[toomuchtodo]

> Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m.

Do wealthy individuals in other countries with a heavier tax burden (Europe, Scandinavia to be specific) do this? Would be nice to see evidence of this behavior before outright dismissing raising taxes.

[caseysoftware]

Yes. Google "millionaires leaving X" and see what the autosuggestions are for X and choose one. While some are US states - NY, Maryland, etc - most are countries.

Here's the top couple using France: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/07/23/flight-o...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-75...

[toomuchtodo]

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

[JonFish85]

If the tax rate is 95%, a company would have to pay someone a $21 million dollar salary to pay that person $2m. I suspect that no company would do such a thing, as it's just throwing money away.

[bryanlarsen]

5% of a very large number is still a large number. Very few people are going to say "don't give me that extra $20 million because the government will take $19 million." $1 million is still a lot of money.

And of course, there are lots of deductions. You could give that $20 million to a charity and the government would get none of it. You wouldn't get any either, but you could certainly get a lot of indirect value out of giving away $20M.

[JonFish85]

What company is going to pay that? It's just silly. If you felt that a CEO/athlete/whatever was worth $30m a year, you'd have to pay that person $581 million dollars. They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government.

[toomuchtodo]

> They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government.

And so we keep closing loopholes.