the
rich so as to make everybody equally poorer we're not going to collect
revenues that will last.

