[dedward]

Taking a wealthy friend as an example, and watching how many jobs he's created, how many charities he's created, and how many lives he's changed - plus the sheer raw numbers of dollars he paid in taxes on top of all that - I don't really care if the percentage is less than mine. I didn't create 500 jobs or donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to real-life charities every year.

EDIT: That doesn't mean I think the system is perfect or that people don't cheat, or that the wealthy are somehow innocent - money is power, and those with more money will exert more influence on how to keep more of it - that's natural.

[jbooth]

Yeah, and he did all of that because we have a society that enabled him to do it.

Good for him. Seriously. But if he doesn't feel obligated to pay back towards that society then he's either missing something inside or fell victim to a convienent ideology that told him it's good to be selfish.

Whatever happened to noblesse oblige?

Not to mention, of the millionaires I've met, most aren't entrepreneurs and didn't create any jobs, they just worked in finance.

EDIT: To add: If your friend has those millions and likes the society he earned it in, it's probably worth him paying back into it purely as an investment. If we actually funded infrastructure and education in this country, we might see better returns from them.

[ryanwaggoner]

Are you donating all the extra money you have to the IRS? Are you skipping all deductions, even if you're eligible for them? Why not?

Your argument is essentially that we have a duty to pay as much tax as possible. But this is predicated on the belief that paying taxes is the best way to benefit society with your resources. Obviously, this is a long-standing debate that we won't solve here, but I would argue that the government is a terrible, terrible steward of resources, and I'd much rather have the money in the hands of "the rich", who seem far more likely to invest it and create jobs and institutions that better society. And yes, enrich themselves along the way. I'm fine with that. A rising tide floats all boats.

Again, I find it humorous that people who get all worked up over someone minimizing their tax liability through tax avoidance (completely legal) seem really interested in raising tax revenue, as long as it's someone else's money. None of them are sending donation checks to the IRS, which seems the height of hypocrisy. You have shit you don't need and someone else needs shit you have, so why not donate the money and let the IRS help those poor folks out? If you truly believe the government is the best way to allocate limited resources, why wouldn't you do this?

[jbooth]

I'm in the band of income that pays the absolute highest taxes as a % of income. I just want rich people to pay the same % as I do, or a tiny bit higher since they'll miss it less. I don't complain about paying my taxes, I see them as membership fees to live in a society with laws and running water and OSHA.

It's not about "small govt" or "big govt", those are just buzzwords. The government's hugely in the red either way. Who convinced you that this was ideological, rather than a matter of simply paying their fair share?

[gyardley]

While we might be able to justify one person paying orders of magnitude more taxes than another, based on the overall benefit to society as a whole, let's not pervert language by describing that system as 'fair'. In fair systems, people get the same service for the same price.

[jbooth]

Yeah, and in an anarchic system, power and money flow upwards until it's unsustainable and it collapses.

We're not living in caves, definitions of fair should include upward mobility.

And who says they're not getting the same service? Wealthy corporations and individuals get a ton of services from the US gov't, from subsidies to infrastructure to direct benefit from the State Dept and military.

[ryanwaggoner]

We're not living in caves, definitions of fair should include upward mobility.

Are we talking absolute upward mobility, or relative upward mobility? If absolute, then we already have that. If relative, that's impossible...not everyone can be simultaneously relatively upwardly mobile :)

[_delirium]

I don't know about other people, but I don't go out of my way to avoid taxes. I certainly don't create new companies or change how I do business in order to avoid taxes. If there's an actual deduction box on a form that I'm eligible for, sure, I'll check it. But I don't really spend days thinking up ways to hide my income. Any time I would've spent on that could be much more productively spent by just making more income.

[ju2tin]

"Any time I would've spent on that could be much more productively spent by just making more income."

Which is actually a good reason to make taxes lower and less burdensome, so the most productive members of our society (as measured by income) will spend their time producing, instead of defending the fruits of their labor from the tax man.

[_delirium]

In my experience, the kinds of people who spend the most time on minimizing taxes are precisely the opposite of productive members of society: heirs and heiresses with large assets and passive incomes, but not much real capacity for earning income through their own labors. You generally see complex tax-avoidance trust structures in these "old-money" families much more than you see them in new-money families. For them, it's a rational decision, because the opportunity cost of spending a bunch of time/effort on tax avoidance is low: they aren't wasting time that they would otherwise have put to more productive uses.

[jbooth]

Well, it's certainly a reason to make them simpler.

But those same big companies with the same high priced lawyers, accountants and lobbyists never tend to actually advocate for making them simpler. Oh, they might say that in public and at your Ayn Rand book club, but it's not what they say when they're speaking to the congressmen.

EDIT: Hey guys, I wasn't dissing Ayn Rand, don't get so defensive. Just, you know.. who's got a really big interest in making sure people believe all this stuff? Might be worth thinking about.

Big corporations don't actually have an interest in a simple tax code -- more complicated means their accountants give them a competitive advantage.

[ju2tin]

I think the point here is that he "paid back toward society" by creating jobs and charities, not by forking over his money to the government for it to waste on inefficient pork-barrel projects and other ill-chosen boondoggles. Why do you apparently think we can only help society by giving money to the IRS?

[loewenskind]

Anecdotes don't prove anything. Plenty of rich people don't create any jobs (directly anyway) and if they are giving to charities it's usually for tax reasons and/or PR. If you had the money your rich friend has you almost certainly would have donated a similar amount to charity.