[vladvasiliu]

I've never personally known any "very rich" people so I can't comment on them.

But the perception I'm talking about applies even to "reasonably confortable" people. Think your random engineer making 100k a year (which is a "good" salary in these parts). Basically, someone with some form of STEM degree.

I doubt most of these people are doing anything shady. Plus, this kind of income doesn't really give them any kind of financial independence: they wouldn't be able to afford not having a job.

[zimpenfish]

> I doubt most of these people [random engineer making 100k a year] are doing anything shady.

I guess it depends what your level of "shady" is - I know a bunch of people in that kind of range who were all about "optimising their tax" (which I would consider to be "tax evasion" - morally wrong even if it is legal at the time.)

[vladms]

You know "optimizing" means different things for different people.

For example: France offers specific saving deposits with guaranteed interest rate and non-taxed. If a normal saving deposit would be taxed and has similar interest rate, "optimizing their tax" means just using the that specific deposit.

There are many other schemes that I can't believe they exist (example: in France if you create an investment account, after 5 years of the account existence you are not taxed on the gains! So what you can do is "create account with 100 euro", "wait 5 years", "invest more / potentially do gains" - and you will not be taxed!!!)

You will tell me "that is morally wrong!". I could agree with you, but I see nobody demanding better laws/regulations, probably because they don't know/care about details.

[zimpenfish]

> You will tell me "that is morally wrong!"

No, I think the investment account with no tax on gains is fine. I'm talking about things like "create a company, take a salary that's just over the lowest tax threshold, get 0% infinite term company loans from yourself" - things that your average person wouldn't be doing (unlike the free-gains-account.)

[vladms]

You mean something like described in this page: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/loan-schemes-and-... ? This one seems illegal at least in UK. Do you know if it is different in other countries?

[zimpenfish]

> This one seems illegal at least in UK.

It wasn't for a long time though. There's a bunch of other similar schemes which caught famous people[0] when they were declared illegal by UKGOV.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jun/19/tax-scheme-...

[vladms]

My experience is that "common people" try (or were trying) as much to "game the system" as "rich people". Examples (not from UK): shops not giving a receipt (this improved probably with cards), people avoiding paying fines for small things, people asking for benefits they were not entitled too (this improves with digitalisation) etc.

So, my opinion is that splitting people by class/income/whatever does not help a lot. You need rules/systems to avoid as much as possible cheating schemes, and compared to like 30 years ago things might already be better, but as nobody can check every news many can end with the impression "the system is bad".

[teamonkey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie