mack said:
if you knew what he was trying to say, you would not came up with "original" utterly simplistic ideas in the first place.
Whats your best tax opinion
- Thread starter ncrider
- Start date
if you knew what he was trying to say, you would not came up with "original" utterly simplistic ideas in the first place.
A flat tax of 2-3% on everyone's income except full time students (students exempt if in full time college with limits...no lifetime students), and then hefty consumption taxes on luxury items boats, 2nd homes, 3rd cars, and non-essential food and tobacco items (beer, soda, chips, candy). Marijuana should be legalized, and taxed (not a frequent user, I just have no problem with other people toking up if their conscience, health and job permit it). Necessity food items would not be taxed. Hybrid and road bicycles, maybe even XC bikes would not be taxed, as they could be justified as alternate means of transportation. Sorry, I love my V10, but I'd tax the sh!t out of it as a luxury item. Of course, right now, more than 35% of my income is taken out in taxes, and that's even with me claiming my daughter. I'd love to have another $30k in my wallet to buy heavily taxed bikes. 
El Jefe said:A flat tax of 2-3% on everyone's income except full time students (students exempt if in full time college with limits...no lifetime students), and then hefty consumption taxes on luxury items boats, 2nd homes, 3rd cars, and non-essential food and tobacco items (beer, soda, chips, candy). Marijuana should be legalized, and taxed (not a frequent user, I just have no problem with other people toking up if their conscience, health and job permit it). Necessity food items would not be taxed. Hybrid and road bicycles, maybe even XC bikes would not be taxed, as they could be justified as alternate means of transportation. Sorry, I love my V10, but I'd tax the sh!t out of it as a luxury item. Of course, right now, more than 35% of my income is taken out in taxes, and that's even with me claiming my daughter. I'd love to have another $30k in my wallet to buy heavily taxed bikes.
yup, that would be Awesome!!!!,... but wait... reality calls.... how much would you raise by this taxes? enough ????
and selective luxury taxes, dont work as good as you might think.
there are a lot of ways around them.
specially in small stuff.
i can get a rolex daytona in a dealer here in Lima, cheaper than i could anywhere in the US, and a foes mono is cheaper than US msrp, yet we have a hefty luxury tax.... wonder how???.....
according to my dad, (an accountant and tax lawyer) high luxury rates just open the need for a gray market, and offshore corporations (all the rage here).
I've seen the idea of a financial transfer tax floated a few times, and found it interesting. Not sure how it would work to be revenue neutral though...and the fact that I haven't seen it mentioned in any serious publications lately leads me to believe it wouldn't work.
Silver said:
we have it in peru. (and most southamerica)
in fact we have every possible tax imaginable since the gvmt gotta tax the living chit out of the very few peruvians making a few bucks so it can afford paying 30% of the national budget on external debt.
we pay 0.15% on every money transfer. every money transfer over 500 bucks gotta be made thru a bank, otherwise is ilegal, and the bank collects this tax.
it has actually collected enough money to lower the income tax by a nominal 5% eliminating our "extraordinary solidarity tax in name of the poor children" (truly thats the name).
while is took the burden of that 5% on every person, that money-transfer tax has actually caused a lot or troubles, and rised business costs.
0.15% might not be very big, but it has made a lot of companies and people to establish offshore corporations, to pass the money thru them, and kinda makes people de-bank their money and has increased the relative "need" for a gray market.
in the short term its effect have been good, but according to my dad, such elitist taxes in other places than income, make the capitals go away since income is bound to the location, but consumption and transfer can be made on paper overseas.
and yeah, a perfectly globalized economy, would help to demolish the tax-heavens like liechtenstein, grand cayman or panama. But until then (i doubt the big guys want their money playgrounds razed) if those meassures of taxing on luxury consumption, rather than income, are taken by only one side, the taxed folks would move "on the papers" their locations for consumption. which cannot be made with income taxes, since the source of income has a definite physical location.
so while in paper luxury, and consumption taxes sound good, on reality, there are way too many ways around them currently.
alex, good post, i'm gonna reconsider my thoughts on comsumption tax.
funny side note... I was traveling thru europe a few years back and Liechtenstein's border was either delayed or wanted to charge us a fee or something -- i was chillin' in the car, so didn't pay attention -- but it was cheaper/faster to just drive around that little fvcker -- from switzerland to Austria -- then deal with them.
funny side note... I was traveling thru europe a few years back and Liechtenstein's border was either delayed or wanted to charge us a fee or something -- i was chillin' in the car, so didn't pay attention -- but it was cheaper/faster to just drive around that little fvcker -- from switzerland to Austria -- then deal with them.
But in Peru 54% of the population lives below the poverty level..
N8 said:
yup, and poverty defined by SA standards. that would mean like 75-80% in US standards.
Peru´s (and southamericas) economy is freaky.
while the average is about the same as not-so poor naitons on the world, we got the weirdest wealth distribution you can imagine.
you can walk into a store and buy a 75k IWC portuguese watch that they have in stock, and as you leave, in the doorstep of the store, a kid will ask you for US$0.05 so he can take his home to eat with his 5 person family, that lives on 3 bucks a day.
and that really twists my mind, but it happens so often, everywhere and all the time, that most people get de-sensitized.
tax screw the rest 25% big time, since for 75% of the population, enforcing them paying taxes will be more expensive than to the actual taxes they can collect.
so its not the entire country is poor, is just that maybe 15% of peru live in closed gated ghettos within Lima, like in Rio de Janeiro, or Sao Paulo, and this small chunk of population gotta foot up the bill for everybody, because the others cant. and if we dont pay those taxes, we cannot pay external debt, we turn into cuba, and people who depends on state welfare to survive, will starve to death (literally).
so our IRS, is a kick-ass gestapo like, with monthly declarations done online, in which is really hard to evade taxes. since the groups of people from which they can get taxes is so small.
so its the poorness and inequality of the region, that makes the SA tax collection systems the best in the world.
you gotta go out around more N8.
the world is a truly fvcked up place.
thanks to guys like the US gvmt, who supports with its armies, and leverage the US corporations who dont doubt in deailng with known corrupt local politicians who will sell our countries in exchange of a few bucks, while sentencing millions to a slow death in their quest to open markets for their bulldogs to make a few more bucks that they dont really need.