The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

Marmite the Dog

Could the UK and France (and prolly a few others) be included in that list?

Bugs

And what is your point and how does the progressive tax have anything to do with nationalizing banks and oil companies?

There are already socialistic aspects of most of the industrialized societies (SS systems, various health care systems, progressive nature of many tax systems, etc). But I am very much against nationalization of nearly any industry.

Only 40%?
WTF the top 1% paying 40% of the tax bill ain't fair enough for you? Think the top 1% should carry the whole load?

And the bit about the other 99% paying 60% does not come near to painting the entire picture.

2005:
Top 1% paid 39.38% - 99% paid 60.62%
Top 5% paid 59.67% - 95% paid 40.33% (numberrs are droping quickly)
Top 10% paid 70.30% - 90% paid 29.70%
Top 25% paid 85.99% - 75% paid 14.01%
Top 50% paid 96.93% - last 50% paid a whopping 3.07% of the tax bill

I got no truck with making those that have/make more pay more. But how much of the burden can a society justify making the top 1%/5%/10% carry?

I would be all for a simplified tax code that eliminates ALL loopholes by eliminating ALL deductions and exemptions. I would even go so far as to eliminating all separate income categories (ie eliminating categorizing and taxing capital gains seperate/different from other types of income), and making all forms of income simply what it is income.

I said in my earlier post that it seems it would be pretty easy to bump the tax on all in the top 50% and eliminate the tax on the bottom 50%. It would probably not be much of a stretch to bump the tax bill on the top 25% (already footing 85.99%) to eliminate the tax burden on all in the bottom 75%.

Not really on topic but I would also be all for eliminating the tax free status of ALL religious organizations (unless we allow all who belief in fairy tails to claim tax free status).

__________________
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion" - Steven Weinberg

Panda

Capitalist competition in the market place is generally a good thing for everybody.
Its when these pricks get too big and monopolize their market niche that problems start. Corporate profiteers have no social conscience and are not answerable to the general public. There has got to be some government checks and balances to make it work for the benefit of everybody.

Butterfly

Good point, France definitely, but the UK not really, at least not as much as France. But the Nordic countries are definitely more advance in that regard than we are. I don't particularly like the Nordic version of Socialism.

My point is that the very rich are getting away with it, and the very rich are often major shareholders in key strategic industries. Their pressure on management performance make management commit all kind of abuses in the name of profit maximization and cost minimization. Oil and Banking certainly fit that pattern. Those industries are not serving the public and their customers, but only serving their shareholders. A company role is to reconcile its internal objectives with those of the public. If they can't, then they become a burden to society. They should be taken or heavily regulated and even nationalized. Nationalization works, and it will soon be the only future we have. When we hit our Berlin wall, and industries start to collapse, we will be all too happy to have the government nationalize companies.

I don't want to derail this discussion on the tax issue too much, as it's really a tangent. That said, it's an interesting topic and very related to the abuses of our capitalist system. Is 40% fair enough you ask ? you are only looking at Aggregate Tax Revenues, not the Effective Tax Rate. These are two different things, and I hope you are not confusing the numbers above with the tax rate. The extremly rich will have an effective Tax Rate as low 2%, that is how much they actually pay taxes over their overall income.

Now why would a struggling middle class family pay as much 30% of their income as tax, that would only represent a very minor share of all tax revenues, while an extremely wealthy individual making millions every year, and enjoying all kind of luxuries he doesn't really need, pay only 1% in effective tax rate, yet representing a bigger share of all tax revenues. Now is that really fair ? can you the see the imbalance here at the individual level ? where is the Principle of Equality ? Don't we expect everyone be treated the same regardless of religion, race, or background ? if our Legal System is based on such principle, then why not the tax system ?

Butterfly

But it's a myth, the extremely rich do not carry any burden. How is a 2% tax rate a burden ? it's not. And why is their share in Aggregate Tax Revenues bigger ? it's simple mathematics, nothing to do with equality, fairness or burden. It's misleading statistics. To say it differently, the extremely rich are the ones using more of society resources as input for their wealth, therefore they should contribute more in administrative social costs.

Marmite the Dog

The UK used to be, but luckily it's more advanced nowadays.

Norton

Tell me more. Why not?

Bugs

Well there might be some of the top 1% that are paying an effective tax of around 2%, it would be interesting to see some numbers on that. The following study from 2007 (based upon 2005 tax year) indicates tax on adjusted gross income (AGI) for the top 1% is 23.13%. Granted this is based upon AGI and not total income, and certainly many of the top 1% utilize just about any loophole they can find to minimize their AGI. As I stated earlier I woul be all in favor of simplifying the tax code to eliminate ALL deductions and while we are at it I would be happy to throw in eliminating ALL tax credits as well.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/ff104.pdf

Actually based upon the study in the link the top 1% have the highest tax rate of all.
That being said there would need to be some pretty serious tax shelters available to drive their tax from 23.13% down to 2% on gross income.

Note that the top 1% paid 39.38% of the tax, and that is pretty close to the 41.33% of the tax paid by the bottom 95%. This means that 1.3 million folks paid nearly the same amount of the tax bill as the bottom 126 million folks.

Also note that the top 1% had a total of around 368 billion in tax credits (about 40% of the total tax credits). Seems fair that if they paid nearly 40% of the bill that they could get about 40% of the tax credits.

Keeping in mind this only accounts for federal income tax, has nothing to do with social security tax, medicare tax, state tax, consumption taxes, or any other kind of tax. And a key being of course that agian these numbers are based upon AGI.

I would love it if someone could find any kind of study that has numbers related to actual effective tax - across the board. Or a study that can give details in regard to gross income and not AGI.

Butterfly

not sure where to start, will need some time to answer that one.

You won't find any unless you work for one of the big 5 accounting firm, they do their own internal study as marketing material for their clients, and they don't publish it. Publishing the effective tax rate of the very rich would open a big can of worms. Nobody wants to see those numbers, not even the politicians as it would force them to take actions. But I know for a fact that the number above of 2% is not unusual, and more like the average actually. The rich would rather spend their money paying expensive tax consultants than give any of it to governments and society.

good2bhappy

Socialism is to do with the redistribution of wealth!
Why should others have a right to mine?

Butterfly

it's not really, it's about controlled growth and social responsibility,

it's not communism, which is the complete redistribution of wealth and income,

good2bhappy

Socialism refers to a broad array of ideologies and political movements with the goal of a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the public.

Butterfly

^ there are several definition of socialism, and all of them are correct but can be interpreted differently,

the redistribution of income is indirect, so for example instead of having a large corporation stealing all the money from the public by ass raping consumers, they are told to fuck off and make a normal profit instead of an obscene one. Therefore the "income" went from the corporation back to the public.

Now tell me what's wrong with that ?

good2bhappy

sounds like the means of production versus the owners of production

Butterfly

well technically, the means are as important as the owners, without the means, you wouldn't need the owners,

the capital should belong to labor as much as the owners, capital without labor, no production, no profit, no need for ownership

By monopolizing capital, the owners are actually alienating themselves, and creating their own self destruction,

in some way, socialism will reverse or slow down that self-destruction process inherent to capitalism,

good2bhappy

Why dont the owners allow the workers to purchase shares and therefore become owners in their own right?

Butterfly

because buying minority shares in a company doesn't really make you the owner, and you have no say in the capital use of the company, this is still at management discretion

However, making the majority of the capital available to the workers is a good start, with management and other third party owners being a minority,

also workers representation on the board of directors, or management committee would be a better option than just buying shares in a corporation,

good2bhappy

like in the friendly societies of the 19th century?

thegent

In what way?

Given that the gay stalinistas have now moulded a society in which employment by the state and those in receipt of benefits now accounts for over half of the population, I would suggest that the creation of a new socialist utopia has already been created in dear old Blighty.

Of course, the middle classes bear the brunt of the taxation necessary to pay for this burden which has risen to a level never experienced before.

A coup by stealth perhaps but evidently it seems to have slipped past whatever may pass as your radar.