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The "more effectively" part is important here. Plenty of people will happily vote for increased corporation tax here in the UK to stick it to those evil billionaires and just end up ruining small businesses in the process (while of course the likes of Amazon, Google and Starbucks carry on paying essentially nothing).

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So what's the problem with taxing them for egregiously more but ineffectively? What if we kept the current effectiveness but imposed, say, a 120% rate on the ultra-wealthy? Maybe they would end up needing to pay 40% of this but at least it would be a lot better than we are doing now.

Let's say you started out with a 3% effective tax and a 30% ineffective tax. Would adding that 120% be effective or ineffective? If effective it would break their backs, and if ineffective it would kill whatever small businesses couldn't employ the dodge.

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