The waxing and waning aspect of this bill is extremely clever. It gives rich people an incentive to reduce wealth inequality that isn’t purely punitive. The bit that insures the IRS actually audit...
The waxing and waning aspect of this bill is extremely clever. It gives rich people an incentive to reduce wealth inequality that isn’t purely punitive. The bit that insures the IRS actually audit the rich is a welcome addition and helps encourage the rich to actually participate in reducing their tax burden through reducing wealth inequality rather than paying fancy accountants to do an end run around the tax system and hoping the IRS ignores it (as they often do). In a normal world I could see conservatives actually getting on board with this, but I won’t hold my breath.
edit:typo
In the UK, if you earn over £100K a year or you're a company director... You have to complete a self-assessment. Often you end up with weird benefits at companies in the £100-£125k bracket to...
In the UK, if you earn over £100K a year or you're a company director... You have to complete a self-assessment.
Often you end up with weird benefits at companies in the £100-£125k bracket to ensure you don't get destroyed by dumb tax laws, but once you go over that... You get £0 tax allowance on your entire salary.
That means you do have to come up with inventive ways to ensure your tax bill is lower if you want to keep your cash. As your wealth increases, you do end up talking to an accountant about what ways you can lower that tax bill.
It makes sense... Right up until you realiset that there's an effective tax rate of 45% on income from salaries and 20% on dividends, so guess how People get around tax bills?
It's the same game just different rules. This is a great article from ProPublica on how Musk, Bezos, Buffett, etc. avoid income tax. Key excerpt about how they just take out a loan from the company:
It makes sense... Right up until you realiset that there's an effective tax rate of 45% on income from salaries and 20% on dividends, so guess how People get around tax bills?
It's the same game just different rules. This is a great article from ProPublica on how Musk, Bezos, Buffett, etc. avoid income tax. Key excerpt about how they just take out a loan from the company:
The tax math provides a clear incentive for this. If you own a company and take a huge salary, you’ll pay 37% in income tax on the bulk of it. Sell stock and you’ll pay 20% in capital gains tax — and lose some control over your company. But take out a loan, and these days you’ll pay a single-digit interest rate and no tax; since loans must be paid back, the IRS doesn’t consider them income. Banks typically require collateral, but the wealthy have plenty of that.
Yeah, we have "Director Loans" here as well and many a sole trader have fallen foul over them at the end of the tax year. But they behave very differently to what is expected there. Honestly, at...
Yeah, we have "Director Loans" here as well and many a sole trader have fallen foul over them at the end of the tax year. But they behave very differently to what is expected there.
Honestly, at that point they're not really running a company. It's just wholesale tax evasion as far as I'm concerned.
There needs to be a global dynamic that is "Was this money made in country x? Yes? Pay the tax and do not avoid it." Followed by, if your earnings are tied to company x (because you're based there) then it should all be classified as income l, regardless of how you are paid.
We know it's complex because it's designed that way to maximise profits. Not because the systems are complex.
To be clear, they still make enough money in salaries to be absurdly rich. The loans to live even more richly are monetizing their net worth on top of all that.
To be clear, they still make enough money in salaries to be absurdly rich. The loans to live even more richly are monetizing their net worth on top of all that.
I don't think that's true though. Bezos and Musk have small nominal base salaries by their standards (<$100k), and Musk reportedly refuses his. Unless you are including other forms of comp.
To be clear, they still make enough money in salaries to be absurdly rich.
I don't think that's true though. Bezos and Musk have small nominal base salaries by their standards (<$100k), and Musk reportedly refuses his. Unless you are including other forms of comp.
Bezos and Musk may have relatively low salaries, but have incredibly high reported incomes (just not every year). Musk sold ~$30 billion in stock between 2021-2022, something like $600 million in...
Bezos and Musk may have relatively low salaries, but have incredibly high reported incomes (just not every year). Musk sold ~$30 billion in stock between 2021-2022, something like $600 million in 2016. Bezos has also sold tens of billions in stock in the past several years.
I haven't seen a shred of evidence that these big names hold on to loans for the long term. I mean, companies like Apple have a huge war chest of hundreds of billions of dollars but make use of credit frequently. Maybe Musk needed some extra cash at times between 2016 and 2021 and took out loans to bridge the gap. Given that Musk just collected $30B in income, a nearly unfathomable amount of money to spend even after taxes, I don't think he needs large loans in perpetuity. I haven't seen any real evidence that loans are a big problem here so I feel like they're a red herring.
That said, I think the rich could stand to pay even more in taxes. The portion of this bill that tries to hold the rich accountable for their taxes is a good idea. It's absurd that we're basically just trusting rich people with complex taxes to do the right thing.
Wow, we're approaching Peak Backronym with this one. Why does Congress feel the need to give every piece of legislation a completely tortured initialism? Is it just to make sound bites easier?
Wow, we're approaching Peak Backronym with this one. Why does Congress feel the need to give every piece of legislation a completely tortured initialism? Is it just to make sound bites easier?
That seems to be it, makes it easier for people to get behind if they need to get people to protest or badger their Congress people. And it kind of gets the point across just in the acronym...
That seems to be it, makes it easier for people to get behind if they need to get people to protest or badger their Congress people. And it kind of gets the point across just in the acronym itself, though they had to reach pretty far to get to the 'Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms' Act (OLIGARCH). They get to give it two names almost. It may have been better to have just called it the "Wealth Inequality Act" or something generic like that though, just say what the bill is about in as few words as possible and don't try to dress it up just for the acronym.
Initialism vs acronym is a frankly useless distinction, and I loathe its existence. Especially considering that virtually everything eventually becomes an acronym because people invent ways to say...
Initialism vs acronym is a frankly useless distinction, and I loathe its existence.
Especially considering that virtually everything eventually becomes an acronym because people invent ways to say the nonsensical string of letters, i.e. GUI became "gooey" and SQL became "sequel". I'm just waiting for people to start to say CIA is "see-ya" and FBI becomes "fibby".
SQL was originally "SEQUEL." It's the sequel to SQUARE and the name uses wordplay from QUEL. Just a fun fact. In this case, it's more "correct" to pronounce it as a word. It's also fitting to do...
SQL was originally "SEQUEL." It's the sequel to SQUARE and the name uses wordplay from QUEL.
Chamberlin: Well, SQUARE was the work that Ray and I did in Yorktown. It still had some mathematical notations in it. It wasn’t based on English words. SEQUEL was the successor to SQUARE. You might say it was the ‘Sequel’ to SQUARE. And again, it was an acronym, for Structured English Query Language.
Just a fun fact. In this case, it's more "correct" to pronounce it as a word. It's also fitting to do so given the subject matter of an English-like query language.
I don't think it's more correct to pronounce it as a word just because of what it was called in development years ago. It wasn't released as SEQUEL, it was released as SQL (technically SQL/DS)....
I don't think it's more correct to pronounce it as a word just because of what it was called in development years ago. It wasn't released as SEQUEL, it was released as SQL (technically SQL/DS).
Besides that apparently ANSI and ISO/IEC officially pronounce it as letters.
I rebel in my own way by repeating it back to folks as an initialism: "Oh, you mean the S-Q-L server" especially when someone tries to make "wooey" a thing (Web UI, or what we used to call a...
I rebel in my own way by repeating it back to folks as an initialism: "Oh, you mean the S-Q-L server" especially when someone tries to make "wooey" a thing (Web UI, or what we used to call a config page). One more step closer to the ill-tempered old engineer I'm destined to become I guess.
The way I see it, if Republicans are going to do it (for the obvious "branding" reasons), we might as well also have people doing it on the left. No reason to nerf yourselves to be dry and...
The way I see it, if Republicans are going to do it (for the obvious "branding" reasons), we might as well also have people doing it on the left. No reason to nerf yourselves to be dry and unappealing to the public.
Research does not bear this out. This paper from Harvard estimates that the rate of return for every dollar spent conducting audits on the wealthiest Americans (above 90th percentile) returns 12...
Wealthy people largely follow the law and hire armies of accountants to find all the legal loopholes they can use to get out of taxes/maximize their long term personal income.
Research does not bear this out. This paper from Harvard estimates that the rate of return for every dollar spent conducting audits on the wealthiest Americans (above 90th percentile) returns 12 dollars, while a dollar spent auditing those below the median returns $5.
The paper also goes into the top 1% and top 0.1% and shows that auditing is still more than offset by revenue, with the effect increasing as you go up the income scale: The 12:1 figure seems to be...
The paper also goes into the top 1% and top 0.1% and shows that auditing is still more than offset by revenue, with the effect increasing as you go up the income scale:
We find that audits of higher
income taxpayers are more time intensive and more costly than audits of low-income taxpayers.
For example, audits of taxpayers with incomes in the bottom 50% of the income distribution cost
an average of $5,218 while audits of taxpayers in the top 1% and 0.1% cost an average of $11,382
and $15,170 respectively. That said, these rising costs across the income distribution are more
than offset by increasing revenues. We estimate that audits of taxpayers in the bottom 50% of the
income distribution produce $0.96 in revenue for each dollar of audit cost. Audits of the top 1%
produce $4.25 in revenue and audits of the top 0.1% produce a return of $6.29 for each dollar of
audit cost.
The 12:1 figure seems to be from deterrence and it sounds like they're stopping at top 10% purely for statistical power reasons:
We show that audits lead to an increase in future taxes paid that persists over the 14 years we
observe in the data. In present discounted value, these additional taxes are 3.2 times the revenue
raised from their initial audit. We also show that these deterrence effects are similar across the
full income distribution (although we lose the power necessary to estimate precise effects in the
top 1%).
This seems to cover the cases you're worried about, so I'd be interested in any studies you know about that counter this.
from the St. Louis Fed: Income Before Taxes: Wages and Salaries by Deciles of Income Before Taxes: Highest 10 Percent (91st to 100th Percentile) 2021 was $243,781/yr. you're off by almost double.
No? That money invested in audits at any level will pay off doesn't mean that everyone is cheating, but that their heuristics for targeting audits are good at every level. If they audited 20...
No? That money invested in audits at any level will pay off doesn't mean that everyone is cheating, but that their heuristics for targeting audits are good at every level. If they audited 20 million people who had a single W2 filed and no other income reported, they'd likely come up with not very much.
It doesn't say that either. It only says that, for the amount of money the IRS puts into auditing the wealthy, they recoup more. It could be that tax evasion happens at exactly the same rate...
It doesn't say that either. It only says that, for the amount of money the IRS puts into auditing the wealthy, they recoup more. It could be that tax evasion happens at exactly the same rate across the board, but the rich are richer and so their total evaded amount is larger.
Think of it this way. (Made up numbers ahead) If it takes an IRS agent 10 hours to do an audit, and costs $1,000, they audit a poor person and get back $5,000. Or they audit a rich person and get back $13,000. Nothing about that says that there are more or fewer evaders in any economic range, just that there's more total dollars to be found when auditing the rich.
I have no idea what the truth is here, but I’ll note the article says the exact opposite:
I have no idea what the truth is here, but I’ll note the article says the exact opposite:
The legislation would also require at least a 30% IRS audit rate on households affected by the new wealth tax, according to the summary. One recent estimate indicated that the richest Americans dodge taxes on more than 20% of their earnings, costing the federal government around $175 billion in revenue each year.
And yet low-income households have been targeted by IRS audits at a far higher rate than rich households in recent years.
It has already been shown that IRS basically ignores the rich because it is too much time and trouble, which means they spend 100% of their time and resources auditing lower income earners. I see...
It has already been shown that IRS basically ignores the rich because it is too much time and trouble, which means they spend 100% of their time and resources auditing lower income earners. I see no issue with spending 30% to insure that what the rich do actually is legal rather than just giving them a free pass as they do now. This could also lead to recommendations to congress about how to close some of the loopholes the rich exploit. To me you just sound like Flander’s beatnik parents, “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
what evidence are you basing this claim on? yes, they hire accountants and tax experts...but what ensures that those accountants actually follow the law? is it just the honor system? even if 100%...
Wealthy people largely follow the law
what evidence are you basing this claim on?
and hire armies of accountants to find all the legal loopholes
yes, they hire accountants and tax experts...but what ensures that those accountants actually follow the law? is it just the honor system?
even if 100% of wealthy people followed the law 100% of the time (which I very much doubt) there would still be value in doing audits.
because those audits, even if they don't turn up any tax evasion (illegal), can highlight the most common schemes for tax avoidance (legal).
knowing what legal loopholes are being used to avoid paying taxes can act as one part of a feedback loop - Congress can then go close those loopholes. (in a hypothetical world where we have a functional Congress, but one step at a time)
Your point is an important one: if the incentive were to identify tax avoidance schemes, we would need legislators willing or able to implement recommended measures to shut those schemes down....
Your point is an important one: if the incentive were to identify tax avoidance schemes, we would need legislators willing or able to implement recommended measures to shut those schemes down.
That could affect their bottom lines so I wonder how we could get them on board.
they need 60 votes in the Senate to pass any substantive legislation. and they'll never in a million years get 10 Republican Senators to vote for any tax increase.
I share your frustration, but it seems like it would be better directed at Republican obstructionism, and/or Democratic moderates who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster and allowing legislation to pass with a simple majority.
the progressive Democrats who proposed this bill are at least trying. it'd be easy for them to say that because legislation won't pass due to the filibuster, they're not even going to make any proposals.
This bill is absurd and wouldn’t pass even if the dems controlled both houses. What I would like to see is reasonable bills being proposed that are being shut down because of obstructionism...
This bill is absurd and wouldn’t pass even if the dems controlled both houses. What I would like to see is reasonable bills being proposed that are being shut down because of obstructionism instead of bills that are just fantasy wish lists for ultra progressives.
The bill actually makes sense and would probably help a lot. Sometimes it is good to actually draft what you believe should be legislated and run with it, even if if doesn't have a chance at the...
The bill actually makes sense and would probably help a lot. Sometimes it is good to actually draft what you believe should be legislated and run with it, even if if doesn't have a chance at the moment. At least the opposing sellouts have to go on a defensive. If you merely propose passable legislation, there is a high chance things will just continue to slide the wrong way.
Your biggest problem is the two party system. You really should get rid of that. Or just break up the federation to coastal areas and the rest and call it a day already.
This is a good bill, and I'm glad it's being proposed. Getting bills like this out there is good for a few reasons. First of all, it's an acknowledgement by our ruling class- albeit a futile and...
This is a good bill, and I'm glad it's being proposed. Getting bills like this out there is good for a few reasons. First of all, it's an acknowledgement by our ruling class- albeit a futile and small one- that wealth inequality is an issue that's harming society and needs to be counteracted. Another thing this is doing is getting publicity, what this bill is proposing is right at the left edge of the overton window and will definitly spur discussion across all levels of media. Fox is going to lost their minds over this. Third, think of this as a practice run. Imagine we get to a place where everything aligns and this could actually pass. You wouldn't want to be caught flat footed and not have anything to propose. You need to have good, fully formed ideas ready to put forth to become law and this is part of that process.
Finally, we all could partake of some civic engagement and write our representatives and senators in support of this bill! I know I will.
I highly doubt this will pass. The oligarchs whom they seek to regulate are the ones running the country and they don't want it to pass. And if by some miracle it did, they'd find loopholes to get...
I highly doubt this will pass. The oligarchs whom they seek to regulate are the ones running the country and they don't want it to pass. And if by some miracle it did, they'd find loopholes to get around it, as they always do.
I hate common memes articles. They are very often low effort and don't have any specifics. This has a summary, but I can't find any real specifics from the bill to actually comment on. So I'll...
I hate common memes articles. They are very often low effort and don't have any specifics. This has a summary, but I can't find any real specifics from the bill to actually comment on. So I'll comment here.
These bills should target the top 1%, people with private jets and yachts. The summary uses median household wealth which I guess I'll define as about 70k a year if we take the average of the US, but I can tell you right now these folks make it sound like they're coming after unrealized wealth. Let's say you've done everything right and put away the max in your retirement accounts and tax advantaged holdings, that with compounding interest usually means you will be a multimillionaire by the end of your life.
Why should you be punished for doing the right thing? Again, just speculation because common dreams doesn't put out specifics, and this is one of my biggest problems with progressive policy.
How about instead of railing against a source, actually read the article or at least try to to do some minimum amout of research on a topic before commenting. If you had read the article, you'd...
How about instead of railing against a source, actually read the article or at least try to to do some minimum amout of research on a topic before commenting. If you had read the article, you'd have seen that not only does it give a brief summary, it also links to this explanation at Patriotic Millionaires[1]. The explanation lays out a tax that gets higher with more wealth accumulated, and I think it's very reasonable.
The article does reference median household income, and defines it at 100k. And yes, if you save and invest with that level of income, you'll probably be a multimillionaire in a few decades. But did you really earn all that money? All you've done is ride the stock market and perhaps take some value that could have gone to give factory workers a raise so maybe the could also get ahead in life too.
I'm tired of the implication that taxation is punitive. A progressive tax structure is a necessity in a healthy society. We need properly funded social programs like healthcare, like education. We need functioning and well maintained infrastructure like roads, bridges, rail and even power and internet to grease the wheels of commerce.
When wealth is hoarded by a few people it's doing nothing for society. They're like dragons, just sleeping on vast piles of treasure. And don't pretend like playing with rockets or cars or buying a website is doing Joe sixpack any favors. That's not helping educate his child or repairing the derelict bridge on his highway. We need a redistributive tax code to put money back into what the wealthy have been harvesting out of our nation for the past 60 years. Thats not a punishment. That's ensuring society continues to function properly. And that applies as much to the people at the very top as it does to the guy with a piddly 5 million.
One could make the argument that we do fund the government plenty and the lack of funding in social programs is a prioritization problem not a funding problem. Maybe take money from the military...
One could make the argument that we do fund the government plenty and the lack of funding in social programs is a prioritization problem not a funding problem. Maybe take money from the military and foreign aid instead of constantly saying we need to raise taxes for basic human services here.
Well, with regard to properly funding our government, our enormous deficits poke quite a hole in your theory that they have enough funds. I don't disagree that things are massively misappropriated...
Well, with regard to properly funding our government, our enormous deficits poke quite a hole in your theory that they have enough funds. I don't disagree that things are massively misappropriated towards defense, foreign aid, oil subsidies, and the like.
What would be beneficial is not just reallocating from those areas, but also broadening the tax base so that our current programs can be expanded because as things are now our social safety net is quite barebones. I'd like to see universal healthcare, free college, guaranteed housing, and other programs to ensure that the poorest among us are taken care of and have a chance to get ahead.
Have you been to some of these schools my taxes fund? I can't even consider sending my kids to these schools when they get older because of how shitty they are since No Child Left Behind, at least...
Have you been to some of these schools my taxes fund? I can't even consider sending my kids to these schools when they get older because of how shitty they are since No Child Left Behind, at least I get a chance to send them to a private school where they can fucking learn something.
It sounds like you live in a place that does not adequately fund its public schools. Instead of complaining that the schools are bad without a reasonable solution, it would be more productive for...
It sounds like you live in a place that does not adequately fund its public schools.
Instead of complaining that the schools are bad without a reasonable solution, it would be more productive for you to consider the fundamental cause of inequitable schooling: limited resources being hoarded by an extremely small number of people. You use a strange line of reasoning that some underfunded schools perform poorly, so it is pointless to improve funding via taxation of people hoarding wealth. This is not a valid conclusion. (By the way, No Child Left Behind has been replaced by completely different legislation... eight years ago.)
I owe my whole life to public schools. I would have nothing without education. It is a gift we cannot forget.
Current tax money is wasted on administrative bloat rather than funding teachers and reducing class sizes. Or it gets siphoned off to be wasted on remote learning.
Current tax money is wasted on administrative bloat rather than funding teachers and reducing class sizes.
Or it gets siphoned off to be wasted on remote learning.
So let's fix the schools instead of ranting about taxes and sending your children to a very privileged private school life? You benefit from everyone else's kids being properly educated, too. All...
So let's fix the schools instead of ranting about taxes and sending your children to a very privileged private school life? You benefit from everyone else's kids being properly educated, too. All of society benefits.
The answer is not to cloister your child in some ivory tower. We need to fix education and make it work for everyone. There are lots of problems with the education system, not the least of which...
The answer is not to cloister your child in some ivory tower.
We need to fix education and make it work for everyone. There are lots of problems with the education system, not the least of which is how it's funded. Currently in almost every state, schools are funded by property taxes. As you might imagine, this creates quite a disparity in funding between wealthy and impoverished districts. Abolishing that and distributing funds equally across all districts in a state would be a good start. I won't pretend to know anything else about how education works but there are plenty of good people out there who have good solutions.
It seems like making sure my kid gets a good education would lead to a better life like it did for me as a 3rd generation immigrant in the US. But maybe I'm wrong?
The answer is not to cloister your child in some ivory tower.
It seems like making sure my kid gets a good education would lead to a better life like it did for me as a 3rd generation immigrant in the US.
I'm not here to discuss the merits of America's education system. I'm here to discuss the bill introduced by progressives in the House that addresses wealth inequality. Got anything to refute or...
I'm not here to discuss the merits of America's education system. I'm here to discuss the bill introduced by progressives in the House that addresses wealth inequality. Got anything to refute or discuss that I posted in my earlier comment? I'm all ears.
According to the article, median household wealth is about $120k. The lowest tax bracket this would affect is households who have 1000 times that, so $120M. Googling for "US 1% wealth threshold"...
According to the article, median household wealth is about $120k. The lowest tax bracket this would affect is households who have 1000 times that, so $120M. Googling for "US 1% wealth threshold" gives a ballpark figure of around $10M. So this is actually targeting less than the top 1%.
Also, the first link in the article goes to the full text of the bill.
Again, just speculation because common dreams doesn't put out specifics, and this is one of my biggest problems with progressive policy.
Your biggest problem with progressive policy is that a news website isn't detailed enough? What do those things have to do with each other?
I hate the Common Dreams website because of how heavily it reflected the politics subreddit. It becomes a comment echo chamber, and a lot of it is just headline bait like "AOC BLASTS Mitch...
I hate the Common Dreams website because of how heavily it reflected the politics subreddit. It becomes a comment echo chamber, and a lot of it is just headline bait like "AOC BLASTS Mitch McConnell"
Okay. Well, regardless of how you feel about Common Dreams, this is a (small) step toward taxing the 1% and reducing their control over the country, and that's good news!
Okay. Well, regardless of how you feel about Common Dreams, this is a (small) step toward taxing the 1% and reducing their control over the country, and that's good news!
I agree, but there has to be a simpler way to do it. Our tax code is bonkers because everyone can cut out a tax break using many different methods while everyone who makes less than 70k a year...
I agree, but there has to be a simpler way to do it. Our tax code is bonkers because everyone can cut out a tax break using many different methods while everyone who makes less than 70k a year usually only needs to fill out a W2.
The US tax code is really complicated, but this law is actually pretty simple. Here's an approachable summary from elsewhere in this thread. The law itself is only 14 pages, most of which is about...
The US tax code is really complicated, but this law is actually pretty simple. Here's an approachable summary from elsewhere in this thread. The law itself is only 14 pages, most of which is about definitions, edge cases, and enforcement; I read through it in about 10 minutes.
Making the US tax code simpler might be a good idea, but that's probably another thread.
The waxing and waning aspect of this bill is extremely clever. It gives rich people an incentive to reduce wealth inequality that isn’t purely punitive. The bit that insures the IRS actually audit the rich is a welcome addition and helps encourage the rich to actually participate in reducing their tax burden through reducing wealth inequality rather than paying fancy accountants to do an end run around the tax system and hoping the IRS ignores it (as they often do). In a normal world I could see conservatives actually getting on board with this, but I won’t hold my breath.
edit:typo
In the UK, if you earn over £100K a year or you're a company director... You have to complete a self-assessment.
Often you end up with weird benefits at companies in the £100-£125k bracket to ensure you don't get destroyed by dumb tax laws, but once you go over that... You get £0 tax allowance on your entire salary.
That means you do have to come up with inventive ways to ensure your tax bill is lower if you want to keep your cash. As your wealth increases, you do end up talking to an accountant about what ways you can lower that tax bill.
It makes sense... Right up until you realiset that there's an effective tax rate of 45% on income from salaries and 20% on dividends, so guess how People get around tax bills?
It's the same game just different rules. This is a great article from ProPublica on how Musk, Bezos, Buffett, etc. avoid income tax. Key excerpt about how they just take out a loan from the company:
Yeah, we have "Director Loans" here as well and many a sole trader have fallen foul over them at the end of the tax year. But they behave very differently to what is expected there.
Honestly, at that point they're not really running a company. It's just wholesale tax evasion as far as I'm concerned.
There needs to be a global dynamic that is "Was this money made in country x? Yes? Pay the tax and do not avoid it." Followed by, if your earnings are tied to company x (because you're based there) then it should all be classified as income l, regardless of how you are paid.
We know it's complex because it's designed that way to maximise profits. Not because the systems are complex.
To be clear, they still make enough money in salaries to be absurdly rich. The loans to live even more richly are monetizing their net worth on top of all that.
I don't think that's true though. Bezos and Musk have small nominal base salaries by their standards (<$100k), and Musk reportedly refuses his. Unless you are including other forms of comp.
Bezos and Musk may have relatively low salaries, but have incredibly high reported incomes (just not every year). Musk sold ~$30 billion in stock between 2021-2022, something like $600 million in 2016. Bezos has also sold tens of billions in stock in the past several years.
I haven't seen a shred of evidence that these big names hold on to loans for the long term. I mean, companies like Apple have a huge war chest of hundreds of billions of dollars but make use of credit frequently. Maybe Musk needed some extra cash at times between 2016 and 2021 and took out loans to bridge the gap. Given that Musk just collected $30B in income, a nearly unfathomable amount of money to spend even after taxes, I don't think he needs large loans in perpetuity. I haven't seen any real evidence that loans are a big problem here so I feel like they're a red herring.
That said, I think the rich could stand to pay even more in taxes. The portion of this bill that tries to hold the rich accountable for their taxes is a good idea. It's absurd that we're basically just trusting rich people with complex taxes to do the right thing.
edit: corrected 2016 amount
Wow, we're approaching Peak Backronym with this one. Why does Congress feel the need to give every piece of legislation a completely tortured initialism? Is it just to make sound bites easier?
That seems to be it, makes it easier for people to get behind if they need to get people to protest or badger their Congress people. And it kind of gets the point across just in the acronym itself, though they had to reach pretty far to get to the 'Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms' Act (OLIGARCH). They get to give it two names almost. It may have been better to have just called it the "Wealth Inequality Act" or something generic like that though, just say what the bill is about in as few words as possible and don't try to dress it up just for the acronym.
Pedantic: initialisms are spelled when said, e.g, CIA.
Acronyms are said, e.g., SCUBA.
I think this would be a tortured acronym.
Initialism vs acronym is a frankly useless distinction, and I loathe its existence.
Especially considering that virtually everything eventually becomes an acronym because people invent ways to say the nonsensical string of letters, i.e. GUI became "gooey" and SQL became "sequel". I'm just waiting for people to start to say CIA is "see-ya" and FBI becomes "fibby".
SQL was originally "SEQUEL." It's the sequel to SQUARE and the name uses wordplay from QUEL.
Just a fun fact. In this case, it's more "correct" to pronounce it as a word. It's also fitting to do so given the subject matter of an English-like query language.
I don't think it's more correct to pronounce it as a word just because of what it was called in development years ago. It wasn't released as SEQUEL, it was released as SQL (technically SQL/DS).
Besides that apparently ANSI and ISO/IEC officially pronounce it as letters.
Isn't GUI already said aloud as gooey?
It definitely didn't used to. That's why I used it as an example of an initialism that has become an acronym.
I rebel in my own way by repeating it back to folks as an initialism: "Oh, you mean the S-Q-L server" especially when someone tries to make "wooey" a thing (Web UI, or what we used to call a config page). One more step closer to the ill-tempered old engineer I'm destined to become I guess.
And GIF becomes gif…
Thanks, I knew what the difference was but for me that word is like a USB cable – I never get it right the first time.
Mostly it's just fun. It's kind of a silly tradition among legislative staffers.
The way I see it, if Republicans are going to do it (for the obvious "branding" reasons), we might as well also have people doing it on the left. No reason to nerf yourselves to be dry and unappealing to the public.
Research does not bear this out. This paper from Harvard estimates that the rate of return for every dollar spent conducting audits on the wealthiest Americans (above 90th percentile) returns 12 dollars, while a dollar spent auditing those below the median returns $5.
I think you missed a link in your post...
Here is a link to the paper: https://scholar.harvard.edu/hendren/publications/welfare-analysis-tax-audits-across-income-distribution
Whoops, sorry about that. I've added it, but the link @nbschock posted is the same paper.
The paper also goes into the top 1% and top 0.1% and shows that auditing is still more than offset by revenue, with the effect increasing as you go up the income scale:
The 12:1 figure seems to be from deterrence and it sounds like they're stopping at top 10% purely for statistical power reasons:
This seems to cover the cases you're worried about, so I'd be interested in any studies you know about that counter this.
from the St. Louis Fed:
Income Before Taxes: Wages and Salaries by Deciles of Income Before Taxes: Highest 10 Percent (91st to 100th Percentile)
2021 was $243,781/yr. you're off by almost double.
Wouldn't your logic mean that no one is following the law?
No? That money invested in audits at any level will pay off doesn't mean that everyone is cheating, but that their heuristics for targeting audits are good at every level. If they audited 20 million people who had a single W2 filed and no other income reported, they'd likely come up with not very much.
So then how does it prove that wealthy people are mostly not following the law?
It doesn't say that either. It only says that, for the amount of money the IRS puts into auditing the wealthy, they recoup more. It could be that tax evasion happens at exactly the same rate across the board, but the rich are richer and so their total evaded amount is larger.
Think of it this way. (Made up numbers ahead) If it takes an IRS agent 10 hours to do an audit, and costs $1,000, they audit a poor person and get back $5,000. Or they audit a rich person and get back $13,000. Nothing about that says that there are more or fewer evaders in any economic range, just that there's more total dollars to be found when auditing the rich.
I know that's what it says. That's what my point is. The logic of the comment I responded to was bad.
I have no idea what the truth is here, but I’ll note the article says the exact opposite:
It has already been shown that IRS basically ignores the rich because it is too much time and trouble, which means they spend 100% of their time and resources auditing lower income earners. I see no issue with spending 30% to insure that what the rich do actually is legal rather than just giving them a free pass as they do now. This could also lead to recommendations to congress about how to close some of the loopholes the rich exploit. To me you just sound like Flander’s beatnik parents, “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
I'm curious why you think this will result in a net loss?
what evidence are you basing this claim on?
yes, they hire accountants and tax experts...but what ensures that those accountants actually follow the law? is it just the honor system?
even if 100% of wealthy people followed the law 100% of the time (which I very much doubt) there would still be value in doing audits.
because those audits, even if they don't turn up any tax evasion (illegal), can highlight the most common schemes for tax avoidance (legal).
from 2021: The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
and 2022: Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale: After a year of reporting on the tax machinations of the ultrawealthy, ProPublica spotlights the top tax-avoidance techniques that provide massive benefits to billionaires.
knowing what legal loopholes are being used to avoid paying taxes can act as one part of a feedback loop - Congress can then go close those loopholes. (in a hypothetical world where we have a functional Congress, but one step at a time)
Your point is an important one: if the incentive were to identify tax avoidance schemes, we would need legislators willing or able to implement recommended measures to shut those schemes down.
That could affect their bottom lines so I wonder how we could get them on board.
I’m so tired of these inane, purely performative bills that aren’t even intended to be enacted. Why can’t they spend their time actually legislating?
have any of the sponsors said "this is purely performative, we don't intend to enact this"? or is that something you're reading into it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate
they need 60 votes in the Senate to pass any substantive legislation. and they'll never in a million years get 10 Republican Senators to vote for any tax increase.
I share your frustration, but it seems like it would be better directed at Republican obstructionism, and/or Democratic moderates who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster and allowing legislation to pass with a simple majority.
the progressive Democrats who proposed this bill are at least trying. it'd be easy for them to say that because legislation won't pass due to the filibuster, they're not even going to make any proposals.
maybe instead of proposing doomed legislation, they could just hang out in DC and participate in the committee hearings the Republicans are holding to interview a guy who thinks the Pope covered up a UFO landing in the 1930s. but that would be more inane and performative than this legislative proposal, not less.
This bill is absurd and wouldn’t pass even if the dems controlled both houses. What I would like to see is reasonable bills being proposed that are being shut down because of obstructionism instead of bills that are just fantasy wish lists for ultra progressives.
The bill actually makes sense and would probably help a lot. Sometimes it is good to actually draft what you believe should be legislated and run with it, even if if doesn't have a chance at the moment. At least the opposing sellouts have to go on a defensive. If you merely propose passable legislation, there is a high chance things will just continue to slide the wrong way.
Your biggest problem is the two party system. You really should get rid of that. Or just break up the federation to coastal areas and the rest and call it a day already.
This is a good bill, and I'm glad it's being proposed. Getting bills like this out there is good for a few reasons. First of all, it's an acknowledgement by our ruling class- albeit a futile and small one- that wealth inequality is an issue that's harming society and needs to be counteracted. Another thing this is doing is getting publicity, what this bill is proposing is right at the left edge of the overton window and will definitly spur discussion across all levels of media. Fox is going to lost their minds over this. Third, think of this as a practice run. Imagine we get to a place where everything aligns and this could actually pass. You wouldn't want to be caught flat footed and not have anything to propose. You need to have good, fully formed ideas ready to put forth to become law and this is part of that process.
Finally, we all could partake of some civic engagement and write our representatives and senators in support of this bill! I know I will.
I highly doubt this will pass. The oligarchs whom they seek to regulate are the ones running the country and they don't want it to pass. And if by some miracle it did, they'd find loopholes to get around it, as they always do.
I hate common memes articles. They are very often low effort and don't have any specifics. This has a summary, but I can't find any real specifics from the bill to actually comment on. So I'll comment here.
These bills should target the top 1%, people with private jets and yachts. The summary uses median household wealth which I guess I'll define as about 70k a year if we take the average of the US, but I can tell you right now these folks make it sound like they're coming after unrealized wealth. Let's say you've done everything right and put away the max in your retirement accounts and tax advantaged holdings, that with compounding interest usually means you will be a multimillionaire by the end of your life.
Why should you be punished for doing the right thing? Again, just speculation because common dreams doesn't put out specifics, and this is one of my biggest problems with progressive policy.
How about instead of railing against a source, actually read the article or at least try to to do some minimum amout of research on a topic before commenting. If you had read the article, you'd have seen that not only does it give a brief summary, it also links to this explanation at Patriotic Millionaires[1]. The explanation lays out a tax that gets higher with more wealth accumulated, and I think it's very reasonable.
The article does reference median household income, and defines it at 100k. And yes, if you save and invest with that level of income, you'll probably be a multimillionaire in a few decades. But did you really earn all that money? All you've done is ride the stock market and perhaps take some value that could have gone to give factory workers a raise so maybe the could also get ahead in life too.
I'm tired of the implication that taxation is punitive. A progressive tax structure is a necessity in a healthy society. We need properly funded social programs like healthcare, like education. We need functioning and well maintained infrastructure like roads, bridges, rail and even power and internet to grease the wheels of commerce.
When wealth is hoarded by a few people it's doing nothing for society. They're like dragons, just sleeping on vast piles of treasure. And don't pretend like playing with rockets or cars or buying a website is doing Joe sixpack any favors. That's not helping educate his child or repairing the derelict bridge on his highway. We need a redistributive tax code to put money back into what the wealthy have been harvesting out of our nation for the past 60 years. Thats not a punishment. That's ensuring society continues to function properly. And that applies as much to the people at the very top as it does to the guy with a piddly 5 million.
[1] https://patrioticmillionaires.org/the-oligarch-act-explained/
One could make the argument that we do fund the government plenty and the lack of funding in social programs is a prioritization problem not a funding problem. Maybe take money from the military and foreign aid instead of constantly saying we need to raise taxes for basic human services here.
Well, with regard to properly funding our government, our enormous deficits poke quite a hole in your theory that they have enough funds. I don't disagree that things are massively misappropriated towards defense, foreign aid, oil subsidies, and the like.
What would be beneficial is not just reallocating from those areas, but also broadening the tax base so that our current programs can be expanded because as things are now our social safety net is quite barebones. I'd like to see universal healthcare, free college, guaranteed housing, and other programs to ensure that the poorest among us are taken care of and have a chance to get ahead.
Have you been to some of these schools my taxes fund? I can't even consider sending my kids to these schools when they get older because of how shitty they are since No Child Left Behind, at least I get a chance to send them to a private school where they can fucking learn something.
It sounds like you live in a place that does not adequately fund its public schools.
Instead of complaining that the schools are bad without a reasonable solution, it would be more productive for you to consider the fundamental cause of inequitable schooling: limited resources being hoarded by an extremely small number of people. You use a strange line of reasoning that some underfunded schools perform poorly, so it is pointless to improve funding via taxation of people hoarding wealth. This is not a valid conclusion. (By the way, No Child Left Behind has been replaced by completely different legislation... eight years ago.)
I owe my whole life to public schools. I would have nothing without education. It is a gift we cannot forget.
Current tax money is wasted on administrative bloat rather than funding teachers and reducing class sizes.
Or it gets siphoned off to be wasted on remote learning.
So let's fix the schools instead of ranting about taxes and sending your children to a very privileged private school life? You benefit from everyone else's kids being properly educated, too. All of society benefits.
I don't trust my state to fix schools, they've actively made them worse, and it was a top down problem since No Child Left Behind.
The answer is not to cloister your child in some ivory tower.
We need to fix education and make it work for everyone. There are lots of problems with the education system, not the least of which is how it's funded. Currently in almost every state, schools are funded by property taxes. As you might imagine, this creates quite a disparity in funding between wealthy and impoverished districts. Abolishing that and distributing funds equally across all districts in a state would be a good start. I won't pretend to know anything else about how education works but there are plenty of good people out there who have good solutions.
It seems like making sure my kid gets a good education would lead to a better life like it did for me as a 3rd generation immigrant in the US.
But maybe I'm wrong?
I'm not here to discuss the merits of America's education system. I'm here to discuss the bill introduced by progressives in the House that addresses wealth inequality. Got anything to refute or discuss that I posted in my earlier comment? I'm all ears.
Out of everything in my comment, all you could come up with to respond to was schools?
According to the article, median household wealth is about $120k. The lowest tax bracket this would affect is households who have 1000 times that, so $120M. Googling for "US 1% wealth threshold" gives a ballpark figure of around $10M. So this is actually targeting less than the top 1%.
Also, the first link in the article goes to the full text of the bill.
Your biggest problem with progressive policy is that a news website isn't detailed enough? What do those things have to do with each other?
I hate the Common Dreams website because of how heavily it reflected the politics subreddit. It becomes a comment echo chamber, and a lot of it is just headline bait like "AOC BLASTS Mitch McConnell"
Did he get blasted out of a cannon?
Okay. Well, regardless of how you feel about Common Dreams, this is a (small) step toward taxing the 1% and reducing their control over the country, and that's good news!
I agree, but there has to be a simpler way to do it. Our tax code is bonkers because everyone can cut out a tax break using many different methods while everyone who makes less than 70k a year usually only needs to fill out a W2.
The US tax code is really complicated, but this law is actually pretty simple. Here's an approachable summary from elsewhere in this thread. The law itself is only 14 pages, most of which is about definitions, edge cases, and enforcement; I read through it in about 10 minutes.
Making the US tax code simpler might be a good idea, but that's probably another thread.
You do realize income and assets are not the same thing right?
Some assets generate income, and there's been talk of taxing capital before realized gains.