this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 32 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

This would be ideal but I'm skeptical that it's actually possible. Bribes are cheaper than taxes, so I think they'd likely just prevent the taxes from happening by greasing the correct palms.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Well yeah, that’s exactly what’s happened for at least the past 50 years. In 1968 corporations were paying 53% of their profits in taxes, and billionaires were paying 94% around that time! Btw, if you’re making billions, paying 94% still leaves you richer than most…

Contrast that to today, where the system is so obviously broken during a time when Amazon is paying less in total taxes than a fry cook at McDonald’s.

It would need to be done with actually no loopholes, and meaningful enforcement of consequences for those who would try to cheat (perhaps the guillotine).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

one big issue is everyone goes "you can't tax stocks!" and then billionaires take a loan against the stocks with the unrealized gains as collateral. So we'd need to start classifying a loan as a realized gain of the collateral against this, with an exception for mortgages on primary domiciles, maybe also a "first million dollars are exempt," calculated on the full debt of the borrower, not per loan. I can't imagine anyone taking out more than $1M in debt against a properly they don't live in is not the rich we need to be taxing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Yeah. Virtually anything with an exception for the first million dollars will both lose almost no tax revenue (as a percentage), and never ever touch the rest of us temporarily embarrassed not-quite-yet-billionaires.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 4 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Contrast that to today, where the system is so obviously broken during a time when Amazon is paying less in total taxes than a fry cook at McDonald’s.

Wait.....by percentage, or by dollar amount?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 17 hours ago

Mostly by percentage, but I wouldn't be surprised for the other one.

[–] raspberriesareyummy 3 points 13 hours ago

Dollar amount for some markets and some years - big corps do accounting magic and end up net negative, which they can calculate against profits in another fiscal year under some circumstances, paying 0% tax

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago

Don't they already just avoid paying taxes by not having a salary and just using bank loans or something? So they have no actual money in the bank