[HN Gopher] EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to b...
___________________________________________________________________
EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to be taxed, not
income
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-10-23 07:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| darthoctopus wrote:
| about time
| Khelavaster wrote:
| Printing more money effectively taxes the super-rich as well.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Completely false. Real assets hold up much better under
| inflation than savings accounts of ordinary people.
| Condition1952 wrote:
| Freshly printed money goes directly into the pockets of the
| mega-rich
| usrusr wrote:
| It's exactly the opposite: the super rich don't just have all
| their wealth in assets, they have _far more than all their
| wealth_ in assets. They buy real estate using mortgages just
| like everybody else. They are billionaires in net worth, but
| their debt is usually much bigger than the sum of their cash-
| equivalents. They win from money devaluation just like any poor
| mortgage serf, just magnified by some trailing zeroes. Printing
| money taxes the guy with the savings account and nobody else.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| I would clap if I could
| rahen wrote:
| No, inflation concentrates the wealth into the hands of the
| government, banks and the wealthiests, not the people. This is
| called the Cantillon effect.
| Copenjin wrote:
| Easy target, why not.
| rewmie wrote:
| > Easy target, why not.
|
| If the super-rich are such an easy target, how come the article
| states they also avoid any type of income tax?
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| It's pretty easy to avoid income tax by not making any
| income. Works for rich and poor alike.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Because over time the threshold for the 'wealth tax' will be
| lowered until the middle-class are taxed out of their homes
| blueflow wrote:
| The same middle class that is currently not able to afford a
| house?
| okokwhatever wrote:
| exactly, because in the end the idea is to increase taxes
| for everyone. But hey, lets lower the bar of the super rich
| to those who own a car or a house or those who travel by
| plane or those who eat meat....
| bluescrn wrote:
| Yeah, the middle class is already being wiped out, leaving
| the working class with nothing to aspire to.
|
| Soon there'll be nothing left between the elite and the
| wage slaves/serfs.
| blitzar wrote:
| Everyone will want the threshold for the 'wealth tax' to be
| their wealth + $1, even better if the Smiths next door with
| all their vulgar displays of wealth are hit by it.
|
| I on the other hand with my $1 lower wealth am an average
| humble common man of the people.
| badcppdev wrote:
| An interesting thought experiment for me is to imagine a wealth
| tax in the 0.1 to 0.5% range and figure out if the difference is
| might make to the different groups.
|
| I'm a firm believer in incremental changes and experiments which
| is of course hopelessly politically naive.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| I think the tax rate they suggest in the article is 2%, which
| feels pretty incremental.
| labster wrote:
| Often a problem in politics is that people are pretty inelastic
| when it comes to what they want changed. They want a program
| fully funded or not funded, a tax issued or no tax at all. A
| small wealth tax will be seen by foes as a stepping stone to
| further overreach, and proponents won't want to fight the same
| fight again later to get what they feel is owed now.
|
| Your naivete is not the problem, but rather partisanship means
| we can't have nice things.
| blitzar wrote:
| The core problem is how you define and observe wealth. It is
| not like income, which is a transfer that can be observed
| directly.
|
| It becomes not dissimilar to the "Window tax" (not the bill
| gates kind) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax - a form
| of _daylight robbery_ where people brick up windows of their
| houses.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| Why not just ask the taxpayer to identify the value of all
| their assets, with the condition that they must sell to the
| government at the price given, if requested?
|
| Note that in practice _income_ is also quite complicated to
| pin down in tax law.
| blitzar wrote:
| Why not allow me to sell at the price the government
| insists it is valued at?
|
| Many people that live in locations with property tax would
| very happily sell their property at the "assessed" value
| rather than sell on the open market for a fraction of that
| price.
| dappermanneke wrote:
| wish the EU was half as focused on promoting economic growth as
| they are on taking things from people
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Taxation is not "taking things from people". Everyone benefits
| from the public services Taxes fund, even the super wealthy.
| f233f2 wrote:
| If we are to tax people because they benefit from public
| services, then poor people should be taxed more than rich
| people since they benefit from those services more.
| badcppdev wrote:
| No rich people benefit more. They rely on the rule of law
| in a nation state to protect their assets and provide a
| supply of goods and services. And they don't pay much for
| it (in percentage terms definitely).
| f233f2 wrote:
| Poor people cause much, much, much more work to law
| enforcement and the judicial system than rich people.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| That too is benefitting rich people more than poor.
| f233f2 wrote:
| Rich people can hire private security. Poor people can't.
| In terms of raw numbers, law enforcement's job is to
| protect poor people from other poor people.
| tgaj wrote:
| Yeah, because white collar crimes do not exist and do not
| cost billions of dolars. Sorry for being sarcastic but
| seriously...
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| You can easily be poor without a working government,
| being rich without a working police and judicial system
| is much harder.
| michpoch wrote:
| > They rely on the rule of law in a nation state to
| protect their assets and provide a supply of goods and
| services. Which as a result let their companies prosper
| and that benefits the employees.
|
| > And they don't pay much for it Not true
|
| > (in percentage terms definitely). Why would it matter?
| kleene_op wrote:
| Rich people benefit from all the poor people benefiting
| from public services. No Uber drivers without public roads.
| f233f2 wrote:
| Uber drivers are poor people.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Everyone benefits from the public services Taxes fund, even
| the super wealthy."
|
| That is somewhat debatable. Not all taxes go to universally
| popular public services. Special interest lobbies are strong
| everywhere, so you always end up funding a bunch of rent
| seekers.
|
| This is the eternal problem of the public purse, not that
| different between modern democracies and eunuchs of the Ming
| dynasty: someone's else's money gets stolen a lot.
| dappermanneke wrote:
| I live in one of the most highly taxed countries on planet
| earth and what my taxes mostly do is go from my pocket to
| either an unsustainable pay-as-you-go defined benefit
| pensions regime that nobody wants to reform into a market
| based defined contribution regime since that would make
| apparent the underlying weakness of our economy or the money
| goes to structurally poor regions where it disappears forever
| because nobody wants to take hard measures to reform
| governance in those regions. sorry to break your bubble but
| high taxation is not inherently good or bad, depends wholly
| on the governance, and the governance tends to the bad
| badcppdev wrote:
| Please name the country? It makes the discussion impossible
| when you vaguely complain about something with no links or
| ability for anyone to respond.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Going by the username, Belgium?
|
| Edit: note that many countries would fit the description;
| at least I know the Flemish are complaining their taxes
| burning up for nothing in Wallonia and Madrid/Barcelona
| complaining their taxes disappearing for nothing in
| Andalusia etc, West Germany in East Germany, but I guess
| every country has this issue at least at some level.
| galbar wrote:
| When I read their comment, I immediately thought of
| Spain. But they may have meant a different country.
| dappermanneke wrote:
| I'm sorry I don't want to dox myself nor spend my time
| arguing with people who just googled "how does X country
| benefits system work" on HN
|
| I think you can easily see from the replies to my comment
| however that this sentiment is widely shared across
| europe, which is indeed reflective of the fact that our
| economic malaise and lack of policy to address it is an
| EU wide phenomenon
| badcppdev wrote:
| The first point makes sense. But your contributions to
| this discussion is significantly hampered by that choice.
| Perhaps start a throwaway account where you can share
| more specific links and examples.
|
| If this is a subject that you think is important then
| make an effort.
| dukeme09 wrote:
| I bet it's Germany!
| arcade79 wrote:
| Based on the description, it sounds like Norway
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Argentina, for sure
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Hello
| okokwhatever wrote:
| I don't know where do you life but believe me if I tell you
| that your statement does not work if you're out of the US and
| EU.
| archi42 wrote:
| s/even the super wealthy/especially the super wealthy/
|
| The wealth of the wealthy depend a lot on the infrastructure
| build from tax money. E.g. they don't build nation-scale road
| networks, but would make much less profit if these were
| absent.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Taxation is not "taking things from people". Everyone
| benefits from the public services Taxes fund, even the super
| wealthy.
|
| Of course it's taking things from people. You might say that
| it's worth it, but that's nothing to do with the mechanism.
|
| Having worked with the public sector a bit, it's incredible
| how much money is constantly wasted. You see public services
| and think all the money is spent efficiently on them, when
| it's just constantly spent on everything. PS20k meetings to
| decide whether or not to spend PS10k. Making sure your budget
| is always fully spent so you can get the same next year, even
| if you don't need it now and won't need it next year. Every
| day in every department in every government, multiple
| people's whole lifetime of taxation is wasted.
|
| The mentality is totally different when your customers go to
| jail for not paying you.
| tgaj wrote:
| Oh man, you should see how much money is wasted in private
| corporations. How many start-ups take millions of dollars
| and deliver nothing. There always be some percentage of
| money lost, like there always be bugs in our software.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| There's a big difference though; startups are fueled by
| private money, from people who knew the risks.
|
| Public sector waste comes out of all our pockets and
| could have been allocated to welfare, teacher salaries or
| infrastructure.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They are spending their own money. They aren't wasting
| other people's hard-earned money. VCs and other funders
| know the risks and take them anyway. That's why upping
| taxation to those who take big risks and they pay off is
| bad - they'll just stop taking risks and things will stop
| improving.
| rahen wrote:
| Thank you. I see the same across the Channel, in a country
| addicted to public spending and government control.
|
| Private company come with safeguards: competition and the
| need for profitability (which is just sustainability
| anyway). When the natural balancing forces of the market
| are skewed, obviously inefficiencies will arise and people
| will pay the price for this.
| dijit wrote:
| You might not have meant it this way, but such phrasing is a
| dogwhistle for fervent capitalists.
|
| Usually the saying is: "If the damned government would just get
| out of the way and we had unfettered capitalism we would have
| enormous growth".
|
| The issue with Capitalism (as many economists will tell you) is
| that it causes monopolies, in fact the _game_ monopoly was
| designed to teach exactly this.
|
| Growth is not by-in-itself a good thing for most people, it
| _typically_ is because wealth generally gets distributed a bit;
| however countries like the UK (which is a rich country by most
| metrics) has a lower QoL for a common person than Estonia does
| despite Estonia only having a fraction of GDP per capita
| relative to the UK.
|
| Wealth naturally centralises in a closed capitalist system;
| regulation is the only force that stymies that.
|
| If wealth is too concentrated then growth is meaningless to the
| majority.
| rahen wrote:
| Isn't the government also a monopoly? Can you really get rid
| of it and its corruption by just voting? What about state
| monopolies when they become inefficient and debt ridden, and
| can just _forbid_ competition?
|
| No private monopoly is forever, whether it's the Hudson's Bay
| Company, the East India Company, GM, Kodak, IBM, you name it.
| All those empires fell because eventually there will be more
| innovative offers from lighters, more agile competitors.
| Government monopolies are much harder to get rid of.
| badcppdev wrote:
| The EU population pays a lot for national defence and
| safeguarding of 'things'.
|
| Imagine Switzerland bordered Russia... would they spend more or
| less on national defence? Does that mean that the EU is
| subsidising the defence budget of the country with the highest
| average wealth?
| dappermanneke wrote:
| actually european defence spending is frankly laughable
| compared to the USA which provides most of our security
| guarantees
| badcppdev wrote:
| So American tax payers are subsidising your security costs?
| NATO has benefits and costs. Some of the costs are
| financial and some are political. All of that has to be
| figured in when you are talking about how the super-rich
| benefit greatly from the current situation and do not pay
| proportionally
| sho wrote:
| I hope this is the beginning of the pendulum swinging back
| towards a more sustainable tax regime. A lot of people forget -
| or pretend to forget - in the "golden age" of america's great
| works, the top tax rate was above 90%! And somehow all that
| innovation and wealth creation still managed to happen (and is
| now all beginning to fall apart).
|
| I'm not advocating for a return to those levels, but right now
| the truly rich effectively pay no tax at all,basically a result
| of regulatory capture at the individual level. Hopefully, this is
| the first step in that finally beginning to swing back in the
| other direction.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Tax rates are meaningless signalling to low-information voters.
| The real devil is always in the loopholes. In practice,
| American tycoons never paid 90 per cent taxes, not even half of
| that.
| joe__f wrote:
| Then start funding more regulatory bodies to close loopholes
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You're missing the point. Saying that once upon a time
| taxes were 90% and it was fine is wrong because there were
| ways round it. Therefore there is no historical evidence
| that this level of taxation would be a good idea.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > In practice, American tycoons never paid 90 per cent taxes
|
| at least they had to go down from 90%
|
| now they start from 37%...
| smolder wrote:
| That's interesting. Not that I don't believe you, but, have
| any source?
|
| I'd like to see how the "real tax rate" for each bracket has
| changed over time, if there were any way to arrive at such a
| number. It'd be difficult to fairly account for all the
| accounting tricks/loopholes, subsidies, and quid-pro-quo to
| arrive at some net burden.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Yeah its insane to me that people are unaware of this or ignore
| this. I also don't get how the average person can defend the
| existence of the ultra wealthy.
| pojzon wrote:
| Whistleblowers released so many papers about the topic by now
| half of super rich should be in jail with 50yrs sentences for
| a tax fraud.
|
| Issue is - our politics are on rich ppl payroll.
|
| Nothing will change till we make any lobbing illegal with
| very bad consequences for both parties.
| totetsu wrote:
| How does that quote go again ..
|
| A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
| It can only exist until the rich people discover they can
| buy themselves politician. From that moment on, the
| canidate promising to keep the most benefits out of the
| public treasury will always get the most campaign funding..
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| > I'm not advocating for a return to those levels
|
| It worked in the past without any significant drawbacks for
| society (i guess the rich person losing 90% to taxes might
| grumble a bit), so there is no reason not to do it again.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I wonder how much the super-rich pay for the protection of their
| assets? I don't mean the physical security around their property
| or the fees to whatever vault holds their art collection. I mean
| how much to the super-rich pay to national governments for
| security of the national borders, court systems, general
| policing, financial rules, auditing, banking systems, and all the
| education and infrastructure required to run that system. I
| wonder if measured by a percentage of wealth whether the ultra
| rich are actually getting subsidised by the rest of the
| population.
| teamonkey wrote:
| If you believe in market rates, the cost of protecting large
| assets from taxes will be very slightly less than the cost of
| paying those taxes.
|
| Or actually it should cost somewhat more, if you think that
| holding on to those assets has significantly more utility to
| you than paying tax.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is quite significant; especially this is why wealthy
| people from less stable or rule-of-law states tend to park
| their wealth in the West. There's a lot of money in London from
| Gulf states, Russian oligarchs, Chinese "property investors"
| and so on. To some extent it's a benefit, but it also prices
| out locals, and the distorting effects of that concentration of
| money start to affect the local rule-of-law as well...
| RandomLensman wrote:
| The mentioned $200B globally per year is an irrelevant sum
| compared to global tax revenue - might shift some distributional
| things, but not adding noticeable amounts to taxes raised.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Declare residence in an isolated island. Stay away of the world
| for 6-9 months a year. Use a third-party proxy person who signs
| everything in your name (obviously for a profit), and so on, and
| so on... profit.
|
| All the tricks were already invented during this century. The
| taxes to the rich guys, at the end, will only affect those in the
| middle class with medium-high salaries (do you recognize here my
| friends?).
| gwnywg wrote:
| That's exactly what I thought. Calls to tax the rich are not
| affecting them since they have means to avoid being taxed. We
| have no means at all and those laws will be directed at us at
| later stage (thresholds lowered, definitions changed, etc.).
| okokwhatever wrote:
| It happened before and will happen again, yes.
| rand846633 wrote:
| Would you trust some random island state with your multi
| billion wealth? Seems risky. Also how do you maintain access to
| all the relevant markets that you need to multiply your wealth?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That level of wealth often implies a lot of risk-taking.
| That's why higher rates of tax are a problem: people won't
| take the risk, and far fewer new things will be created.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| If you are an american citizen, you are taxed no matter where
| you live.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| if you're an american citizen you're just a small percentage
| of all the human race paying wild taxes.
| Trow83949 wrote:
| I am middle class, and I already do those tricks. In reality it
| means I follow the sun, and change location every two months. I
| pay about 10% in taxes and socials. All strictly legal!
|
| Who really gets screwed by this, are middle class people with
| children!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Who really gets screwed by this, are middle class people
| with children!
|
| The classic middle class trap: the working class are
| subsidised by taxes; the rich can pay enough to avoid taxes,
| and the middle class pay taxes.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes. There should be no objection against people being paid for
| honest work, but if these people use that money against other
| people in any way, we have a problem. And this is almost always
| the case, where rent seeking is just one example.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| TL;DR: - Everybody in this post is sick of paying taxes -
| Everybody will pay more taxes in the near future. Period - Rich
| guys will pay mostly the same taxes in the future - Taxes are
| collected to repay debt not to sustain a sick society.
|
| Anything else is wishful thinking and academic ideology far away
| from the real live.
| Trow83949 wrote:
| You are missing the point.
|
| EU has about 200 billions EUR in frozen assets of Russian
| oligarchs. Those money are ripe for taking, but EU needs
| justification. Taxing it over several years seems like a good
| strategy. It is not like they can move it to Dubai...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-23 09:02 UTC)