[mercutio2]

It may be hard to get effective tax rates for high earners above 40%, but it would be eminently feasible to get them back up to 40%, where they stood before Bush and now Trump went off and reduced effective tax rates for high earners so much.

I just mailed the feds my owed taxes for 2017; my high earner effective federal tax rate is ridiculously low (lower, because of the cut off for social security at ~120k, than significantly less well paid people).

I didn’t ask for these tax cuts, and they’re certainly not enhancing my propensity to work, they’re just going to allow me to retire earlier.

But if your point is that income taxes aren’t an awesome way to raise revenue, I’m with you. Land-value-taxes would be almost impossible to avoid, and would have the salutory effect of improving efficiency in dense urban areas.

[SlowBro]

Would a land value tax be priced on farms as well? I wouldn’t think so, else you risk pricing farmers out of business. Have you noticed how many wealthy people own vineyards? Put some greenhouses on it and call it a farm.

The wealthy are clever, or they can hire some downright clever people to help them. Better solutions are needed.

[mercutio2]

Of course a land value tax would apply to farms.

If rich people want to move out to rural areas to lower their taxes, that’s fine by me.

The main difficulty with land value taxation is deciding what the actual land value is.