The rich, like all taxpayers, seek to reduce their taxes, and as taxes become higher, they spend more time planning to mitigate them. The rich, though, have the wherewithal to implement strategies, tax forum shop and pay the best professionals, that the rest of us don't have. It's elementary, and requires no "studies," that rich people will avoid and DO avoid abusively high tax regimes, and that is unavoidable. It doesn't take a tax attorney or accountant to know this. It's common sense in a world increasingly full of places to live and conduct business, to submit to this or that applicable tax jurisdiction. So the proper analysis of "taxes for the rich" is not stale, partisan resentment narratives, but rather a nonpartisan analysis of what point will maximum revenues be achieved? Simply, at what point of taxation will (revenues - tax mitigation) produce the greatest revenue? In essence, if you beat the golden goose past a point, it will run away, escape, and then revenue capture becomes negative, no one gets the golden eggs. This is uncontroversial, accepted economics: Laffer curve - Wikipedia What is debatable is what happens next? How is that "rich tax" equilibrium point calculated? What policy achieves it? Those considerations are beyond the scope of this thread and forum generally, but rest assured partisan "placard slogan" narratives of any flavor will not come anywhere close to meeting it. So what is the true partisan aim of repetitive "tax the rich" propaganda narratives? They are specifically tailored towards: 1. Resentment Propaganda among mostly nontaxpayers or low taxpayers which can then be used to raise taxes on all of us middle and upper middle class taxpayers, not the rich. They know that excessive taxation of "the rich" is a thorny issue, everyone reading here knows it. They also know that in "nontaxpayer land" ANYONE who has anything and earns any middling or higher income can be falsely characterized as "the rich." It starts out as "tax the rich," but the real aim is to tax YOU and ME more, and this is why they dishonestly forward all the many gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex Aristocracy LIE NARRATIVES on wealth and income. Complex middle level and up "workers" are able to shelter lots of their income passively by DEFERRING it into outsized pensions to a far greater extent than you and I in the private sector can, so they aren't concerned about what is really going on, MORE TAXES FOR YOU AND ME in the private sector. 2, The above reality ironically plays into Complex enrichment and its very rich crony-donor corporate elites via redistribution. As a middle or upper middle income earner, your family will likely buy a few consumer goods, game and show tickets, wares advertised on TV, but if they can take more money from you, a multiplier of goods and services can be sold by large corporate cronies, and as an added benefit, sold to dumber, non taxpaying consumers. If people aren't stupid enough to buy junk, take money from smart people and give it to the stupid. Great business plan for those seeking to extract as much from as many taxpayers as possible at the end of a government gun barrel. Immoral to the point of evil, but they aren't known for their moral compass. 3. False classification of middle and upper earners and savers as "the rich" towards greater and greater levels of Complex thievery. So you started a business/farm in 1995, scraped and saved, raised and educated kids, created jobs and valuable services in the community, lived on peanuts. Now, when it's time to retire and sell your business/farm? Guess what? despite a lifetime of sweat and sacrifice, YOU are now "THE RICH!" for tax purposes and LIE NARRATIVES on taxation, wealth and income... despite never being "rich" before and not truly "rich" now. And YOU must pay your "fair share." They know they can't soak the really rich, and they don't want to anyway, that's THEIR Complex uniparty best donor bloc. What they want to do is penalize YOU and ME when after a long life of work and sacrifice, you want to retire and leave something for the next generation. THAT is the real reason for Cap Gains tax abuse/increase and other tax increases, taking your sweat away, your very LIFE, and effectively redistributing it to THEIR benefit.
About half of what he said was true. There are plenty of savings plans for middle income Americans to defer or reduce taxes. A ten second internet search will show you how. Farmers in particular have numerous government plans that not only help save taxes and and supplement income. SEPs, long term buy-outs ... there are ways if you spend a day looking. Anyone who has accumulated wealth has done so using the Nations infrastructure - a farmer using large trucks to transport goods does more road damage than the average Joe - the average wealthy family will benefit more from infrastructure improvements than the average Joe - more electrical grid use, more water services, more highway shipping. All that needs to be taken into account when setting up a tax structure. As with most things, there is a point of diminishing returns - finding that point is an ongoing process.
Some fair points, but half being untrue is a stretch way too far. Sure there are ways for the middle and upper classes to defer (not the same as reducing) taxes and reduce taxes, but they are not tremendous things worth more than a smile and a feel good for the moment, and not noticeably better than the tax plans to ease the burden on the lower class.. A point you slide over is that the infrastructure was not built for the farmers, the truckers, or the rich. It was built for society as a whole. All of society benefits when the farmer can efficiently get his goods to market, e.g. (The early railroads might be an exception as most were built to make crony capitalists and politicians rich.) In case you haven't noticed the upper class, i.e. wealthy, does and always has paid more taxes than the middle class who in turn does and always has paid more than the lower class. I don't think many people disagree with that. What many disagree with is the demagogic effort to push that point higher and higher.
No need for internet searching, I was a financial consultant for private firms and banks for years before becoming an attorney with a fairly regular tax law portion of practice to date. AMA. I've opened and managed/advised hundreds of SEPs, IRAs, deferred comp plans, ESOPs, buy sell, trusts, conservation easements, etc. over the years. Those savings plans and other tax planning strategies are strictly limited as opposed to public sector pensions, and benefit primarily wage/salary earners, are of much less benefit to the 30 million U.S. business owners facing cap gains and other taxes when contemplating selling, devising, restructuring business assets. Same for farmers, who really do pay themselves peanuts and then get lied about by the Complex as "rich" towards abusive cap gains taxes when it's time to cash out, retire, leave an estate. As the underlined portion of the OP post claims, the true focus of constant LW lie narratives on "the rich," "wealth," "income inequality," is to falsely categorize those as rich who aren't towards abusive tax policy. The "nation" owns -0- infrastructure other than in a few categories such as raw federal land held in trust for taxpayers, military bases, etc, little of the infrastructure used directly by businesses and others, get honest. 1. States, counties and cities may own infrastructure, but taxing the use of those is, or should be, overwhelmingly a function of those state and local tax regimes, not federal taxation. 2. The above narrative is also refuted by the fact that businesses DO PAY more for the infrastructure they use in several ways. 3. Aid, or even "welfare" to farmers is of debatable use due to so much of that was created for the express purpose of STIFLING small farms in favor of large corporate farming. But farm-aid and its true nature is only tangential to this thread topic.
They invariably pay more for that infrastructure. More road taxes in the form of fuels. More money spent on electricity and water. In fact, when they buy a product which might be more energy saving, it costs more and they pay a higher tax on it.
Most Americans are not saving/investing. They live paycheck to paycheck. They spend until they're broke, and then borrow. They have the latest Iphone, big screen TV, video game console, nice clothes, hair, nails, etc. They are not taking 10 seconds to do that search. California has the highest taxes and the gap between the rich and poor is huge. The wealthy know how to avoid paying taxes and leaving CA is one good way. Its easy to point at the rich and demand that they pay more, but it won't be long until people are pointing at you.
To add a constructive element to the thread, here are some ways that capital gains tax could be equitably administered: 1. High exclusions for small businesses and average joe investors. Also, let's posit a base ~10% cap gains rate on small investors and small businesses. 2. The above can be mitigated by cap gains tax brackets greater than the typical short term/long term brackets. I would have no problem, for example, with cap gains tax brackets that exclude one-time or few-time business sales, and instead progress up to high brackets for those true wealthy with millions of cap gains every year. Wall Street won't cotton to this, nor will large, truly wealthy investors... which is why you won't see much of it other than lip service. 3. Alternatively, AMT for cap gains that kick in only on the truly wealthy, several ways to calculate. Anyone sincerely interested in taxing wealthy people should have no problems with the above. Those are -real- ways, not resentment propaganda ways, to truly tax the wealthy. Again, we will likely not see them. Ask yourself why not?
