Lawry,
When I wrote that most people would avoid tax if
given the opportunity I was a little too bald. I
don't think that most people would go out of
their way to do so. When I was in my 30s I didn't
at all mind being taxed because I was aware of
the benefits I was receiving -- health care,
three children being educated, etc -- and I
thought I was being paid too much anyway
(managerial job with a multinational). But then,
in those days, government (politicians and civil
servants) was far less corrupt than it is now and
the governmental slice of GDP was much less
(about 30%, cf about 45% now). Since then, having
become independent in the meantime and
establishing three businesses with novel jobs
(that is, jobs of a nature which didn't exist
previously), I've increasingly resented the
amount of tax I've paid. But in a perfectly legal
way I've avoided some taxation I would otherwise
have been charged by following the advice of a
highly qualified tax accountant who is scrupulous
and whose firm is given 'top acceptability' rating by the tax authorities.
I can't speak for America or elsewhere but here
in the UK the taxation business has now become so
complicated that even tax inspectors don't
understand anywhere near the whole of it. I
understand that there are over 20 volumes of
statutes. There are so many types of transfer
payments back and forth that any change in
taxation inevitably causes unfairness to some
(often the poor). It's ridiculous, too, that from
the point of being earned any aliquot of money is
taxed at least twice, and sometimes three times,
before the net amount is finally spent. A total
simplification is admitted to be necessary but no
government has had the courage to push it through.
Keith
.
At 01:32 22/04/2012, you wrote:
Many interesting thoughts and observations, here. Thanks Keith.
I cannot agree with your last assertion, though,
that "all of us" would given the opportunity
evade taxes. At least some of us could, but don't.
Leaving aside the inevitable reality that I
disagree and sometimes strongly with some US
Federal and State policies and expenditures, I
feel that I get good good value for my taxes, and am happy to pay them.
Cheers,
Lawry
On Apr 21, 2012, at 4:53 AM, Keith Hudson wrote:
Natalie,
But the sort of emotive talk by Les Leopold and
others about wealth is of absolutely no
constructive use. The rich may be greedy, but
then so is everybody else given an opportunity.
One never hears of an inheritance or a lottery
win ever being turned down. Every single penny
of the wealth of a rich person goes into jobs.
It is either spent into the products or
services of existing jobs, or it is invested,
which produces new jobs, or it goes into
philanthropy, which also produces jobs. Even
wealth which goes into "dead" ends, such as
personal ornamentation or luxury yachts involves jobs.
Once again, as I'm continually saying on FW
(but which hasn't been remarked upon, never
mind disputed), the wealth of today's
billionaires (well over 1,000 of them and
growing fast) is not as disproportionate as the
wealth of the 'robber barons' (Rockefeller,
Carnegie, etc) of a century ago, nor that of
the even wealthier landed aristocracy of
previous agricultural times, nor that of the
royalty of ancient empires. Overall, we are, in
fact, steadily becoming more egalitarian. It's
hard to believe perhaps but it is so.
What makes us unhappy is that the wealth of
some of the rich is constantly flaunted in the
media. Emotionally we can't cope with this. The
effect is that what biologists call a "super
stimulus". We have no defences against this
because although our genes know what "fair
play" is (proven as an instinct in all primates
as well as some monkeys) we've evolved for
millions of years in environments in which
great disparities in wealth were never
possible. Emotionally we can't cope with
examples of great disparity in wealth when it's
thrust in front of us, whether of a next-door
neighbour who flaunts it or the antics of distant billionaires.
The rich can't be blamed for the growing
structural unemployment in the advanced
countries either. Without any overt conspiracy
between them, each one of them will tend to
park their investments with businesses that are
maximally profitable at that time. And that
means growing automation. Unless we extinguish
our intellectual curiosity in our minds and the
growth of the scientific method then automation has a long way to go yet.
I'm greatly in favour of taxing the wealthy --
and heavily, too. But the only sure way of
doing this so that it can't be evaded is to tax
the status objects that are visible to us --
their personal ornamentations, houses, luxury
yachts, etc. Some rich people might even
welcome this form of taxation because being
able to quote their tax band would only add
even more status to themselves. But this tax
will never happen because it doesn't give any
opportunity for politicians to grant favours to
the rich and thus be able to divert some of
their wealth to themselves. All other, more
sophisticated, forms of taxation give the
opportunity for rich people to employ clever
professionals and evade taxation. And you can't
blame the rich for wanting to evade taxation.
All of us would do so given the opportunity.
Keith
At 23:38 20/04/2012, Natalie wrote:
What If the Greedy Rich Paid Their Share? 8
Things to Know About Wealth and Poverty in the US
By <http://www.alternet.org/authors/8894/>Les Leopold
We're far from poor -- we just have a wildly
lopsided distribution of wealth that makes us seem poor.
(snip)
It wasnt an act of God, or the blind forces
of technological change, or the mysterious
movements of markets. Nor did the super-rich
become enormously smarter than before.
Instead, flesh-and-blood policy makers decided
that deregulation and tax cuts should become
the order of the day starting in the
mid-1970s. The idea was that if we cut taxes
on the super-rich and deregulated the economy
(and especially Wall Street), investment would
dramatically increase and all boats would
rise. But as we can see from the chart below,
the average worker's wage in real terms
stalled and even declined after the mid-'70s.
The fruits of productivity no longer were
shared equitably. The enormous gap between the
two lines (trillions of dollars per year) went
almost entirely to the super-rich. The wealth
of the wealthy skyrocketed, not by accident,
but by policy design. "Greed is good" replaced the middle-class American dream.
(snip)
What Is Wealth and Who Has It?
Wealth or net worth is the total value of what
you own (your assets) minus the total value of
your debts (your liabilities.) Our collective
net worth is really huge. Were talking big,
big numbers. As of the end of 2011, U.S.
households had $30 trillion in private assets
and $13.6 trillion in liabilities for a total
net worth of $16.4 trillion
(<http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-5.pdf>
PDF). How much is that? It comes to an average
of $141,000 per household free and clear of any debts.
(snip)
full story with graph at:
<http://www.alternet.org/economy/155025/what_if_the_greedy_rich_paid_their_share_8_things_to_know_about_wealth_and_poverty_in_the_us>http://www.alternet.org/economy/155025/what_if_the_greedy_rich_paid_their_share_8_things_to_know_about_wealth_and_poverty_in_the_us
(my comment)
Apart from reversing market deregulation and
tax exemptions for the wealthy, he may have
mentioned that many industrialists are wealthy
because government allows them, by virtue of
promises like job creation and economic
stimulus, to exploit the commons without much
compensation. Such agreements result in
unjustified tax exemption, despite immense
profits. Corporations today fail miserably to
employ or stimulate regional economies, as do
ever floundering free-market entrepreneurs.
<http://capitalism-creates-poverty.blogspot.ca/2012/03/free-market-myths-no3-entrpreneurs.html>http://capitalism-creates-poverty.blogspot.ca/2012/03/free-market-myths-no3-entrpreneurs.html
Government should, on behalf of the people
whose commons are being exploited, have
recourse to tax the income (profits) of the
corporation by the same measure as for
individuals. If the corporation downsizes and
ships most production overseas, citizens
should have recourse, through government, not
only to tax that income as well, but to revoke
the agreement within the first year of
outsourcing. With proper taxation of industry,
there wouldn't be so much concentration of wealth.
Further, if the commons were legally
recognized as incorporate of predominately
finite resources, we would be looking at
sustainable, rather than exploitative,
approaches toward extractions, and industry
would be paying high taxes for the privilege
of using public lands' raw materials.
Natalia
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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