| By stressing "federal income taxes" I assume that you mean that there are local taxes on wealth. I do not know how it is in USA, but in most countries there are taxes on wealth, typically at least on houses, cars and land. Wherever I have seen the amount of those taxes, they were already too high in my opinion. Moreover, the inheritance taxes are also a kind of tax on wealth and they are also quite high in many places. In my opinion taxes on wealth should be reduced, not increased, because I have seen cases when someone happened
to be jobless for some time, thus having no income. While without the burden of taxes on wealth they could have lived decently for a longer time, waiting for an opportunity, the necessity of paying the taxes could force them to sell their property at loss and risk becoming homeless. I do not think that is right. On the other hand, when someone owns much more wealth than would be needed to ensure a decent life until dying of old age, then I would accept that it is right to tax the excess wealth. However, I have seen too many cases when the introduction of taxes on wealth was justified as "tax for the rich", but in the actual law the taxation thresholds were so low that the taxes affected mostly the lower end of the middle class, not the really rich. |
I'm just re-using the exact same phrasing from the article to point out how disingenuous it is.