[nivenkos]

Yeah, income tax is the real evil.

I live in Scandinavia, and the high income tax (and no property or inheritance tax) keeps the class system intact for generations. You can't work your way up when the government is taking almost 60% of your income.

That said, I'd still prioritise abolishing sales tax on groceries and electricity here. Both are incredibly expensive and make life a struggle for a lot of working people.

[mavhc]

Most countries have more of a scaled income tax, but Sweden has 57% if you earn 1.5x the average. Why is that?

[_vbnz]

To keep the class system intact. The ultra-wealthy don't pay much more tax (and don't pay property or inheritance tax, and capital gains tax is also lower than income tax (wtf?)). It's a far less progressive country than the marketing would have you believe.

And unfortunately all the political parties are just focussed on giving more money to the boomers or liberalising the housing market, so it won't change any time soon.

[lordnacho]

I think inheritance tax differs across Scandinavia, just a small point really not detracting from your message. In Denmark there's definitely one, Sweden it's none or much lower, not sure.

[ptr]

You can even chose to pay 0.375% on your assets p/a, instead of the capital gains tax. Pretty good. But you’re exaggerating the income tax situation. ~60% is the marginal tax rate, you only pay that for a part of your income over a certain level.

[sokoloff]

Can you choose year by year? I’d think most years 37.5bps on assets would be way cheaper than capital gains, but in a down year, you might choose to pay capital gains. (Or you could “bunch” realized gains into every other or every third year and take the wealth tax option only that year.)

[ptr]

It’s a special kind of account, you can sell everything and withdraw the proceeds, then buy new assets outside that account. So you can choose, but not retroactively (unfortunately!)

[pessimizer]

Consumption taxes are regressive and bad, but at least they're justifiable. Without government protection, the poor/weak have no rights that the rich/strong have to respect; they end up enslaved, serfs. So they pay a poverty/weakness tax.

Imagine the effort that a government has to put in to offset racist discrimination, as an example. While we might say that racism is a problem caused by the racist, we can't say that racism is a problem for the racist. It's a problem for the race being discriminated against. Levying a tax to pay for that expense makes sense in a purely payment-for-services model of government. Lots of Europe used to charge Jewish taxes, and the Islamic world both Jewish and Christian taxes.

[ClumsyPilot]

"Without government protection, the poor/weak have no rights"

Without government protection the poor start cutting off heads, see the French revolution. Every time there is civil unrest, from peasant uprising in medieval Russia, to Occupy Wallstreet to Anonymous DDOSing websites, the government is out in force to out it down.

Having a few limits on power, like "you cant discriminate by race, but discriminating by class is cool" does not mean thay the state is suddenly protecting the poor.

[nivenkos]

I see it more as a reasonable way of shaping behaviour. Like taxing diesel, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. is fair enough if it helps create a better society.

Taxing electricity whilst trying to encourage people to switch their homes from gas and their cars from diesel, is just crazy.

[pessimizer]

You then run into the question of whose vision of a better society you're enforcing. But aside from that you can really look at those taxes as something to offset the additional costs of commerce in those things. We've agreed that emissions are a danger, cigarettes raise health care expenditure, and alcohol raises police expenditure. We use those to justify the specific amounts of the taxes.

If this weren't the justification, there's no reason not to just ban the things you don't approve of altogether, rather than just taxing them.