'Absurd!': US Billionaires Pay Lower Tax Rate Than Working Class for First Time
'Absurd!': US Billionaires Pay Lower Tax Rate Than Working Class for First Time | Common Dreams
Their tax rate isn’t the real issue. The fact that they extract that much wealth out of the labor and production of others is the real problem.
No human being should have a billion dollars. The workers who got you to your level of privilege and status should be paid based on their worth.
A boss that pays fairly would never become a billionaire, and their workers would live good lives being paid the actual value of their labor. Increased demand from increased household discretionary income would create a boom on the supply side.
But it will never happen, because billionaires own everything and will always manufacture consent. Democracy will die to thunderous applause.
Us poors (the dumb ones, because education will be forever castrated) will clap for the billionaires and lay our thrift store hand-me-down jackets over the curb so they can cross a puddle in the street lest they get a drop of water on their 100k elephant skin boots. It's coming to a head
Although this is true, I'd like this graph on a billboard outside every polling location in November:
Well said.
If we tax them they won’t be incentivized to make more money, thus depriving the market of needed jobs. /s
This is true in the way they may just move overseas, but the frees up the local market for new business and competition!
OR aggressively union-bust and lobby the hell out of congress until, well, we get what we have now: corporate plutocracy.
Wouldn’t they need to employ more people to make the same amount of money?
Not in this country…
Just like we never should have bailed out corporations we should not worry about taxing corporations or the rich. The void will be filled and more rich people will be made. That's how the "free market" works. If you do not let companies die innovation slows and the economy rots. Rich people may not be motivated but some poor people will be.
That there are even billionaires, let alone multi-billionaires. It's an immoral, unethical system that fundamentally exploited labor that allowed for this.
That productivity has gone up but wages have remained stagnant should boil everyone's blood. All the wealth stolen and sent upwards into fewer and fewer hands. Legalized theft by way of capitalism.
Great article. Nice to see an economist doing such important work. I don't really understand finances. I snipped the parts of the article that helped me understand the finding/headling. There's a great chart in the article of taxation differences since the 1960s too - staggering! Plutocracy in action!
Published in The New York Times with the headline "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires," Zucman's analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they "live off their wealth"—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.
Stock gains aren't currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.
"But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets," Zucman noted. "Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter."
We can tax registered securities. Stock holdings. We can take 5% or 50% of all outstanding shares, each and every year, and transfer them to IRS liquidators to be resold in small lots over time.
We can exempt the first $10 million held by a natural person, (which exempts about 99.5% of the populace from the securities tax) and establish a progressive tax schedule that causes the tax rate to exceed average gains when holding more than $100 million worth of securities.
BREAKING NEWS: Republican voters still learning about the Trump Era Tax Reform 8 years later!
Exactly my first thought seeing the thumbnail
Probably get banned for this, but it’s worth it.
What the MSM considers normal regular American I consider upperclass. What they consider poor I consider normal. What they consider homeless is actually the new poor.
Yeah, a whole lot of working folks are one missed paycheck from homelessness. I'm old enough to remember that it wasn't always like this, if you were working you didn't have nearly so much anxiety and exhaustion, you could afford to look after a kid or have the occasional holiday, maybe own a home. Not anymore. The rich are getting richer though.
I think torches, and pitchforks. We should go old school.
I wish people would say this and mean it. I'm waiting. I think we should actually eat one billionaire to make a point. I'm vegetarian but I'll take a bite to prove my commitment.
It's kind of a naive idea though. I used to think it was possible. They will literally just kill us or actively make us poor/homeless/antisocial and make some sort of loophole to make it legal and justified. I wish I didn't think it was game over for the nation but I think it's actually a lost cause. And any time I try to talk to someone in hopes they can influence me otherwise they just prove my point and make me want to give up more. It's like they create a division on purpose, or the benefit of the doubt is that they are too naive or emotional to understand what they are actually doing which is creating more of the people they claim to oppose.
It's like a natural force that keeps war in constant motion. Nobody is allowed to just "be". Doesn't matter if they contribute to society or not. People are disposable to groups and nations. It's an industry. Probably the one that maintains the backbone or foundation of each group/nation/force.
This is easy to solve. Count the loans as ordinary income. Problem solved.
I had to take an insane amount of loans out to get my nursing license. I'll be paying them off for over a decade. I don't like this idea
Easy, put a 1 million dollar limit (as in tax kicks in after 1 mil)
There are numerous things to make this proposal reasonable.
Count as income depending on amount of loan, nature of collateral, and usage of the loaned money.
A loan taken out against primary residence used for purchase of same residence under a million dollars? Not applicable. Proceeds used for education, within reasonable limits? Not applicable.
When a loan is taxed as income, provide for tax credits upon repayment reconcile ultimate use of "real" income. That way you avoid the "double tax" compliant they keep whining about.
I find the tax loans approach ultimately the most workable approach to close the loopholes.
Exclude students loans and anything tied to an asset. These are unique loans only offered to the super wealthy or since there are equity based loans, just tax equity based loans
Loans to entities with more than 10 million net-worth then.
No, count unrealized asset value as income.
You gained 2 billion in stock value, but didn't sell? You get taxed on that stock gain.
I can’t support that. I myself once had 20 million in stock options but couldn’t sell it. By the time I could sell it, it was worth zero. Yet you in your system I would have paid taxes on it. Stock fluctuates in value to much. We just need way to force them sell the stock and then tax the stock as ordinary income.
So only corporations and billionaires can afford to own a home?
Tax the rich, the banks, and the churches. Then see if you still need anything from the normies.
for the first time
Nobody ask about the long-term capital gains rate going back to Ronald Reagan's '83 reform.
Not 100% sure but I imagine they’d count capital gains in the analysis. The full read in The NY Times was interesting but behind a paywall
I imagine they’d count capital gains in the analysis
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8544719
The NYTimes analysis is just about income taxes
Aren't you contradicting yourself here?
But it isn't for the first time. This has been happening for years
That analysis you linked isn't about income taxes. The NYTimes analysis is just about income taxes. It is the first time, although the report is on data that’s a few years old
Yeah I know, it is about the total effective tax rate of various income levels. It clearly demonstrates how the ultra ultra wealthy are able to pay less tax. In theory we are supposed to be on a progressive tax system. In reality at a certain income level it becomes regressive. Just focusing on income tax regardless of the rate. Will never show a full picture. There are other taxes that everybody pays. It is much more telling to understand how the whole package works instead of just focusing on one part.
And that is without tax loopholes and evasions. The ultra wealthy have more than enough money to pay the accountants and tax lawyers needed to under report their income.
They used to push for a flat tax where everyone, billionaires and minimum wage workers alike, would pay the same rate. They did one better and now billionaires pay a lower rate than everyone else. Steve Forbes was an idiot. They managed to do it far better than he could have ever imagined when he ran for President in the 90's. Fucking nepo babies...
Flat tax is an awful idea.
Say they make it 10%
When you make $30k a year, $3,000 has a much higer impact on your finances than someone who makes $3,000,000 and pays $300,000 in taxes. You keep $27,000, they keep $2,700,000. You lose a mortgage payment and a car payment. They have to buy a slightly smaller yacht.
On top of that, as already mentioned, their wealth comes from stocks and other non-wages income. Bezos famously only took $81,000 (I think?) in actual pay for many years, yet he’s one of the richest people on the planet. You think $8,100 in taxes is good enough for one of the richest people while you pay $3k out of your $30k?
Flat tax is a bad idea, and the only ones who want it are the wealthy and those who don’t understand that the wealthy could take whatever salary they want to pay as little tax as possible and just live off stocks, loans, which is how they already avoid paying taxes.
Trump has said if he's elected he'll lower the tax rate for the rich even more.
Once again, the problem is that the banks aren't being taxed. The reason the billionaires don't pay taxes is that they buy everything with money they borrow from the banks.
Borrowing against assets should be income that cannot be offset by the debt.
Fat orange and his repuglican crew got it done
Yeah, Trump was standing on the shoulders of giants like Regan, Bush, and Bush to get us into mess. Thanks Republicans!
Biden didn't fix 40 years of Republican corruption in 3 years therefore he's just as guilty, and I'm voting Republican!!!!!! - Average American moron voter
Do not forget Bill Clinton, he played a huge role. Essentially fulfilling republican dreams of deregulation by joining hands with them. It's when the Democratic party embraced corporate interests and neoliberalism. Clinton deregulated banking (see Glass-Steagall) which led to the financial crisis and banking/finance today.
For the FIRST time? Yeah, no. How about ALL the time?
The moneyed class wet dream come true. 🤬🤬🤬
but they graciously pay salaries of so many people, we shouldn't even tax them!
Not even our closest cousins would tolerate a member that hoarded bananas so. No, it would be fangs, and ripping and all sorts of face-eating, and a whole bunch of other stuff we should be taking inspiration from.
Eat the riches!
Taxing billionaires will just get rolled back, the problem is Capitalism itself.
Collectivize the Means of Production.