<story><title>When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/opinion/rich-getting-richer-taxes.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>4c2383f5c88e911</author><text>A flat tax rate is not a good idea whatsoever; if you tax e.g. 20% of earnings ,do you believe people who earn $30k a year are impacted the same way as people earning $200k or more? Sure, those who earn more pay more, but it hits them in &amp;quot;extra&amp;quot; earnings, while the poor are taxed on money they need to survive.&lt;p&gt;A (very) progressive tax rate with a few ways of reducing the tax based on social (e.g. number of children, etc) criteria would probably work better here.</text></item><item><author>tici_88</author><text>&amp;quot;The problem is that no tax code can close all loop holes because you just can&amp;#x27;t foresee the creative ways people will out maneuver the tax code.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I disagree. I simple flat tax rate where everything is taxed at a single rate would close every single one of the loopholes above, if only by making it moot.&lt;p&gt;The fact that the rich can maneuver themselves into a much lower tax rate than the average person presents a significant, unfair advantage in my opinion. A flat tax rate would make things much more equitable. Plus it would asimplify the tax code tremendously.</text></item><item><author>chollida1</author><text>I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece:&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways.&lt;p&gt;Tax income more, they&amp;#x27;ll take it as dividends.&lt;p&gt;Tax dividends more, they&amp;#x27;ll take it as capital gains.&lt;p&gt;Tax capital gains, they won&amp;#x27;t realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they&amp;#x27;ll just get bank loans again&amp;#x27;t their stock holdings.&lt;p&gt;Tax assets on death and they&amp;#x27;ll pass them o n in trusts.
Some will move money off shore if they think they can get better returns that way.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that no tax code can close all loop holes because you just can&amp;#x27;t foresee the creative ways people will out maneuver the tax code.&lt;p&gt;Who would have thought 25 years ago that companies would buy other companies in different countries, not to acquire their products or markets, but to acquire their headquarters address to lower the tax paid in the US.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think anything has changed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chirau</author><text>A &amp;quot;flat rate&amp;quot; can also be tiered. In this case I&amp;#x27;d take it to mean a flat rate on all money earned during a time period. Whether income or capital gains, dividends, assets or whatever, you are still giving up x% of whatever you earned that year.&lt;p&gt;So even when tiered, a person earning under some amount in total might get a lower tax rate than a person earning a higher amount but it is still flat.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;flat tax&amp;quot; would be taxed on all jurisdiction. So call it a &amp;quot;universal flat tax&amp;quot;. That way, there is no persuasion to register in a foreign country and it would dissuade multi geography registrations as you would just be taxed in multiples by each territory.&lt;p&gt;To avoid double taxation, perhaps, a company can register in multiple countries but since the tax is the same everywhere, the portion of the x% taxed would be proportionally divided to the territories.&lt;p&gt;This assumes of course that the whole world agrees on one tax policy and tax havens are eliminated. :)</text></comment>
<story><title>When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/opinion/rich-getting-richer-taxes.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>4c2383f5c88e911</author><text>A flat tax rate is not a good idea whatsoever; if you tax e.g. 20% of earnings ,do you believe people who earn $30k a year are impacted the same way as people earning $200k or more? Sure, those who earn more pay more, but it hits them in &amp;quot;extra&amp;quot; earnings, while the poor are taxed on money they need to survive.&lt;p&gt;A (very) progressive tax rate with a few ways of reducing the tax based on social (e.g. number of children, etc) criteria would probably work better here.</text></item><item><author>tici_88</author><text>&amp;quot;The problem is that no tax code can close all loop holes because you just can&amp;#x27;t foresee the creative ways people will out maneuver the tax code.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I disagree. I simple flat tax rate where everything is taxed at a single rate would close every single one of the loopholes above, if only by making it moot.&lt;p&gt;The fact that the rich can maneuver themselves into a much lower tax rate than the average person presents a significant, unfair advantage in my opinion. A flat tax rate would make things much more equitable. Plus it would asimplify the tax code tremendously.</text></item><item><author>chollida1</author><text>I wrote this a few years ago in response to a similar piece:&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the rich have the ability to take their income in alot of different ways.&lt;p&gt;Tax income more, they&amp;#x27;ll take it as dividends.&lt;p&gt;Tax dividends more, they&amp;#x27;ll take it as capital gains.&lt;p&gt;Tax capital gains, they won&amp;#x27;t realize their capital gains until they can offset them with realized losses or they&amp;#x27;ll just get bank loans again&amp;#x27;t their stock holdings.&lt;p&gt;Tax assets on death and they&amp;#x27;ll pass them o n in trusts.
Some will move money off shore if they think they can get better returns that way.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that no tax code can close all loop holes because you just can&amp;#x27;t foresee the creative ways people will out maneuver the tax code.&lt;p&gt;Who would have thought 25 years ago that companies would buy other companies in different countries, not to acquire their products or markets, but to acquire their headquarters address to lower the tax paid in the US.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think anything has changed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cpursley</author><text>&amp;gt; A flat tax rate is not a good idea whatsoever&lt;p&gt;Tell this to the nations which have successfully implemented a flat tax:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;node&amp;#x2F;3860731&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;node&amp;#x2F;3860731&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_flat_tax_systems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s ironic that a number of former Soviet countries have moved on to the flat tax, while the west has a progressive income tax (#2 plank of the Communist Manifesto).</text></comment>