How to Pay No Taxes
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
Meanwhile, Trump pays for things that are used every day.
Not having good public transportation infrastructure would mean there would be a higher cost of freight within a country thus cutting into profits or driving prices up.
In my eyes, the rich benefit far more from a society's systems than the poor do and thus should be paying more into making it better.
As has already been pointed out, a flat percentage tax does a good job of 'taxing the rich more', but many seem to prefer a progressive taxation, which is to say, almost the opposite of what we have now.
As it stands, income taxes inflate as your income rises, which seems to be progressive taxation. For the life of me, I don't understand how this seems fair to its advocates, but so be it.
That the top 1% benefit from greater tax loopholes makes sense (doesn't necessarily mean fair) in a lot of ways, but aside from the fact that they've bought a lot of legislation, the nation depends on the top 1% as much as they depend on it.
Taxation is a complex subject. I just wonder where on the laffer curve economists think the USA is on regards to the wealthiest.
I also fundamentally disagree that I get more in absolute terms from the government than the millionaire, even if the millionaire has never asked for a handout or used a publicly funded service in his life. The millionaire couldn't buy stabilisation of the banking system[1], free access to markets, protection of his physical and intellectual property, effective enforcement of contracts and all the other benefits which have enabled him to maximise the returns of his ability and efforts - their removal would cost most millionaires far more than 17% of their annual income.
They are beneficial to me too, but not to the tune of several million pounds a year (or not yet anyway :-)
[1]Stability is relative. Unless he happened to be a gold miner, he would be earning less from a smaller economy if every transaction were backed by gold.
"Why should I care what percentage the millionaire pays? Because if they pay a lower percentage, then I have to pay a higher percentage (or receive less well-funded public services)"
This is the problem with government entitlements. People get used to certain cervices and when you try to take them away (less tax revenue, no funding, etc), you get riots in the streets.
There are already problems with this line of thought in Sweden and France. The government has started cutting back because they can't afford these services anymore. I'm not surprised by this because the system just doesn't scale (I think of it like running a business).
The problem I see is that when you dump 60-70% of your money in taxes to the government, you don't have that much left over to save. In 10 or 15 years, if the government collapses, are you going to have enough to get by without it? Nobody thinks long-term, they only think about the now.
The beneficiaries of a stable banking system are just as much the man in the street paying his mortgage or working in a factory as anyone.
I've already acknowledged that I benefit from services provided to me by government such as a stable banking system. However, as I stated in the original post, in absolute terms rich people benefit significantly more from these services, just as their larger enterprises tend to pay more for software licences, not because the marginal cost to the vendor is higher but because the value to their enterprise is much greater. A government that withdrew funding from (for example) enforcing law might cost me my livelihood in the ensuing chaos, but the millionaire stands to lose more than I have ever earned.
Where?
Do we need to argue about why this is something we want to avoid as much as possible, or is it self-evident?