[pydry]

Your core problem is the rich mostly owns both parties and most of the media that can blast propaganda to the effect of:

* It's simply Not Possible to fix the problem of widespread tax avoidance because There Will Always be Loopholes.

* In any case if you tax the wealthy too much they'll run away with their money which will be worse in the long run and the government can't stop them and Then You'll Be Really Sorry.

The public can't really be trained to believe that tax havens are ok but maybe 70% can be led to believe the lie that theres nothing that can really be done about them so they dont demand politicians fix it while a good 40% are susceptible to persistent character assassination on politicians who do try to fix it (e.g. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-ethics-complaint-met-ga...)

Trying to convince Bahamanian lawyers to charge less than a million dollars for setting up elaborate tax structures that Congress winks at because their donors like them isn't really a viable fix. A) they won't B) if they did that particular method would be shut down and theyd shify to others because the core problem of "Congress doesnt work for you" hasnt changed.

[hyperman1]

France started heavily taxing some rich people, and some of them like Gerard Depardieu promptly 'immigrated' to Belgium (A whole km outside France in his case). As far as I know, France did not suffer too much from this.

https://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/12/french-government-deno...

[shapefrog]

Given most countries tax their residents as opposed to their citizens, I say let them leave and they forfeit their right to be residents.

In the case of the US, where they tax both their citizens and their residents. If you want to leave and not pay, you forfeit the residency and the citizenship.

[cinntaile]

How do you mean? He's obviously a resident in Belgium otherwise he'd be paying French taxes? If he moves back to France he'd become a French resident again or if he in practice spends more days of the year in France than in Belgium, then he'll be treated as if he's a resident in France.

[shapefrog]

Yes. He had to move to Belgium to remove the obligation to pay tax in france. Should he decide to move to the south of france instead, he would come back under the taxaction of france.

[soco]

Isn't Depardieu a resident of Saransk, Russia?

[pydry]

As far as I remember they acted like Depardieu and his ilk leaving couldnt be tolerated so they rolled the law back.

I didnt follow too closely though.

[lixtra]

> In any case if you tax the wealthy too much they'll run away with their money which will be worse in the long run and the government

I saw companies leaving countries for tax reasons.

I see people working 80% instead of 100% because thanks to progressive tax their net salaries remain 85+%.

Of course tax laws also factor into life decisions.

[pydry]

There was a NY law that raised state taxes quite considerably on high incomes followed by a study to see if people responded to this by moving across the river to live in New Jersey where taxes were lower. Turns out they couldnt be bothered: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/quelle-surprise-tax-...

A legion of people uprooting their entire life in response to a tax hike is threatened constantly in the MSM but pretty uncommon in reality.

On the other hand companies that can change their tax residency just by saying "this is our new HQ" will yes, seek out tax havens because there's almost no cost to "moving". With political will, it would be pretty trivial to enact legislation to say that the company gets taxed based upon where they actually are.

As to why that doesnt happen see my original point: A) Congress doesnt work for you B) the media acts like you could never really close these loopholes.

[fartingflamingo]

This does hit home. My significant other got a 600€/month pre-tax raise. Her net raise? 120€. She could actually go work 80% and hardly lose anything at all.

[pydry]

I did that for a while just because. Three day weekends are nice even without the rationale of progressive taxation.

Overall I'm not sure if a tax that encouraged it would be such a bad thing. It's obviously against the protestant work ethic which makes it seem almost unthinkable in America but it'd probably be healthier overall.

[Handytinge]

This is a global issue, and Americans make up < 5% of the worlds population. Who are "both parties"?