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by FirmwareBurner 844 days ago
>It's mainly wealth distribution

No it isn't. The problem is that all these programs never actually end up redistributing wealth, but they always end up redistributing income, usually taken via higher taxes from the already shrinking middle class, leading to further deepening of wealth inequality.

As the super wealthy don't just have a public bank account with billions of $ under their own name, like your grandma, but have their wealth under various assets, entangled corporations, trust funds and non-profits, spread across various tax jurisdictions both on- and off-shore, making their wealth very difficult to track and tax correctly, plus gaming the financial system so that their companies are always billing each other for services till they're running at a loss, never seemingly generate any meaningful profits in their home "high-tax" jurisdictions.

FFS they have entire teams of well paid experts dedicated to these "tax optimization schemes", something the middle class and small business owners can never afford. THIS IS WHY WE HAVE WEALTH INEQUALITY, not because some middle class people earn higher wages after busting their asses in school and university. Just look at IKEA's elaborate tax dodging scheme. [1] Why can't he pay Swedish taxes like all Swedish businesses?

[1] https://www.greens-efa.eu/legacy/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Stu...

1 comments

> As the super wealthy don't have a public bank account with billions of $ under their own name, but have their wealth under various entangled corporations, trust funds and non-profits, spread across various tax jurisdictions on and off shore, making very difficult to tax.

Report it and have it taxed. A private company can land a rover on the moon but we can't perform ETL operations on asset reporting?

Relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/29/taxation-worlds... ("‘A historic step’: G20 discusses plans for global minimum tax on billionaires ")