Do The Rich Pay Their Fair Share?

They're not paying more for anything if the percentage is the same...

If person A makes 20k a year and person B makes 200k a year and they both paid 10% tax. That would be fair. As once person A has made 200k they will have paid exactly the same as person B, which is 20k.

However current tax laws states that in the time it takes for person A to earn 200k they have paid 40k in taxes. However, person B will have paid 100k in taxes.

So person A (the poor person) keep 160k of every 200k they make.
While person B (the rich person) keeps only 100k of every 200k they make.

Your analogy just doesn't work, as they are both paying the exact same for items. It's their earnings after tax which is different.

 

They ARE paying more: .2*200,000 > .2*20,000. The concept that the rich should pay more taxes is so deeply ingrained into people's brains that it just caused you to create a mathematical fallacy. .2*200,000 > .2*20,000.

 

You've just disregarded half of the calculations I showed.. I could say most math sums in the world are wrong if I were to miss out half of the sum.

 

But the rich can afford to pay more tax.

Think about how much tax the top 100 have to pay. I'm sure if they didn't pay as much tax then the tax for the lower earner would have to rise to account for the difference? Else there would be cuts in areas what taxes get spent on?

 

Yes they can afford to pay it, but it's still not fair. Why should someone spend years in school, college and university to have half of their wages taken from them?

Also in some cases, people who earn more make less than people who earn less.

For example (if you refer to the chart I showed):

Some could get a paid £32,010 and they would take home £25,608
Where as someone who is paid more at £33,000 they would take home £19,800

So they've worked hard to earn more money, but they actually take home less than someone who earns less than them..

 

Oh I totally agree when you are comparing incomes borderline each side of the tax bracket. I diss agree on that part.

But when you are bringing in £10m+ a year paying tax of a higher proportion is only fair. If you make it so everyone pays the same tax percentage it will effect those who make ALOT in a good way and will effect those who don't in a bad way. As to average the tax between everyone it will go up for the lower and down for the higher bracket.

This being said there are ways and means to pay less taxes.

 

I am not familiar with the tax system in the UK but I do know that in the US taxes work in a regressive system. Higher earners pay a lesser tax percentage. As well as the top earners having that they also are privy to many more tax breaks and in incentives, such as charitable donations and the loopholes created in small business tax law. Under the aforementioned laws anyone who owns a company with less than X amount of employees get certain breaks and incentives. It is easy to find loopholes to pay less taxes if you have the means to do so.

Sent from my phone excuse the mistakes.

 

I didn't realize you weren't referring to income taxes, my bad.

 

But surely that is an incentive for lower wage earns who settled for a crappy job to do something with their lives?

In the UK we give free houses to 'kids' who have children, and pay all of their bills, we shouldn't do that unless it is extreme circumstances (most of their mums would happily put them up but they are scroungers and take the easy life).

In the UK if you work you get penalized against those who don't work, I mean you get paid job seekers for looking for a job now thats just stupid! Yes I agree if you have had a job before and you lost it and you NEED all the money then yes be allowed job seekers, but if your some scroungy chav and cba to find a job and you get paid enough money to buy fags and booze then why would they? Well they proberly would just get pregnant and get free life that way

 

I am not arguing any of that. I was just stating facts, no argument in that post. There are different opportunities for different people though. No matter how the US would like to tout themselves as the land of opportunity, it still is very family and income based. Statistically if you are born into a certain social standard then you stay there.

If you look at the Scandinavian system they have elaborate public welfare systems, but they're not a socialist mega-power. Numerous independent studies proved that their system has increased the liberty in the market, kept down corruption, and increased general citizen morale.

 

Oh I wasn't arguing I was just adding my thought . Indeed its not what you know its more of who you know.

And I totally agree. I think they should cut benefits for people who don't deserve / would rather live on benefits than succeed.

The one good thing in the UK is the health care system.

 

You should have a certain amount of money to pay per annum, every person should have a set amount lets say £2k/yr (no difference if you earn 30k/yr or 500k/yr) that 2k should go to the taxman. Anyone who decides not to work shouldn't receive any benefits whatsoever (people who have been sacked for a legit reason/made redundant excluded)(I really don't apologise if this offends you as your a waste of air if you don't work anyway). You should pay for your own stuff such as healthcare/education for kids etc etc (basically so there's no nhs, public schools) road tax should pay for any road repairs in your area (the 2k/yr should also pay to help your local area not just 'London' cus it's so fucking important). This is not a perfect scenario as I couldn't be arsed to type paragraph after paragraph if anyone dosent get the general idea I'm happy to answer any questions. While I'm on the topic they should not pay for MP's fucking expenses as they are a bunch of useless wankers imo

 

Most of the time I'll just say you can have the last piece next time, or vice versa, lol


Anyway, I think if you've achieved being successful and have money to spare, you should give as much of it away as you can. I will leave money for my kids if I have kids, but if I have $10M I'm not going to leave it all in their name. What's the point of their lives when they could just do whatever they wanted without worrying because they have enough money to last their lifetime. I believe all the hard work is a good example of how successful you are, not by money. Someone making $30,000 could work just as hard if not harder than others who makes $5,000,000 a year. If you have done your job extremely well and have worked hard I think that alone would be better to show off than money if you could display it. However, in today's world money is the measurement of all success. So even someone who's smarter, works harder, and cares more about their job wouldn't necessarily be richer than some dumb ass who got lucky and made millions of dollars. However, I don't believe that if you have tons of money in your account you should just sit there and look at it. Put it to good use doing something at least. Make sure you have a large enough bank roll that you will never go broke and to help family members with certain things, and then give the rest away or at least give it away over time. If I had $20M I would probably give each teacher, even the shitty ones a couple hundred grand a piece because if it wasn't for pretty much all of them I wouldn't of been where I was. First though I would make sure my family would be set, then I would probably donate 5-6 million over the course of a few years to different types of chairities. I would probably take some of it and instead of just donating it just actually help people out, like one person. You never see what happens to your money when you done most of the time, but it'd be cool to like completely change someones life around. Get them a average car, buy them an apartment, hook them up with a job, and money for expenses until they get squared away. So I don't think rich pay their fair share, if they still have millions and millions of dollars sitting in their bank that will never be touched then that's poor money management.


However I think the opposite with taxes. I think, in the US, the government puts their dirty hands all over peoples hard earned money and most people will never see it again. Now it would be different if we could know what it was going to, but it's a crapshoot most of the time. We've already established our government and president can't be trusted, so as far as I'm concerned them taking my hard earned money is the same as some sleezeball off the streets who steals something from you and runs off. At this point the government and president really need to be clear with us, if they keep doing this the US is going to drown in the shit hole it's already half way sunk in. And it'll take a lot longer to pull out than it did putting in. I don't think Obama understands what the meaning what he says even carries. He's basically said shit multiple times, whether it be consequences, actions, opportunities, etc and has not followed through on it. I don't know how in the hell anyone could not see this coming, it was blatantly obvious the amount of subliminal messaging they were sending out while the campaign was going. I mean come the fuck on, something on Rommie pranking a kid gets pulled up and gratified to make him look like the school bully. And Obama runs for president in his 1st term and not ONCE was it mentioned that he did CRACK all through college or highschool or whenever it was. It is so fucking crazy how much the media effects peoples opinions. Not one day out of the year goes by without some sort of insecurity, anger, mistrust, resentment , hopelessness, or fear that the majority of the nation thinks of when they hear the words government and Obama. I'm not saying Romney would of been a better president, but with the shit Obama has pulled recently for jesus sake let Bob from Walmart run the country. He's made us look weak by trying to fuck with our culture and how thing operate and trying to follow in others footsteps because he didn't have a fucking bit of originality in almost anything he's done. I don't want that guy having control over my nations communications and everything else, let alone the entire countries future.

 

In my opinion excluding people who have inherited or won the lottery(just for the sake of being on topic) I believe the rich do pay their share assuming
they do pay taxes. They shouldn't have to pay a greater amount in proportion to what they have or make as a majority have earned what they have. If you we're to spend 50 years running a business to obtain a rich sum would you think it to be fair if you had to pay a higher tax percentage just because you are rich?

 

I believe that yes, you should tax the rich more heavily than you do the poor. Why is this, well it all comes down to the juxtaposition of the rich and poor where one must exist in order for the other to. I mean, you can't have a top level CEO earning millions without the hard work and dedication of his employees right? In this case, why shouldn't the government tax those who are earning more to help those who are earning less. In theory, the wealthy can afford to give their children better education, hence give them an advantage in life, where as the poor generally send their kids to Government schools and hope for the best. Taxes help pay for unemployment benefits, government housing and generally benefit the poor because the rich do not need these benefits to survive. There are many hard working, honest people that are out of a job due to circumstance, are you saying that it would be unfair for those in power to help those in need, especially when it is these people who are the ones making millions FOR the CEO's.

Edit: Lets give you an example, person A makes $1m a year and is taxed at 40%, person B makes $75k a year and is taxed at 20%, even after taxes, person A Makes $600000 where as person B makes $60000, person A is still making 900% more money than person B. Now take into consideration that these two people may be working very similar hours, If person A, goes out with person B, shouldn't it be fair for person A to pay for the majority of the pizza?

 

Your wage is determined by how productive you are in satisfying the wants and needs of consumers. Those paid more, are more productive in satisfying such consumer demands. So why should the more productive members of society be punished more than the less productive members of society? I'm not even going to bother with the morality of taxation here. I mean if being a CEO and earning millions of dollars is so easy, then you go and do it. I'm sure if someone said the same thing about being a gas station attendant you'd simply laugh... it's really not too difficult to be one, and accordingly, your pay is less.

Also, I think you underestimate how much CEOs actually work. Just do a quick google search. They work way more than 9 to 5. These two people are most certainly not working similar hours. If they were, they would be WELL on their way to promotion if they are even just as efficient as their co workers.

 

You seem to assume that a CEO is worth the same amount to the company as the guy who flips the burgers. If a CEO steps down, it costs could cost stockholders millions/billions. If the morning shift grill worker quits at McDonalds, no one gives a shit.

The reason CEO's and other top administrators are paid so much is because they have a desirable skill set and abilities that only a very small number of people have. 95% of the people on this planet can sit behind a register and swipe credit cards, but .01% of people can work 100 hours weeks every week, provide jobs for thousands of people, direct the innovation and workflow of a company, while being under constant scrutiny in their personal life as well, hence, why they are compensated so much more.

 

But can you justify the fact that one class must exist in order for the other to, is that fair, that there are poor simply because there are rich. Look at countries like Finland, their teachers work similar hours, and are paid a similar amount 2,654 euros per month with a compulsory tax set at 32%, compared to the U.S whos teachers are paid 5,266 dollars with a compulsory tax set at 23%. Yet Finland has the best education system in the world. They pay their doctors as much as their teachers, 5,107 euros at 42% tax. Yet they seem to be doing very well for themselves.

 

Unfortunately, I did not make it to the beginning of this debate - I'm certainly not going to go back through all of it, but here is my two-cents.

Does the rich pay their fair share?
Certainly, some may even argue that they pay more than their "fair share" of their income. What is your proposal, to increase their taxes? Do you believe that will increase Government revenues? At first, it may - but in the long run, what will generate the most revenue for government, lower or higher taxes? Using data from 1913 through the end of 2011, the the correlation between the maximum marginal income tax bracket and total Federal receipts is a negative 0.50. In other terms when taxes are cut Federal revenue has a strong tendency to rise (Forbes, 2012.) According to principles under supply-side economics and visual graphs such as the Laffer Curve the higher the burden of tax is on an individual, the lower the amount of revenue will be received, showing 0% tax rates generating no Government revenue to 100% tax rates generating no Government revenue. When you take income from an individual it hinders economic growth; individuals have less to invest into the goods, services, and charities throughout the country. When an individual has more income they invest it into the economy, directly or indirectly (indirectly being reinvested, such as stock purchases.) If there is a sales tax it has been shown it has generated more government revenue, due to individuals spending more.

I think the bigger question people need to begin asking themselves though is: are taxes even moral? Is it justified for an entity to force an individual by the barrel of a gun to pay for something unwillingly? There may be no physical gun in your face now, but avoid your taxes and witness how fast people who work for that entity come to your home, with weapons holstered on their right side. They intend to throw you in a county jail, that jail houses rapists, murderers, robbers, etc. Depending on the circumstances you may go to prison or Federal prison, you may even spend the rest of your life there. If you refuse to go to this facility, these thugs may use physical force on you, if you make an incorrect move or react irrationally, they may pull that gun out and shoot you, possibly ending your life. Is there a difference between Jody, in the federal prison you're spending the rest of your life in, taking your money for canteen items, and the government taking your money for it's spending?

 

The rich have never paid their fare share, this is reality - how our money is divided ruins us. Why do you think everyone is poor and jobless, lol.