Do The Rich Pay Their Fair Share?

The rich actually pay more than the poor do in taxes, they pay MORE than their fair share.

 

Why should the rich get taxed more than a poor person? Clearly they did something to get rich it could've been passed down to them but one person at least worked their ass off to achieve something.

 

I think its fair, because the people who make a lot of money they worked hard to get where they are. Some of them might have spent over 20 years studying for something and others could just have been successful in other fields like sports.

 

....The rich people have more money to work with so they'll have no trouble paying bills/food or whatever but a family that has a low income taxes could really suck the juice out of them, because the amount of what they pay in taxes could just be what they need to survive

 

That's like saying "You have two kidneys, and this guy who had ignored his health his entire life is now suffering from kidney failure, we are now forcing you, without your consent, to give him one of your kidneys because you have more than you need."

Clearly unethical. Just because I have two kidneys doesn't mean the government should take one from me to give to someone else because they don't have a working kidney.

 

The rich do pay their fair share.
Based on marginal tax rates
They pay more because they require more

 

How exactly do they require more? The rich don't get financial aid for college, no food stamps, seldom disability, less inclined to take advantage of public education, less likely to be imprisoned, do not get public housing, etc. etc. etc.

 

Well insurance for their business/cars/houses
They did work their way up there by using those things. They weren't just born rich. So the rich pay a few extra dollars to help others get to the top the same way
They did not acquire that wealth all by themselves

 

They don't get government help because they get that help from society.

 

That's kind of my point... they are the ones paying the taxes but are not recipients of any of the benefits, see my kidney "donation" example.

Insurance doesn't have anything to do with taxes in this context. Why should the rich be paying any more than anyone else? All it does is deincentivize working. It makes it more advantageous for the lower classes to not work, because they will receive benefits. It makes it less advantageous for higher classes to work, because they will be taxed more.

 

I believe that everyone, poor and rich, should have to pay the same percent of what they make. 10%, 15%, etc.

 

They are rich, who cares if it's "Fair" or not. I'd rather poor people who can't afford to eat/survive pay less and get more than some rich snob pay less and be in virtually the same situation.

 

You assume poor people aren't able to survive and that rich people are all snobs. Would you rather people not work to and receive government benefits and be in virtually the same situation as working a job. I would rather not strip money away from the hardest working innovators.

 

This is a two-sided statement that never keeps anyone amused either way. I'm confused as to what the true debacle is about with starting this topic, since you appear to be arguing for both sides.

Unless one understands both sides of the taxation with a full knowledge of the inner workings of it, there is no point. Everyone will be divided on it. It's the same thing that goes with the "raising minimum wage in the US" argument that honestly has me torn (don't really want to get into it).

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In my opinion, yes the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Now why do I say that? Because even if they are paying only a small percentage of their own personal money, you have to remember that they also have assets and I'm sure stocks as well.

Let's say a person from the top 1% is worth an estimated $500M. That's saying he's got personal gain AND assets (stocks, buildings, companies) of $500M. This person pays out of his personal pocket for that (unless he/she has hidden assets in oversea bank accounts, which I'm sure a few do). So he is getting personally taxed for that.

Now on top of that he owns corporations/companies X, Y, and Z. Those companies ALSO have to pay a certain tax back to the states and governments - that is not including those building taxes. On the flip side of that, whenever he needs to purchase dinner for said friends from your pizza example - he/she writes it off to his corporation and it gets buried as a business expenditure; something his friends would not have been able to do (thus he didn't exactly pay for it either). Within that business he also gets covered by health insurance more or less paid for by the corporation, a car - more or less paid for by the corporation, and any other travel expenses - more or less paid for by the corporation.

Finally, we get to his/her building taxes. Varying on where his/her buildings are in the US and his/her personal residences across the US he/she also gets taxed for those as well!

Now, many of them actually are rather intelligent in how they set up their assets... Let's go back to the person worth an estimated $500M again. Lawyers prepare his/her assets so that said person is actually NOT worth $500M. He/she is actually worth moot so that no one can legally go after him/her personally in a law-suit. Instead, people like his/her wife/husband and kids are worth that much money. The car is owned by the corporation and thus not him/her personally. The buildings and houses are in his/her wife's/husband's name again... etc. etc. This part was slightly off topic, but it is to explain how they protect their assets from losses when someone tries to sue. They still pay taxes on it all (more or less).

So even if said person worth $500M is paying only ~$400K (federal taxes, not state) per person, you have to also account for how much they are paying back in taxes on their assets as well (which could well be into the millions of dollars range)!

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On to shoops point in this argument - yes, higher paid people get taxed more which seems a little unfair. But most of those people have money in the form of assets and investments at the point where they are at with financial advisers actually doing the work for them. The top 1% worked hard to get there, no doubt... but now they have others working for them to keep them there. Do you believe that top 1% is actually doing that much work now to keep their assets in order?
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Now on the other side of that, yes the poor also pay their fair share of taxes as well. I really don't want to go into the details of this part right now, but to simply put it - while they are being taxed "more", it is of a smaller profit arena with more people paying into it.

 

No.

Everybody has a utility function for wealth, and for the vast majority of people, this utility function is not linear, and it has a negative second derivative. What does that mean? Well, essentially it means that if you have $0, then getting $1m is a lot more important to you than if you have $500m. This makes a lot of sense intuitively and I doubt you could find anybody who believes otherwise. Now let's go further. Moreover, people's utility functions generally have decreasing absolute risk aversion. What does this mean? Well, it means that if you have more money then you're more willing to take risks. Does this make sense? Yes -- it is a lot more disastrous to you to lose $100 if you only have $1000 than to lose $100,000 if you have $1m. (Your life won't be all that different in the second case. You might be angry, but nothing will really change. In the first case, though, those $100 could mean paying the bills).

How does this relate? Well, ideally, everybody should be putting an equal effort into their taxes. (Everybody benefits from having a strong school system, a good road system, decent defense, etc). What does this mean for us? Ideally, we want everybody's to contribute the same 'utility' to taxes. Because people generally have DARA, this means that a 10% tax to people making $100,000 a year might have similar effect to a 15% tax (on anything over $100,000) to people making $250,000.

However, the super-rich will never end up losing the same utility to taxes as 'normal' people. What is the difference between $500m and $450m. Sure, you lost 10% of your cash. If you're making $500m a year though, chances are you have several billion, at which point 50m is barely anything. Even if you aren't, though, what can you do with $500m that you can't do with $450m. Buy a slightly different yacht? Basically, money has a point of diminishing returns, and once you hit that point, it only makes sense to tax you more in the attempt that everybody puts a similar amount of effort into the system.

 

Typically a hardworking citizen is not rich, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. Either way I'd prefer a poor person be able to eat and have a place to live than a rich person not have enough money to buy an extra house to add to the 5 they already have.. you get my point?

 

Personally, i have two very rich uncles. When i say they are loaded, trust me i mean it. Anyway, I don't understand why they have to fraudulently get their way out of paying tax.
They earn $10m+ every year anyway, they really don't need it.
Obviously this isn't the case with all rich people, but most of them do it. I also can't understand why they are so tight with their money, even if we want a holiday and we go off season to one of their chalets, we get charged full price for everything....
Come on, we are family and no one else would rent it anyway at that time of year $5k less isn't hurting someone who earns that much and has 5 houses with 15 cars... -_- Apart from that yeah I feel they do pay their fare share, especially in critism as well. Everyone feels the need to critise someone who thought and did well in life, why??

 

What's the incentive to work you're ass off just to have the Government take a number off the end of you're paycheck and give it to people who didn't take advantage of the opportunities and education presented to them?

And to people saying "what's fair".. Life isn't fair. They're making more money because they worked harder. Simple. A big itch for me is when people who spent the same amount of money for a 4 yr. degree -

Student A. got a worthwhile degree (CS, Eng, Economics, Ect.) that pays more
Student B. spent the same amount of money on a useless degree,(Liberal Arts, Business admin., Drama/Music, Ect.) and then complains about how they worked just as hard as Student A and make less money. NOSHIT.

I work a minimum wage job (Student), and when i hear of people spending a months paycheck on lottery tickets, then complain about being broke? Yeah people get rich for a reason. They're smarter then the minimum wage worker.

And to the "starving family of four" example. Was it really smart to have kids you can't financially support?

If people want fair, take out the same amount for everybody (10-15%)

Our generation is so needy and act like their entitled to everything. Makes me sick.

 

The secret to bring rich? Sell something to rich people.

Seriously, it's economics 101. Without someone buying what you have to sell, you yourself wouldn't get paid anything. Rich people don't bury their money. The cars they buy feed families; the money they put into accounts gets used for small business and home loans; their investments into stocks help grow medium and other large companies. There's nothing immoral or lazy about being rich...

 

You missed my point. They get more benefit from society than poor people do so to be fair they must give more to society.