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Comment by sharun | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about corporations having all this wrapped up. There is a lot of pressure on them since 2008 plus one leak after another - Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Panama, Switzerland etc hasn't made it easy to be tax haven. If they had "won the war" we wouldn't be discussing it here.

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Many of those were personal income tax dodging, corporate tax dodging is usually island tax havens or Ireland recently (Apple/Facebook).

Personal income tax dodging is bad as that is where most tax revenue comes from. Taxes should probably be lower on income as well though to discourage tax games and retaining more tax whales (wealthy tax payers). People of all brackets need more money in their pocket for this consumer economy that hasn't really rebounded.

"Bloomberg: Sorry America, Your Taxes Aren’t High"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-11/sorry-ame...

How low is low enough? Pay your damn taxes.

Only takes into account federal taxes (30%ish). There are state (3-5%), sales (6-10%), property (based on property), county taxes (less than 1%), self employment/FICA tax (15%). For small/medium business or pass-through business sole-proprietor/LLCs etc have a self-employment tax of about 15% on top of the income (for Social Security / Medicare i.e. FICA, regular employees pay half while the company pays the other half).

There are lots of taxes beyond income tax. Basically taxes take about .35-.50 out of every dollar earned through income, sales, other taxes. Business expenses for businesses, kids, credits and other things can help bring it down as well as standard deductions but it is still high.

This seems a lot until you notice that really rich people don't pay these taxes. They make capital gains or receive dividends, which are either tax free or taxed at a much advantaged rate. This is why there is such a great separation between the 1% and the rest of the population.

The article specifically states that the OECD analysis estimated 'payroll taxes, federal income tax, state and local government taxes.'

"Excluded are the countless other ways that governments levy taxes, such as sales and value-added taxes, property taxes, and taxes on investment income and gains."

They also don't include self-employment tax (15%) and sales tax (6-10%). Sales tax and self-employment alone are over 20% close to 25% not counted in the article. Property tax can be close to 1% (depends on property), dividend taxes also aren't included (10-15%).

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