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lampey posted:What would the downsides be for racing capital gains at the same rate as normal income? traders can fart money at each other anywhere in the world
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Oct 20, 2015 02:25
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Full Battle Rattle posted:"discourages investment" This is ultimately silly - that is like saying income brackets discourage people from seeking a higher-paying job (of course for low-information capitalist purposes this does happen to get people to accept their place and sympathize with their bosses). mdm posted:traders can fart money at each other anywhere in the world This is the real problem - the global 1% can avoid lots of taxes unless something is done internationally. IMO they should keep some tariffs with free trade 'zones' but have the revenue from them be a fund for all members of the treaty organization (NAFTA, TPP, etc).
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Oct 21, 2015 00:43
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McDowell posted:This is the real problem - the global 1% can avoid lots of taxes unless something is done internationally. IMO they should keep some tariffs with free trade 'zones' but have the revenue from them be a fund for all members of the treaty organization (NAFTA, TPP, etc). Doesn't the US require information of foreign assets, and foreign banks largely provide this?
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Oct 21, 2015 01:47
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lampey posted:Doesn't the US require information of foreign assets, and foreign banks largely provide this? A major republican platform is to defund and disband the IRS. If you don't have the resources to confirm reported income how can you enforce the law? The IRS probably have lots of legacy IT databases for payrolls and bank statements and those kinds of things - but if you're putting assets overseas you can do all kinds of things to make it not worth the effort to go after - like going to different currencies / commodities / etc. Our economic culture is insanely paranoid - which is why employers should be publishing wage schedules - break the taboo of talking about compensation openly. By taxing trade within a zone - and putting that revenue into a common fund that member nations can draw from - you have a global system of taxation that affects both consumers and producers. If you start allowing free travel for individuals you might see a healthier geographic distribution of manufacturing/mining/administration/green areas.
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Oct 21, 2015 02:23
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Frankly, I don't understand the rationale behind a flat tax. Doesn't a flat tax system simply increase the low-end rates and decrease the higher mrginal rates? As I see it, it is designed to provide even more tax cuts to the highest earners while increasing taxes on the lowest. How does this even gain any support? (i.e., if someone pays fewer taxes, someone else pays more) A flat tax really just resets the marginal rates to the same level across the board. Right? Also, I don't see how this would affect IRS operations at all. Most of the activity of the IRS involves income definition, and the "flat tax" taxes income, right? Income would still need to be defined. Some folks say that the tax code would be simplified by eliminating deductions, but that's quite ludicrous when one considers small businesses. Are they to be taxed for gross profits, net profits, or net profits plus non-cash depreciation? The Flat Tax is a retard-based system of taxes. Wealth taxes make perfect sense, and it's a good way to tax citizenry in a way that prevents the cataclysm of unregulated capitalism. Love, Vitalis
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Oct 22, 2015 18:18
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Why are flat tax proponents fixated on first‐order polynomials? Why not second degree or zeroth degree? Why does it have to be a polynomial at all? Seems pretty arbitrary.
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Oct 23, 2015 17:08
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I posit that the flat tax isn't flat at all. A true flat tax: Everyone pays the government $3,000. Doesn't matter whether you have a business, are an infant, or homeless. Everyone pays. Nobody doesn't pay. That should clean up IRS operations.
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Oct 23, 2015 17:46
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Dr. Stab posted:I posit that the flat tax isn't flat at all. That's a direct tax and it has to be proportional to population size or it's unconstitutional Hth
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Oct 23, 2015 21:08
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Platystemon posted:Why are flat tax proponents fixated on first‐order polynomials? Why not second degree or zeroth degree? Why does it have to be a polynomial at all? I already made a similar point further up in the thread. Apparently, the answer is that people are retarded at math.
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Oct 26, 2015 16:29
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PT6A posted:Hence why I said "taxable income." There should be a basic personal exemption which would render the first $X not taxable. Like a standard deduction? point of return posted:this worked better before donald trump's tax plan turned out to be basically the same as jeb!'s Trump's taxes are lower than Jeb's, both individual and corporate. Jeb actually tries to put forward something that's not a huge gently caress you, but still a nod to our corporate overlords. Jeb's top income bracket is 28% at $85,750 while Trump's is 25% at $150,000. Jeb's top corporate bracket is 20% while Trump's is 15%. For comparison, corporate taxes are currently in the mid thirties. Both want to get rid of estate taxes and the alternate minimum tax, but that's to be expected from a GOP candidate. lampey posted:What would the downsides be for racing capital gains at the same rate as normal income? The downside is that the intent is to reward investors for keeping their money in the market, instead of moving in and out as winds change. That's also some of the purpose behind tax-advantaged retirement accounts, which charge penalties for withdrawal before the age of 59½. But some people do want their capital gains taxed as income, particularly securities traders. With capital gains taxed as income, losses are fully deductible instead of only up to $3,000, the wash-sale rule doesn't apply, and you aren't taxed on each gain individually. Those are huge benefits. And if you make less than $200,000 annually, it's cheaper to have your capital gains taxed as income. But the IRS doesn't want people trading. They want people investing. As such, they make election bothersome and irrevocable for individuals. To get around that headache, many securities traders can set up corporate entities and elect mark-to-market accounting like any other corporation would (or trade through their retirement accounts). If you're dealing with a decent amount of capital gains, it's probably better to do so through an entity anyway, especially if your trading puts you in higher income brackets. Corporate taxes are based off profit, not income, and profit is what's left after employee payroll, medical, insurance, retirement, etc. Working for a company that cares so dearly for its employees can be nice. And hey, if the business environment in the United States isn't competitive, overseas corporations may be hiring.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:21
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Vitalis Jackson posted:Frankly, I don't understand the rationale behind a flat tax. Doesn't a flat tax system simply increase the low-end rates and decrease the higher mrginal rates? That is the rationale lol.
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Nov 8, 2015 03:24
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Full Battle Rattle posted:"discourages investment" "I can make money without doing anything, but it will be taxed at 30%. gently caress that, I"ll just not make any money!" said no one ever
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Nov 8, 2015 03:37
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just a reminder that total taxation as a share of income is already pretty flat https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/19/heres-why-the-47-percent-argument-is-an-abuse-of-tax-data/ politicians and the media tends to focus purely on the federal income tax though in order to make disingenuous arguments for slashing taxes for the wealthy
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Nov 8, 2015 03:43
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Triglav posted:
This is a really insightful explanation for why we have the current system. Is it really worth giving a subsidy to capital gains to keep money in the market? The IRS is leaving a lot of money on the table for that upside.
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Nov 8, 2015 09:19
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Well, it's a balancing act, but it's not a subsidy. It's rewarding positive conduct. If there were no benefits to investing, fewer people would do it and economic growth would slow. And if there were no benefits to keeping investments in the market, the market would be more volatile and any crashes would be harder. In a crash, someone may see their previously profitable asset beginning to lose money, but they'll keep it in the market because they'll lose even more to taxes if they pull it out too early. If the asset is no longer profitable by the time they pull it out, well that's a capital loss and the IRS will let them recoup up to $3,000 in losses on their taxes. Money kept in the market keeps businesses open and people employed. What the IRS loses on one person's capital gains taxes, it makes up in other people's taxes. So long-term capital gains are considered investments and treated beneficially, while short-term capital gains are considered profiteering and given no benefit. Even things like capital gains tax deferrals can be positive. I remember reading that George Soros may currently owe some seven billion dollars in deferred taxes, due 2017. But the government will get substantially more in 2017 than if they taxed him annually, because the less frequently someone's taxed, the more they make over time, and the larger sum both they and the government receive in the end. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. Consider the idle rich. They're either losing money or living off dividends from their investments. They may be sunbathing on a yacht all day, but their money's at work in someone else's pocket, and the government's collecting taxes off that person, the idle rich's dividends, anything either of them buy, and anyone either of them employ. For the IRS, it's a web of small revenue streams of greater value than a single large stream. And when that idle rich person dies, their heirs lose 40% of anything above five million dollars. That five million dollar leeway keeps the estate tax from hurting successful families who may have amassed a few million dollars in assets between houses, cars, businesses, etc, while still keeping any would-be aristocratic class in check.
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Nov 8, 2015 21:42
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Triglav posted:Well, it's a balancing act, but it's not a subsidy. It's rewarding positive conduct. If there were no benefits to investing, fewer people would do it and economic growth would slow. And if there were no benefits to keeping investments in the market, the market would be more volatile and any crashes would be harder. In a crash, someone may see their previously profitable asset beginning to lose money, but they'll keep it in the market because they'll lose even more to taxes if they pull it out too early. If the asset is no longer profitable by the time they pull it out, well that's a capital loss and the IRS will let them recoup up to $3,000 in losses on their taxes. it doesn't actually work that way the idle rich invest in the global economy but their investments in generate money for them instead of useful economic activity
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Nov 8, 2015 22:35
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How do you define useful economic activity? An American investor buys a thousand lots of stock in an American cellphone company, funding research and development and the ultimate fabrication of a South Korean computer chip to be soldered in China with Indonesian tin, all so an American consumer can uselessly tweet a pizza emoji for their own momentary enjoyment. But each level of the operation was priced, invested, and taxed by local authorities and businesses. In aggregate, countless people benefit, domestically and internationally, all from an American consumer's desire to tweet a pizza emoji, an American company's desire to profit, the American company's foreign supply chain's desire to profit, and the investor's desire to profit. Maybe some or all of these companies were founded whole or in part by grants from local government, in an attempt to spur economic activity. Who knows. And so the consumer works enough to buy a cellphone with their taxes-withheld paycheck, paying sales tax at the point of sale. The company profits, which local, state, and federal governments tax. After taxes, the company issues its investor a dividend, which state and federal governments tax as income. Later the investor sells their stock in the company at a profit to another investor, which state and federal governments tax as capital gains. Whether or not an economic activity is useful, money's still green.
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Nov 8, 2015 23:34
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distribution of wealth senpai
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Nov 8, 2015 23:38
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Triglav posted:An American investor buys a thousand lots of stock in an American cellphone company from another investor who wanted to cash out. I would love to live in the world where only newly issues stocks were Can shares changing hands for the Nth time even be connected to real activity going on at the issuing company? At that point it's just money being shuffled in a spreadsheet and is no more productive (in real terms) than money stashed in a mattress.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:08
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What if it could mean multiple plateaus but each one flat, so it's the same, but we call it flat tax and no cents or uneven dollar amounts will be owed to the irs? That or just tax capital gains a lot, and then do the flat tax if it will shut up tea partiers.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:11
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Triglav posted:How do you define useful economic activity? ill let robert reich explain it https://vimeo.com/141725998 password is Bernie2016
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Nov 9, 2015 01:34
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Reicere posted:I would love to live in the world where only newly issues stocks were Many traders are superstitious, believing they can read patterns in the noise, talking about dojis and fibonacci ratios. They'll buy and sell from other traders based off the patterns they convince themselves into seeing on their charts, while other traders on different charts trade off completely different patterns. Both can make and lose money doing this. Both end up giving their brokerages lots of money in commissions. But traders, both human and computer, are also what provide market liquidity to speculators and investors, who are buying and selling for limitless other reasons. A stock issued a hundred years ago is still tightly connected with the activity of the current company. If the company's worthless, so's its stock. Fundamentals and future outlooks are constantly changing with each quarterly earnings report, press release, news article, and so on. A positive outlook brings capital, while a negative outlook takes it away. If a single outlook changes for one company, outlooks change for everything else as well. Everything effects everything, so buying or selling a stock moves other stocks, indices, currencies, commodities, futures... The larger the timescale, the more efficient the market, but from moment to moment the market is irrational and inefficient. Traders make their money by playing those inefficiencies and acting on news faster than others. But even on larger timescales you have inefficiencies and irrationalities. For example, Tesla Motors hemorrhages money with little to show for it, but their stock price keeps going up. Some want them to succeed and will keep feeding them money until they do. Others are following the herd, seeing numbers get larger. Some others maybe just think the cars are nice and others will find them nice too. There's infinite reasons why someone may buy or sell a stock. Traders and brokerages are just there to make it possible. Top City Homo posted:ill let robert reich explain it The password doesn't seem to work.
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Nov 9, 2015 02:29
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Triglav posted:Many traders are superstitious, believing they can read patterns in the noise, talking about dojis and fibonacci ratios. They'll buy and sell from other traders based off the patterns they convince themselves into seeing on their charts, while other traders on different charts trade off completely different patterns. Both can make and lose money doing this. Both end up giving their brokerages lots of money in commissions. But traders, both human and computer, are also what provide market liquidity to speculators and investors, who are buying and selling for limitless other reasons. whoops try lowercase: bernie2016
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Nov 9, 2015 02:51
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Ah yeah, I saw that on Netflix some time ago. Good show, I agree with a lot of it. Even something as simple as increasing wages and benefits across the board is a virtuous cycle that helps the economy and improves people's lives. Happy and healthy workers making good pay means more productive and satisfied workers working longer and buying more goods and services. But I suppose that creates a lot more waste, too. I don't think economic activity should undermine our responsibility to the biosphere and future generations. As is, it unfortunately seems to. And also unfortunately, it seems dangling a reward on a stick in some mutually beneficial direction is the only way to get people helping those they'll never come in contact with. Dissatisfaction is a major motivator. Someone will toil for satisfaction. If they're dissatisfied enough, perhaps they'll even toil for scraps. And maybe those meager scraps will keep them dissatisfied and willing to toil. But I think there's a layer of nationalism that must be overcome too. Is a happy worker in America more important than a happy worker in Bangladesh? Can a Bangladeshi be paid more if an American's willing to spend more? Would the American be willing to pay the Bangladeshi more if the American could afford to spend more? Would the poorest American happily accept a 39.6% global income tax to improve conditions in Bangladesh?
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Nov 9, 2015 04:01
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Reicere posted:I would love to live in the world where only newly issues stocks were You have to consider the effects on the whole system. If an investor could not sell stock at a later date at the market price it may not have been bought in the first place, and the company would have a harder time raising funds to make pizza emoji.
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Nov 9, 2015 10:23
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Triglav posted:Ah yeah, I saw that on Netflix some time ago. Good show, I agree with a lot of it. i don't know economies in general are best managed on a local or national scale and trade is best done between equally developed nations that want to specialize. for example, an african free trade block is much better than a USA African free trade block and a USA Canada free trade block is much better than US Mexico trade block increasing the standards of living can be achieved if the goal is not to plunder poorer nations in any case, free trade has barely benefited the 3rd world http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/09/economist-explains-0
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Nov 9, 2015 17:58
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We're not in the united kingdom so it's actually called "property tax".
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Nov 10, 2015 05:39
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PT6A posted:I already made a similar point further up in the thread. Apparently, the answer is that people are retarded at math. if you think building a system with 300 million users can be done by just telling them to do advanced math and then complaining and sanctimoniously wagging your finger when they don't, you might actually be functionally retarded
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Nov 11, 2015 19:17
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point of return posted:there is literally no reason why the irs can't do our taxes for us other than that h&r block and the company that makes turbotax spend shitloads of money lobbying against it
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Nov 14, 2015 14:13
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point of return posted:there is literally no reason why the irs can't do our taxes for us other than that h&r block and the company that makes turbotax spend shitloads of money lobbying against it yes there is you idiot
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Nov 18, 2015 02:34
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Necc0 posted:yes there is you idiot not if you're a sheltered retard who works for someone else in an office and rents
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Nov 18, 2015 03:38
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Necc0 posted:yes there is you idiot california franchise tax board does my state taxes for me
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Nov 21, 2015 18:58
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point of return posted:california franchise tax board does my state taxes for me How does that work if you're a business owner?
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Nov 21, 2015 19:26
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point of return posted:california franchise tax board does my state taxes for me 90%-100% of doing your CA taxes is copying data from your fed return. this doesn't mean poo poo Cactus Ghost has issued a correction as of 21:48 on Nov 21, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 21:43
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