Billionaires pay "0% - 0.5% tax" report finds - Suggests 2% minimum tax.

[Nutty667]

Why shouldn't low income high wealth individuals be taxed?

Why is it any different to low wealth mid income people being taxed?

In the UK we have a real issue with this. I don't know or understand why wealth gets a get out of jail free card vs payee which is fair game.

Hording isn't good for the economy

Because low wealth mid income is cash.
High wealth, no income isn't cash. It never was. You're talking theoretical value of something.

They're not hoarding anything. The value of shares does not exist in money. It's not money that's withheld from employees, or overcharged from customers. It doesn't exist until sold, and then tax is paid.

 

[Caracus2k]

Personally I’m OK with billionaires spending their money and stimulating the economy rather than hoarding it.

'Billionaires' aren't generally hoarding their money for heavens sake!

These figures mostly relate to investments they have in companies they have often been founding members of!

This is the problem with this questions.... too many lazy and or jealous people who are ignorant of the facts.

 

[413x]

'Billionaires' aren't generally hoarding their money for heavens sake!

These figures mostly relate to investments they have in companies they have often been founding members of!

This is the problem with this questions.... too many lazy and or jealous people who are ignorant of the facts.

For people that don't support more tax on the wealthy.. For whatever reason.. What do you suggest happens to the public purse?

Do you support the NHS dying? Infrastructure rotting away, and basically becoming like the USA?

I assume you have to? Because how else do you make this better? It's a question often asked to Labour "where do you get the money from?" and it's a legitimate question.


But for those who don't support tapping the mega rich.. What is it?

Let it rot?
Tax payee more?

You can't do both?


(not attacking, many would like to be like the USA, where individual comes first)

 

[Sythe79]

It's not even the case of them hoarding assets in the form of shares. it's the fact that if you are wealthy enough when you release those assets into capital there has always been ways to pay little to no tax on it.

It's not just billionaires either, every other UK actor in the 2000s had some shell company that took their fees and then "loaned" them it back at a zero tax rate, when the money was all gone from the shell company you just shut it down with the bad debt loans.

 

[Caracus2k]

For people that don't support more tax on the wealthy.. For whatever reason.. What do you suggest happens to the public purse?

One of the main things that needs to be done is that Goverments need to work together to try and stop corporations using the system to transfer profits made in higher tax areas to lower tax areas 'tax havens'.

Do you support the NHS dying? Infrastructure rotting away, and basically becoming like the USA?

The USA has its problems but Europe should worry when you look at the trajectories in incomes in the two area and how they have stagnated on this side of the Atlantic

I assume you have to?

I'm a big supporter of (meaningful) infrastructure investments and maintenance.

I think they should have tries to reel in HS2 and get it built for example.

I support the provision of socialised health care but dont think the NHS is necessarily the best way to provide it given that plenty of other countries provide health car in a different fashion.

I'm under no illusions that this can be done 'on the cheap' and that large amounts of taxation are required for a modern functional society. They should incentivise hard work and innovation though.

 

[Richie]

Of course, and at the point they do, they end up paying huge amounts of tax on it.

"Huge Amounts" is very relative.... What percentage would someone pay in CGT from £1M profit on shares, for example?

 

[Richie]

"Huge Amounts" is very relative.... What percentage would someone pay in CGT from £1M profit on shares, for example?

I worked it out.

CGT on £1M Profit is £195,030 or 19.5%
Tax Paid on £30K salary is circa 22%
Tax Paid on £60K salary is circa 30%

Seem fair?

 

[mattx4]

I worked it out.

CGT on £1M Profit is £195,030 or 19.5%
Tax Paid on £30K salary is circa 22%
Tax Paid on £60K salary is circa 30%

Seem fair?

So one person took a big financial risk and got taxed at 19.5% vs two people that took no financial risk and got taxed between 22-30%

Seems fair enough

 

[EvilRob]

So one person took a big financial risk and got taxed at 19.5% vs two people that took no financial risk and got taxed between 22-30%

Seems fair enough

Not really - those two people had to work all day every day for a year for their income.

 

[Richie]

So one person took a big financial risk and got taxed at 19.5% vs two people that took no financial risk and got taxed between 22-30%

Seems fair enough

Could also be re-written as:

So one person was ABLE TO TAKE a big financial risk through having wealth and got taxed at 19.5% vs two people that haven't got the ability to take the same financial risk as no wealth to invest and got taxed between 22-30%. Seems fair enough

 

[mattx4]

Could also be re-written as:

One person quit their 60k a year job took a huge risk setting up a small business worked years on minium wage to make the business work and after 10 years sold a portion of it off. You can make up stories either way, but you can't tax based on stories.

What you can do is take a general view that if people put capital at risk they should get a small tax break

 

[Caracus2k]

One person quit their 60k a year job took a huge risk setting up a small business worked years on minium wage to make the business work and after 10 years sold a portion of it off. You can make up stories either way, but you can't tax based on stories.

What you can do is take a general view that if people put capital at risk they should get a small tax break

People don't seem to understand the negative consequences of changing incentives through taxation.

 

[Richie]

You can make up stories either way, but you can't tax based on stories.

No you cant, so I am unsure why you brought your story up to begin with only to shoot down someone else's as some kind of legitimate response

 

[jeffk]

'Billionaires' aren't generally hoarding their money for heavens sake!

These figures mostly relate to investments they have in companies they have often been founding members of!

Hang on, you said that they would spend the money if a wealth tax was brought it.

How are they capable of spending the money but not hoarding it?

 

[Caracus2k]

Hang on, you said that they would spend the money if a wealth tax was brought it.

How are they capable of spending the money but not hoarding it?

'Wealth taxes' won't just affect the billionaires.

And in any event 'billionaires' are going to be one of the groups most likely to move, and take their capital with them to areas without wealth taxes as Norway has found out.

Super-rich abandoning Norway at record rate as wealth tax rises slightly

Flood moving abroad has come as a shock and is costing tens of millions in lost tax receipts

www.theguardian.com

Wealth taxes will affect more middle earners, the younger to middle aged ones, who will still have decades of life ahead of them and who are in a position to make decisions about whether to spend today or defer some spending and save some money for 'tomorrow'.

 

[adam cool dude]

It is an absolute joke when you look at how companies like Amazon treat their employees and what they get away with tax wise. I think it has got to the point that some warehouses in America have such a high staff turnover that they need to close them down and build them elsewhere because they have exhausted the employee pool in the area.

Meanwhile Jeff Bezos is worth 148 billion. His net worth alone spent on social housing in this country would solve our housing issues in less than ten years and help tens of millions of people.

It is almost turning into a snowball and is getting out of control really.

 

[unwashed potato!]

They aren’t using services such as schools and hospitals that I would

With respect, they get the benefit of them just as much as anyone else in the country they live in, if not more given how they have made their wealth.

I'm sure you're smart enough to know that the company my brother in law just got a job for where he's paid £60k per year, has 10 other employees, and the boss is nearly a billionaire, that that boss has benefitted by being able to hire someone that is healthy, fit, educated, comes on a train operated by smart people, with the train lines layed by smart people, of which he drives a Tesla to the station, a car company run by an apparent genius, who again, is educated highly to allow all these things to come together so that that rich boss can take advantage of them. These things require tax to be paid.

 

[willhub]

The world is disgusting I feel like getting off somewhere desolate like a remote asteroid and having a cold shower with some bleach to cleanse myself or the dusty earth disgustingness.

Seriously, things need to change we're been conned left right and center.

 

[Caracus2k]

Saw this on the BBC, and can't say I was surprised to find that billionaires don't pay anywhere near the same percentage of tax as most people. I think I was surprised at how little they do pay - Some literally pay nothing

This is a very dishonest framing anyway.

Just to be clear as to why it relies on comparing the taxes people pay on income to the taxes (if any) paid on 'wealth'.

It should be obvious why in some years billionaires pay effectively no tax.

For example Elon Musk made the headlines recently for 'losing' the largest amount of money recorded when the value of the shares he held went down significantly in value.

To make the dishonestly of this comparison more down to earth let's take the example of a couple in the UK in their late 50's or early 60's earning circa 50k each.

They have paid off their mortgage and have assest (mostly their house) worth £1 million.

Their immediate taxes paid on their incomes jointly would be just under £24,000 per annum (income tax and NI)

Which equates to some 2.4% of their 'wealth'

Not as small as the 0 - 0.5% quoted for the billionaires but the billionaire is quite a few orders of magnitude richer, wealth wise, vs the couple in my example.


And you can see that comparing that 2.4% to the earnings of a younger couple, on the same sort of salaries who were renting and who have essentially no assets to count as 'wealth' would provide another apparently large, and dishonest, difference.


2.4% vs 24%


Because it's smoke and mirrors that relies on you not noticing the substitution of wealth in to be compared with income.

 

[hurfdurf]

So one person took a big financial risk and got taxed at 19.5% vs two people that took no financial risk and got taxed between 22-30%

Seems fair enough

Big financial risk?