UK Wealth Tax Needed; Rich Not Paying Fair Share

[Randydeluxe]

Abolish all inheritance and personal income taxes. Cap capital gains and corporate taxes at 15% Establish a national 10% sales tax. Those that consume the most, pay the most. Those that invest pay much less. Shrink government to whatever size is necessary to live within those percentages.

This sort of scheme comes down very hard on the disadvantaged, and defunds health care. It also has some side-effects like reducing tourism and generating a two-tiered education system.

But Great Britain already has that, right?

[MrJonno]

Try a sales tax at around 50% to replace all others,

Regardless should be set on what society wants, what society can afford and whether a government can be elected on it tax plans (and stay elected)

What is the role of government, whatever the people want it to be!

[Blind groper]

laklak's scheme is a recipe for taxing the rich even less so that the government has to come down even more heavily on the poor. I can tell you now that there is absolutely no way any government is going to live within those income limits, and the tax rate would shoot up enormously, very quickly.

My scheme is to tax the turnover on business. Each business has a clear cut turnover, which amounts exactly to the moneys coming in. If a business is taxed at (say) 7.5% of turnover, and it has a total income of $ 100,000,000 per year, it will pay $ 7,500,000 per year in tax. Up until now, such a business would have been paying no more than $ 1,000,000 per year, due to the financial slight of hand pulled by its lawyers and accountants. Tax turnover and there will be no shenanigans. No evasions. No fancy tax lawyers. A clear cut payment for the moneys coming in.

The amount would have to vary a bit. Some businesses are mostly profit. If someone is a landscape gardener, for example, he/she will bring in at least 50% profit, and such a business should be paying more like 20% tax on turnover. But this is a simple matter to arrange.

The ordinary people would then have taxes on purchases, and income tax. But they would not have to pay more than their fair share, which they do today, in order to compensate for the shady accounting tricks used by the wealthy and by big business to avoid their share of taxes.

[Coito ergo sum]

What is "turnover?" Revenues?

[MrJonno]

The fact that every industrialized country basically taxes in roughly the same way sort of implies the system generally works

[Pappa]

The fact that every industrialized country basically taxes in roughly the same way sort of implies the system generally works

Works for who?

[laklak]

Doesn't work for me, I still have to give money to the fucktards. The best tax plan I can come up with is y'all pay for whatever it is I need. I think that's fair.

[Seth]

Try a sales tax at around 50% to replace all others,

Regardless should be set on what society wants, what society can afford and whether a government can be elected on it tax plans (and stay elected)

What is the role of government, whatever the people want it to be!

You have this idiotic notion that "the people" are some monolithic entity with a unified will. That's never the case. Also, a 50% sales tax would do nothing but destroy the economy because people won't be able to afford to buy goods, which means less revenue will be collected for redistribution to the dependent class, and again, as usual with your silly arguments, the whole system collapses when the productive class stops being productive because it's not worth their while to be productive.

Socialists are morons when it comes to economics. They are so abysmally stupid that they think that money just appears from the money fairy and that wealth just appears like electrons in the quantum flux, spontaneously and automatically.

[MrJonno]

Try a sales tax at around 50% to replace all others,

Regardless should be set on what society wants, what society can afford and whether a government can be elected on it tax plans (and stay elected)

What is the role of government, whatever the people want it to be!

You have this idiotic notion that "the people" are some monolithic entity with a unified will. That's never the case. Also, a 50% sales tax would do nothing but destroy the economy because people won't be able to afford to buy goods, which means less revenue will be collected for redistribution to the dependent class, and again, as usual with your silly arguments, the whole system collapses when the productive class stops being productive because it's not worth their while to be productive.

Socialists are morons when it comes to economics. They are so abysmally stupid that they think that money just appears from the money fairy and that wealth just appears like electrons in the quantum flux, spontaneously and automatically.

I didnt suggest a 50% sales tax but that is what you would need if you replaced income tax, not some piddling 10-15% rate that was suggested elsewhere

[Seth]

Try a sales tax at around 50% to replace all others,

Regardless should be set on what society wants, what society can afford and whether a government can be elected on it tax plans (and stay elected)

What is the role of government, whatever the people want it to be!

You have this idiotic notion that "the people" are some monolithic entity with a unified will. That's never the case. Also, a 50% sales tax would do nothing but destroy the economy because people won't be able to afford to buy goods, which means less revenue will be collected for redistribution to the dependent class, and again, as usual with your silly arguments, the whole system collapses when the productive class stops being productive because it's not worth their while to be productive.

Socialists are morons when it comes to economics. They are so abysmally stupid that they think that money just appears from the money fairy and that wealth just appears like electrons in the quantum flux, spontaneously and automatically.

I didnt suggest a 50% sales tax but that is what you would need if you replaced income tax, not some piddling 10-15% rate that was suggested elsewhere

Strangely, the Interwebz seem to recall you writing,

MrJonno wrote:Try a sales tax at around 50% to replace all others,

And no, that's not what you'd need. As I said, federal revenues have stayed quite close to 19 percent of GDP for the last 100 years. As tax rates rose, revenues dropped as the economy slowed. As tax rates dropped, tax revenues rose as the economy burgeoned. This indicates that the federal government can easily (and indeed opulently) operate on 19 percent of GDP. I recommend putting government on a diet by mandating that it operate on 15 percent of the last year's actual GDP so that it will stay lean and less intrusive. A 15 percent sales tax will adequately fund the federal government.

[Blind groper]

What is "turnover?" Revenues?

Turnover in business is the total sum of all moneys coming in.

If you sell widgets, for $ 10 each, and you sell 50,000 widgets per year, your turnover is $500,000 per year. If you also rent out gadgets, for $1 per day, and rent 100 gadgets for 100 days each per year, you also have a rental income of $10,000 dollars per year. Your turnover is then $510,000 per year.

7.5% turnover tax then means the dealer in widgets and gadgets will pay $15,750 in tax each year on $510,000 turnover.

I find these comments by various people about trimming government expenditure quite, quite naive. Guys, it aint gonna happen.

Spending money is one way people in the government demonstrate their power. They are not going to stop doing it. Besides which, the American government will just find another war to blow trillions of dollars on.

[laklak]

I want to make sure I understand your proposal, Blind Grouper. You're advocating a 7.5% tax on gross company revenue, regardless of expenses, capital investment, profit margins, dividends, etc. Just 7.5% of every dollar that comes into a business?

[Blind groper]

More or less correct, laklak.
The 7.5%, though, is just a f'rinstance number. The real number would be derived after careful study by people who know more about what a business can generate than I do. It could be anything from 5% TO 30% depending on the business.

Of course, if my proposal was adopted, it would increase unemployment. All those high priced tax lawyers and accountants would be out of a job!

[laklak]

What about profit margins? Most grocery stores, for example, work on about 1.5 - 2% profit. Tax them at even 5% and they go out of business. Or capital expenditure - my sister just replaced 5 commercial air-conditioning units on the commercial building she owns, it will take 5 years to amortize that expenditure. However, it all came out of her bank accounts right away, so she will show an operating loss this year. Now she's out of business. You can't work off gross revenue, it simply does not work.

[Blind groper]

To laklak

Certainly. That is why the amount to be taxed is a variable, depending on type of business.
The thing is, though, that it puts all businesses of a particular type on a "level playing field". If, f'rinstance, you have a business that makes an average 10% profit on turnover, and it gets taxed at 5%, then all businesses of that type get taxed at 5%. If this is not sufficient to make the business viable, all such businesses will have to make changes, such as raising prices, or cutting costs. But they are all in the same boat. There is nothing anti-competitive here.

Such a tax regime will require a change in the way people do business. But it is all do-able, and it is not difficult. For a start, the business will save an awful lot of money not paying expensive lawyers and accountants fees! The tax compliance cost would plummet. The system would also put an awful lot of government tax officials out of work, and force them to do something actually productive.

I am not familiar with your sister's business, but I have been in that situation myself, owning an office suite, which I rented out. Earnings on such properties are of two kinds. Rent and capital gain. Rent is often much less than the capital gain. I seriously doubt your sister would suffer under a turnover tax system. The tax level would be set at an amount that kept her business viable. If she needs to make major capital expenditure, then she has a range of options, which are really not much different to what she would do today.

The turnover system would also make debt less attractive. If the interest you pay on a loan is not tax deductable, then the incentive to borrow money is down. The banks would scream! How much sympathy do you have for the banking sector?