I understand that people don& #39;t like billionaires because of the existential inequality, but I think people don& #39;t understand taxes.

Example: Earn a million dollars, pay 30% tax on it.
Hire 7 people to work for you, they pay 30% on their income.

Buy something with your income?
Pay 5-10% sales tax on it.

1e6 * 0.7*0.7*0.9 = 450k.

And now your business you invested in, after spending 700k on salaries earns $1.4M total. Pay 30% on the 700k profits.

Issue a dividend to you shareholders?
Recipients pay another 30% in taxes on the amount received.
My point is that people think that money gets taxed once. It gets taxed so many times along the way, in geometric fashion, it& #39;s surprising there is any left.
That said, there& #39;s certainly a lot of tax loopholes that lead to institutions not paying on this schedule.

A simpler, more transparent tax code would increase fairness in this regard.
One only has to look at the crazy backflips corporations do to elect specific tax treatments.

It& #39;d be better to have a simpler system which imposes frictions in fewer places.
I don& #39;t think a wealth tax is a great idea, but one of the appealing aspects of switching to a wealth-tax only system is that it& #39;s theoretically much simpler to navigate.

In practice falls short and introduces new issues, but interesting to think about new tax doctrine.,
I also like the georgist approach to property taxes. You pay what you think you owe based on a self-asessed property value, but anyone can buy your property at that price.
How much of a person& #39;s work output should the government be entitled to? Pick the closest answer.
It seems that tax policies don& #39;t start with answering the above question in a sane manner.
BTW; this isn& #39;t even mentioning inflation. You& #39;re paying like another 6%/year on all dollar assets you hold without writing a check.
You can follow @JeremyRubin.
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