[slg]

>Yet somehow many of us approve when the victims are wealthy and higher status, as is the case with the Panama Papers. Furthermore most of those individuals probably did nothing illegal, but rather they were trying to minimize their tax burden through (mostly) legal shell corporations.

This is a scary thing that has been building over the last 10 years. Wealthy people are vilified for being wealthy even when they play by the rules. You saw this a lot with Occupy Wall Street and you hear similar rhetoric from Bernie Sanders supporters condemning the "donor class" and being angry at banks for being big regardless of anything else. But these people do exactly the same thing you and I do. I take advantage of the tax system when I deduct education expenses. I lobby the government when I contribute to the EFF. I want the companies I invest in to be as big and as profitable as possible. If I had more money, those things would simply be in higher quantities. That is the only thing most of these people are guilty of, doing the same thing we all do but at a much higher magnitude. We can recognize that magnitude difference is a problem and want to shrink it without resorting to vilifying people who simply play the hand they are dealt.

[sliverstorm]

IMO there exists behavior I'll call "bad faith tax reduction". You might not be doing anything illegal by the letter of the law, but maybe those education expenses you deducted, went to a business you own (or something like that).

An exploitable tax code is like an exploitable software package. Yes, the software gave you everyone's personal information in the database. But maybe it only did that when you ran a buffer overflow attack to escalate your permissions.

Setting aside exact numbers, I figure a decent razor for whether you're being honest is whether you mind other people learning about what your tax return looks like. I deducted my property tax and my mortgage interest; I will tell you that freely. But if I had twelve offshore shell companies scooting money around through various tax loopholes, even though it's not illegal I probably wouldn't want anyone but the IRS to know...

[cloudjacker]

The analogy I use is how people go shopping in a neighboring state for lower sales taxes, or buy a house in an inconvenient place for lower property taxes.

Wealthier people are doing the same thing.

People get angry more so because they don't get the privilege to participate in those advantages. While simultaneously taking advantage of what they can.

[bungle]

Well, this picture is from Finland (a country with very small differences in incomes): http://hs10.snstatic.fi/webkuva/taysi/630/1460170330858?ts=5...

Y-scale is the taxes paid

X-scale is the income

As you can see... people in middle class and lower play by the rules almost perfectly. Now the richest don't play anymore. There are those that play by the rules, but a lot of those that don't.

Finland has a progressive income tax.

So let's stop the bullshit that everything does it. This picture shows it clearly that only the richest are the assholes (in meaningful way).

[cloudjacker]

And then there are jurisdictions that fund themselves primarily from offering incorporation services, instead of levying an income tax at all.

The state needs to make better rules, obviously passive taxation has pitiful compliance outcomes.

[heartbreak]

The difference is that at one end of the spectrum people are taking advantages so that they can eat tonight, and the other end is taking advantages so that they can have a few million dollars more this quarter than last.

[basch]

if you buy a set of rules, and then "play by the rules," I dont think you deserve kudos.

[slg]

They lobby the government on their own behalf. You know who else does that? Everyone. That is how democracy works. No one blames a middle class person for supporting a candidate who plans to cut taxes on the middle class. Why do we blame the upper class for doing the same?

Like I said, you can have a problem with the magnitude of influence they have and I think we should move to reduce that magnitude. But you are being biased if you simply have a problem with the fact they do have influence.

[lowbloodsugar]

Not that they have some influence. That they have all the influence. What you and I want has zero effect on congress. What the rich want, they get. So how you claim democracy works is demonstrably not how it works in the USA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

[rev_bird]

>You know who else does that? Everyone.

I think I agree with you, but this rings false. The main (only?) way to effectively lobby the government is with money -- which gives the wealthy far more leverage. If one side is saying, "Choose policy A please," and the other side is saying, "Choose policy B, there's $30,000 in donations in it for you," I bet policy B gets a better look in. It turns into a vicious cycle when Policy B also happens to help that wealthy person hang onto more of their money.

I dislike it, but damn if I can't figure out an alternative.

[Karunamon]

Am I allowed to be biased based on the results, rather than the actions that led to those results?

No raindrop feels responsible for the flood, but make it so people can't get out of the rain, and before long, everybody starts hating the rain.

[dannysu]

I agree with the sentiment of your comment. But I also think some people crossed the line even though legal and playing by the rules.

For example, when law makers do things that would be considered to be a conflict of interest or due to them having insider info on what laws are coming to effect.

Or when people like Marianna Olszewski hiring a stranger to conceal her ownership of offshore accounts.

Somewhere there's a line crossed that isn't just reducing the tax a person has to pay. It went from tax reduction as an incentive to do something to being malicious.

When you deduct education expenses to reduce your tax, it's a reduction meant to encourage you to do something.

[forgetsusername]

>Wealthy people are vilified for being wealthy even when they play by the rules.

Playing within the rules is irrelevant when you're the one who gets to write the rules.

[DigitalJack]

As if there existed some impartial authority to make rules.

[sliverstorm]

"Everyone else", is the idea.

For example, if you wrote the tax law, you could say "let's tax everyone but me"

But if everyone writes the tax law together, nobody will let you exempt yourself, and you won't let them exempt themselves.

Like some kind of law-making standoff.

[jessaustin]

Holy crap, this means that the Golden Rule is still a relevant ethical precept! Who knew?

[circlefavshape]

Many people here (not me) think the magnitude difference is not a problem, and in fact contend that inequality is a positive

[pasquinelli]

it really isn't scary. what difference does it make if they "play by the rules"? it isn't a game. the criticism is that the rules are damaging to many and beneficial to few. what's so scary about that? even if you think occupy wall street's and bernie sanders's criticism of the rich is off base, what about it is "really scary"?

[sickbeard]

Deep down, we all want to be communists. That's what I've learned the last 5 years. Someone is rich and that's not fair. /s

[rev_bird]

I'm having trouble figuring out which part of this is sarcasm, but I can't imagine anyone but a child could boil this whole thing down into "Someone is rich, I want their money."