Thursday, March 19, 2020

TPC: Sanders Proposes A $23 Trillion Tax Increase, Mostly On High-Income Households And Businesses

TPC: Sanders Proposes A $23 Trillion Tax Increase, Mostly On High-Income Households And Businesses
MGB: Increasing taxes on the CEO/Donor/Direct Shareholder class has a pergovian effect on rent seeking. As taxes go up, the incentive to put profits before people goes down, resistance to minimum wage hikes go away and unions thrive. Wages go up, as do consumption and revenue from workers. Working class households save more as the speculation sector shrinks.
Ending high velocity trading is essentially stopping a rigged game based on advance information. Even if SEC funding decreases, it will again have the incentive to stop such abuses. Currently, it benefits from them.
Wealth taxes magnify the problems inherent in capital gains taxation. Scrapping the SEC fee and cap gains tax and replacing them with an asset tax (which would also be a levy on pass through, dividend, interest and rental income) at point of sale or distribution stops evasion.
Retain the exemption for ESOP sales and mark to market at option exercise or at sale after gift or inheritance and the purpose of such taxes - increasing worker ownership and control, is realized. In the end, most high income wealth from dividends and gains will end because they will dump the assets. The tax must also stay in the 21 to 25 percent range because it will not be income specific.
Warren is out and Biden is the effective nominee. The discussion of taxing wealth is good, but it also shows how Sanders is more social democrat than Democratic socialist.
M4A is total social democracy. The reason that it must rely on more from the rich is because the plan is really Medicaid for All. This would be good for the states, because their share of Medicaid eventually goes away.
The problem is that the rich won't sit still for such an expansion. M4A or a public option (which must be heavily or entirely subsidized because market reform will not fully fund it) need to be paid for with a broad based consumption tax. Because employers must be given the option to provide insurance, it must be an employer filed tax. Regardless, the customer is the end payer.
The rich will fund debt reduction because it relieves their heirs if responsibility to pay future taxes. Most of the assets holding debt instruments are help by the people who owe the debt. It is time to unwind thus pile of yarn.
Separating income, consumption, social insurance and asset taxation into separate levies INCREASES taxes on the rich and effectively extracts much if their wealth. Employers pay salaries and returns from capital with after employer tax money.
Assets are purchased with after salary tax money and are taxed at sale and return. When spent, they are taxed again. The effective rate for the wealthy is near 90% under the rates I propose (most families would get $1000 per child per month from employers, free healthcare and pay no salary tax).
If salary taxes can be prepaid with no return bonds, none will be collected and at some point, high salaries will no longer be paid. This plan does what Sanders wanted to do, except that he and his followers want free stuff more than ownership. Call it a revolution wasted.
What I propose is more evolution than revolution. The TCJA actually puts us closer as asset tax rates converge. It is also in everyone's interest to go down this road, even the wealthy and especially their progeny.

1 Comments:

Blogger Michael Bindner said...

Before rates are adjusted, IRS data allow us to look at how collections might be impacted by our proposals. Salaries and wages for 70% of taxpayers would go away and, with FICA taxes, be collected through the I-VAT, C-VAT and S-VAT. The top $5 trillion in salary would be subject to income tax. The bottom $2.5 trillion in salary and wages would be shifted. The A-VAT pick up taxation of interest ($105.7 billion), ordinary dividends ($215.5 billion), capital gains subject to preferential rates ($992.4 billion) and pass-through taxes from partnerships and Chapter S corporations ($832.6 billion). Add 3% to the rates paid on this income (14% tax increase).

9:19 PM  

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