With Gerard Depardieu giving up his French passport to escape the French taxman, it’s fashionable for other rich folks to threaten to move to reduce their taxes. In the US, that consists of trying to play various states off each other, since the US taxes citizens on world wide income. The only way to escape is become a tax fugitive like Mark Rich and live in Switzerland and have people who are expert at moving your money around (I actually met one of them once, a man named Mikey. Oh and you have to read the link, the US attempted an extraordinary rendition of Rich in Switzerland sometime prior to 1992!).
The New York Times comes in on the side of the whining rich in a piece titled, “Two-Tax Rise Tests Wealthy in California.” It starts by depicting how hard pressed the wealthy are in California because they pay higher income taxes than in any other state in the US, and are also being hit by Federal “tax-the-rich” levies. Funny how there’s no mention of increased taxes on middle class folk, namely the increase in regressive payroll taxes and coming benefits cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Nor do we see a word of how many of the top rich are private equity or venture capital fund managers, and already organize their lives to have virtually all of their labor income subject to capital gains treatment. If the Times could be bothered to talk about effective income tax rates, as opposed to marginal tax rates, it would puncture the pretense that the rich are being abused.
It isn’t until paragraph 12 that we are finally told the thesis of the article is likely all wet:
Some of those earners seem at least resigned to the tax burden as a cost of being able to live in California rather than, say, Texas.
“I am happy to pay my taxes, whatever they are: no problem with me,” said David Geffen, the entertainment mogul, who owns estates on the oceanfront in Malibu and on the hedge-lined streets of Beverly Hills. He said he thought it could hurt the business climate, but added, “I don’t think anybody of means is really going to move because of it.”
Notice how the lead in misrepresents the quote? Geffen isn’t “resigned” which implies resentful; he is HAPPY to pay taxes, meaning he accepts them as the price of civilization and recognizes that he is rich enough that they don’t make a dent in his lifestyle. And he says even the resentful aren’t going anywhere.
The next bit confirms that the most the rich are likely to do is grouse:
Cristobal Young, an assistant professor of sociology with the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Stanford, conducted a study last fall that concluded that tax rates had little effect on where millionaires choose to live.
Mr. Young said he suspected that few, if any, millionaires would leave or stay away because of the tax increase. More likely, he said, they would find ways of reducing their tax burden, with loopholes or income avoidance, or simply reduce their work.
Reader DK provided a good shred:
What’s with journalists named ‘Adam’ … here’s a truly ridiculous NYTimes article by Adam Nagourney:
It’s a sort of People magazine piece: ZOMG! What are they doing to the wealthy now!! Isn’t it fun to watch how desperate tax grabs from the top 1% trigger musical chairs of moving out of high tax states, tax evasion, reducing work load and so forth. And, we can even quote economists about this!!
Oh, yes, we’ll make sure to have ‘balance’ in our story. “Some” people say that actually moving out of California is too severe an overreaction. But, they’ll never be able to prove it isn’t happening because, Adam tells us, these things are devilishly hard to track! (Good thing for Adam: never let any empiricism get in the way of a juicy story grounded in rumors!).
The entire article is of, by and for the wealthy. Not a word about whether/how raising taxes at the top affects the economy, affects investment, helps fund stabilizers such as government programs, jobs and safety net measures. No, none of that when you have a brilliant, proven Governor such as Rick Perry begging California millionaires to experience the liberty of Texas (and the “Adam-envying” sycophants at CNN trolling for first hand accounts of wealthy Americans put out and pissed off about these infringements on their ‘liberty’).
Really, one wonders just why Adam Nagourney is so happy being a court jester? Do he and Adam Davidson have matching costumes? Because clearly they are dancing to the same music and choreography.
Brace yourselves. We are only going to hear more kvetching from the rich for being asked to take a wee dose of the austerity medicine they are all too happy to force on the middle class and poor.
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Rather than pay taxes, I know someone who’s making good money working under the table. And he orders just about everything he can from out of state, over the internet.
Doing good work there, for the betterment of society. The informal economy is already bigger than the commercial economy in some places. And soon it will swallow it up. What will the poor monetarists do when will they have left is stand stand around and lament to each that people just can’t act rationally enough to live their lives as the monetarist paper bugs think they should.
If the rich and corporations were so, so, so concerned about taxes, they would move to Wyoming or NW Arkansas.
Mitt Romney lives in “oppressive” Mass. and Orange County when he could just as easily live in NH and AZ; even both Kochs live in NYC.
The rich have already voted with their feet. and they endorse the taxes and gov’t services where they love.
Wyoming? Pfft. That’s what Delaware is for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
NOTHING about 1209 North Orange Street hints at the secrets inside. It’s a humdrum office building, a low-slung affair with a faded awning and a view of a parking garage. Hardly worth a second glance. If a first one.
But behind its doors is one of the most remarkable corporate collections in the world: 1209 North Orange, you see, is the legal address of no fewer than 285,000 separate businesses.
Its occupants, on paper, include giants like American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Coca-Cola, Ford, General Electric, Google, JPMorgan Chase, and Wal-Mart. These companies do business across the nation and around the world. Here at 1209 North Orange, they simply have a dropbox.
You know a guy… Well, that settles it, working above the table and paying taxes is passe. And bitcoin will replace the dollar. Sheesh.
without fail…JGiddy types and im going to spew n laff
terima kasih keluli kepala
My late brother-in-law was a handyman who did a lot of work for cash. When he retired at 62 (bad back) and started to collect SS he hardly got anything because his reported income had been so low. Morality/legality aside, it might make sense for your friend to pay more now so he gets more later.
The problem of student loan debt, and other debts which people can’t get rid of in bankruptcy, is one reason people work under the table.
After all, if your income isn’t reported, the debt collectors can’t take it — you can therefore use it to buy, you know, food.
In France, between the cases of Bernard Arnauld and Gerard Depardieu, we have already had months of chorus whining in the press .. all that for a failed legal attempt at raising taxes which was cancelled by the highest court in the country..but we had one of our major newspapers (Liberation) exposing the ridicule of that whining with a full front page cover photo of B. Arnauld and the perfect title splashed across “Fxxx off, Rich C..t” (a reference to something Sarkozy said to demonstrators in poor suburbs of Paris). Arguably, this did more to discredit that whining than any of the PR by the Socialist government and its supporters.. Bernard Arnauld himself, thought it serious enough to sue the paper…
http://nymag.com/thecut/2012/09/bernard-arnault-suing-over-libration-cover.html
Libe’ is still one of a kind. Here in the USA it would have been thunked out of existence by one of the 2 media moguls.
Vive Libe’!
Only 2? I thought there were at least six. And there are probably a couple hundred of their minions who can wield the power without actually being rich themselves — well, when I say “without being rich” I mean, you, know, only a few hundred million, or even a few million, in their estates, not really people of the “right sort.” And then there are the ordinary editors, who exercise the power on an hourly basis, but there are so many of them, one with a sense of humor and frustration might let something like that through to relieve his tension. It’s not as if they’re following orders or anything.
OUR COLLECTIVE ECONOMY
{YS: It starts by depicting how hard pressed the wealthy are in California because they pay higher income taxes than in any other state in the US, and are also being hit by Federal “tax-the-rich” levies.}
The journalist who wrote that article should take a look at comparative income taxation amongst the major democracies. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg – now look for the US at 7th place from the top down of 29 nations, meaning amongst the least tax-oppressed.
What is about the American mentality as regards income taxation? Greed? That is, “I worked for it, so it’s mine!”
Permit me to advance a sociological fact: We humans have lived in collectives (tribes, towns, cities, states, nations) for thousands upon thousands of years. Some call it the herd instinct – but the first attribute of such collectivity was herd self-protection.
We’ve come a long way since then (though perhaps thrown back somewhat since Reckless Reagan’s occupancy of the White House). We still live in collectives, but we have also derived – as an offshoot of capitalism) – what are called Market Economies.
What is the single most attribute of a Market Economy? It is a collective of consumers and suppliers who meet and serve one another. It is within such economic collectives that we work and earn money – some earning much, much more than others. (In fact, American TenPercenters garner nearly 50% of ALL INCOME GENERATED by our economy, whilst the rest of us NinetyPercenters must share the remaining half.)
How’s that so? Because we all participate collectively in the economy. My point being this: Do you know any self-made-millionaires who achieved that status on a deserted island. No, the all made their enormous wealth in a Collective Economy.
Which is why the overall well-being of the collective is far more important than that of any select group of individuals – however rich they may be. And however much they may warp the democratic electoral process to maintain a tax-system that allows them to continue amassing riches hand-over-fist.
MY POINT? The MegaBuck Club
Any one of us may like to win the lottery or back the right horse or become a venture capitalist and join the Megabuck Club. But the rest of us are pursuing rather conventional lives, looking after our families. We do so willingly because we expect no more from an economy than our fair share of the wealth we helped generate by means of our hard-work.
And our collective well-being is therefore far more important than any one individual’s singular good-fortune of having amassed a MegaBuck or more of Net Worth.
Methinks …
Another global tax survey, by KPMG, updated to 2012 and including social security and capital gains taxes:
http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Pages/individual-income-tax.aspx
Can’t find it now, but it seems that a couple years ago they included average local taxes, too (recall footnotes about cantons in Switzerland being highly variable).
Our taxes may look lower than Europe but we don’t get any healthcare included until 65 (for now), or 5 weeks vacation, or generous parental leave, and our meager by comparison retirement is 67, going on 80, etc.
If the rich want to expatriate, or all move to Texas and then secede, they should watch out that the door doesn’t hit them in the ass on the way out.
PRODUCTIVITY CONCERNS
Well put. But about “Leave” or “Vacation” time, see the average hour worked per country here: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS .
A selection from that data-set:
Country – Hours – Percent of US
US – 1787 – 100%
Germany – 1413 – 79
France – 1478 – 82
UK – 1625 – 91
Italy – 1774 – 99 (which surprises the hell outta me …!;^)
Sweden – 1644 – 92
Spain – 1690 – 95
Work hours affect productivity (output per hour worked), which is a key factor in investment decisions particularly of manufacturing industries.
I agree that we Yanks deserve more time off – but let’s not go overboard either. Yes, the numbers show that the US can be more flexible. Let’s make sure that parents get time off for their newborn and that 4 weeks out of 52 becomes a norm for everybody as regards vacation taken as they see fit.
Let’s also assure that mothers are not incarcerated at home by childcare when community day-nurseries could be built and staffed (funded by the Federal government) should they want to return to work. This had a great impact upon the number of women-at-work in Canada when a program to build community day-nurseries was implemented by the Canadian government.
The Troglodyte Right is going to holler, of course, that all the above is much too expensive and “Such measures will cost us jobs!”. Which is their constant refrain whilst genuflecting at the Altar of Malarkey.
If all companies (above a certain size) are compelled by law to assume the above measures, then the time-lost is spread over all workplaces. Thus the burden is shared equitably.
IN FACT
What is costing us jobs is the manner in which runaway HealthCare costs are imputed to a company’s Labor-Input costing (because HC-insurance is privatized) and recuperated in the pricing of goods/services produced. It thus becomes an indirect tax.
Well said, Lafayette. We almost had a debate on this during last year’s election season after Obama pointed out that businesspeople succeed in part thanks to the infrastructure provided by society — paid for with everybody’s taxes. But I suppose that debate has already dropped down the memory hole.
The “I built that” set has a warped idea of “freedom.” Those who have the most — obtained at the expense of those with far less — have no responsibility to the society that enabled them to amass such wealth. “Freedom” for them is the freedom of capital, not of people. The rest of us are “free” to compete in a race to the bottom.
The reason Americans bitch about their taxes is that they don’t get anything for them. Europeans get medical care, free or heavily subsidized education, decent public transportation and so on. All we Americans get is an empire that benefits only the wealthiest of us. If you add the cost of healthcare, education, transportion and all the rest to what American’s pay in taxes, you will find that they pay pretty high taxes.
I don’t think the problem with tax rates would be so pronounced if there was an element of trust in our elected reps. From what I can see at the bottom of the ladder…… it costs loads of money to run for office, that money comes from high up and carries favors to be paid once elected. A perfect example would be our current president, who got the vast majority of his campaign money from Wall St and promptly put the very people who caused the crisis into positions of power. The results so far speak for themselves.
Once elected they tend to serve their masters(which definitely is not the average citizen) with favorable legislation.
I believe the entire political system in this country encourages and rewards greed and corruption. There are some good people on both sides who try to be citizen statesmen, but they are the very few in number. Most others succumb to the power of money and position as well as party identity.
So on taxes, I just see my money going into the swamp and the swamp people getting rich while I continue to struggle on less. The wealthiest areas of the country are now centered in and around Washington DC…..so I guess it is all working out well for them.
The Income Tax, like the Fed, was a faux progressive scam designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. It has done exactly that for one hundred years. Income taxes fleece disproportionately those who manage against the odds to achieve a small leg up in the competitive rat race. They receive apparently large salaries but taxes cut them down to size. Like Syssyfus, they spend working lifetimes in desperate attempts to ‘achieve’ security, which only comes to those who cash in on some investment scheme with the modest surplus they manage to accumulate. Most of the investment schemes are swindles, so the gains of a few are balanced by the losses of the many. Meanwhile, the truly rich maintain lavish lifestyles financed by bond interest, tax exempt income, corporate dividends and capital gains taxed at bargain rates. The major government use of collected taxes is paying risk free interest on government debt. Guess who owns this debt. The inheritor rich!
If income taxes were abolished and government spending limited to maintaining full employment, the economy might return to a sound foundation. All this talk about using taxes to soak the rich is bosh and has been going on since 1913 without effect.
Repeal the Income Tax and end the Fed.
I wouldn’t go that far, but any analysis of California that focusses on the vagaries of the state income tax and omits mention of Proposition 13 is pretty much empty.
Nonsense, Jake. The income tax was very effective at making the rich poor and the poor rich….
….back when most of the income tax was assessed against the extremely rich. When the tax rate for multi-millionaires was 92%, while the tax rate for average Americans was under 10%, then the income tax did its job.
Now, the income tax has carefully been restructured to tax very rich people at LOW rates while taxing middle class people at HIGHER rates. The results are obvious. However, this restructuring only started happening in the 1960s.
….well, more accurately, the income tax was:
– progressive and helpful under Woodrow Wilson
– regressive and unhelpful under Harding, Coolidge, Hoover
– progressive and helpful under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, early Kennedy
– became more regressive under late Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter
– became completely regressive under Reagan and subsequently
Remember, capital gains tax breaks were introduced under Harding — under Wilson, capital gains got taxed like ordinary income….
As I recall, the Income Tax Amendment was passed in 1913, but the first Income Tax law was enacted in 1922, which means nobody got taxed under Wilson. I seriously doubt anyone ever paid 92%, but as with all things historical I could be wrong. Is it possible you are confusing the Income Tax with some ‘war measure’?
In any case, if millionaires got fleeced so badly those first seven years it doesn’t seemed to have hurt them very much.
Wilson remains our most misunderstood president. He was quite simply Morgan’s man in the White House, and JP even went so far as to have his other man, TR create a third party in 1912 to make certain Wilson got in. Like LBJ fifty years later, he ran in opposition to a War and then used a phony ‘incident’ to plunge us in with both feet. You really cannot make this stuff up.
A little research indicates that only in 1917-1920 were tax rates seriously high, although they never exceeded 70%. But in any case, you cannot understand income taxes by looking at the rate tables. That is what they want you to do. The Internal Revenue Code was 5,000 pages long forty years ago when I knew it backwards and forwards. I believe it is 10,000 pages long today. The rate schedules occupy 1 page.
What do you suppose those other 9,990 odd pages are for?
Politicians and publict sector unions can never have enough taxes because such benefits accrue disportionately to them near term and liability are left to future generations, which includes today’s debt burdened collleged kids with no jobs. Taxes are going up to pay for these groups, not improving services for the mass… California is the example of how a rich state is going broke.
They want to turn the rest of us against others, but taxes are going up on everyone. Look at sales tax, property tax, parking/red light camera tickets, tolls on bridges, 20% tax on cell phones in most states…
I don’t think that property taxes, measured in terms of rate, have gone up over time—in fact, I’d wager they’ve gone down, at least over the long haul.
Which is a pity.
Income taxes are better than property taxes, because of the usual “old retiree” scenario — the house might be worth a lot, but that has nothing to do with the amount of money available to the retiree.
Income *always* has something to do with the amount of money available to the person getting the income.
The current discounted 0% and 15% rates on capital gains and dividends are obscene.
Agree about property vs. income tax. I grew up in a property tax state where schools were funded by special levies, and every year school districts would have to promise to “cut to the bone” in order to get funding. And the main source of opposition to the tax was retired people who had big houses/lots they’d bought while they were working and their kids were young, but were still living in years later.
Of course when the state tried to switch to an income tax system it kept getting shot down because the usual gang would scream about how it was “just one more tax”. My parents still live in the house I grew up in and pay $4k a year in property taxes.
I’m a New York golfer who is getting taxed out the ass, yet I don’t see Rick Perry welcoming me to Texas.
I smell a whiff of elitism Rick! Yes, Phil Mickelson wins majors and makes 47 million a year playing golf, while yours truly placed only second at last summer’s bi-annual Sour Mash 2-Man Scramble (I would of won it, goddammit, if my partner hadn’t gotten drunk!), but the reality is, Phil and I are basically the same guy: we both play golf for money and prizes.
So, my second place netted me a Coleman beverage cooler. Here she is (mine’s “in” baby blue, btw):
http://www.sears.com/coleman-beverage-cooler-in-orange/p-SPM7212749902?prdNo=12
Now the state wants half. What’s an over taxed golfer to do? I’d move to the Lone Star State, but apparently, people who win coolers and people who win millions are not treated equally down there.
Jesus, what a dilemma. Pray tell, what good is half a cooler? What would Solomon-the-Wise do? Give the whole thing over to New York? But I have to ask: do Albany bureaucrats really know better what to do with a Coleman cooler than I do?
I doubt it. So bible-thumpin’ Governor Rick, get off the high horse and give me shout it. Seriously. For Phil Mickelson and I believe the same thing: this rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s is bullsh-t.
Classic, Max
one could change their name (filing purposes)
Last, Electric
First, General
My plan was to hide my Coleman cooler in-baby-blue down the Cayman Islands, but the Caymanites rejected it as too big.
I said, “Whaaaat! You guys make trillions disappear, but you can’t hide a plastic cooler?”
They said, “Sorry, Max424, no can do. The reality is, when you’re trying to fool the taxman, size matters.”
I had the same problem with the size 11 golf shoe I won for finishing 18.
Caymen officials explained to me this is a design flaw with being a Caymen Island PO Box Corporation. The PO boxes are just too small for these types of asset classes.
im laffin too hard to type
Thank You Both!
What number is this now? I’m losing count of the articles in their ongoing series “The Beleaguered Billionaire”.
I’ll look for the update when Kansas and Louisiana drop their state income tax.
Does kinda make you wonder how they ended up with 90% of the personal net worth of the Richest Country In The World, paying all that tax and all. Hard work, prolly…
@DK “Really, one wonders just why Adam Nagourney is so happy being a court jester? Do he and Adam Davidson have matching costumes? Because clearly they are dancing to the same music and choreography.”
@Klassy! I’m losing count of the articles in their ongoing series “The Beleaguered Billionaire”.
Keen insights of the week!
And to think that after WWII we had guys like Frank Capra … now we just have the Adam Court Jesters :(
“Give me your rich, your pampered,
Your spoiled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched wealthy of your teeming shore.
Send these, the vacation homeless , tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Inscription in the end zone of every Texas HIgh School.
Wins the internets!
It amazes me how difficult a time we seem to have talking about taxation. Look, I would be happy if Mssrs. Gates, Buffet, Dimon, and Geithner merely paid the same marginal rate on their income that I do. They don’t. Why? Because somewhere in our cultural consciousness we determined that those whose incomes derived mostly from speculation in markets were the true engines of prosperity, not we lowly wage-earners and these gents enjoy a capital gains tax rate about half what I pay. Increase marginal tax rates on the rich? Too complicated and they have the means to avoid them. Treat capital gains as ordinary income? Now we’re talking.
As you point out the only effective and rational solution is so da*n simple! Now why can’t democratic voters demand that their “representative” jump on this simple solution and run with it? Hmm.
Because most people don’t even know that capital gains and dividends are taxed at low, low rates, far lower than the taxes on working.
I make a point of explaining this fact to everyone I know. But tables of a dozen graduate students and professors will generally have *nobody* who knows these simple facts about the tax law except me and my family.
The answer is education. Once enough people realize that work is taxed at up to 45% but stock market speculation is taxed at a maximum of 15% (or did they finally change it to 20% ?), then people will begin complaining about it.
People don’t even KNOW about it. The tax forms they get hide this information in a maze of confusing computations.
I know, it’s astonishing, isn’t it? (The ignorance about these basic features of inequality embedded in the tax code. Don’t get me started when I start to explain how FICA taxes are regressive. I wish I got anger or indignation — instead it’s glazed-over and “huh”, can I go back to my iPad and cheering about how great Obama’s health care act is!)
The big difference here is that the 1% have the means and desire to complain and actually get their taxes lowered, because of their wealth and influence (obvious Mainstream Media influence). The middle class and poor have no voice. Not yet.
With 15 Trillion in overseas tax havens the truly wealthy don’t care that much about local (i.e. national) tax rates. Increasing taxes on earned income only hurts and discourages small business and professionals.
Oh PJ, but lets stick it to the W-2 earners right? Seriously, why should those professionals and business owners you feel so bad for get preferential treatment over anyone else? You would be well served to pull your head out from your ass, and think things over a bit.
Which is why property taxes on land should be drastically increased: land can’t flee, and taxing it heavily creates no disincentive effects.
The problem with that is that unless you live in a comunistic state (no individuals owning anything) you will be taxed beyond your capacity to pay. How do you expect to pay for your food if all taxes fall upon the producers? Because ultimately farmers own the land they farm. Their incomes may be high now, but in the not so distant past they were at poverty levels. Income tax is the only tax that has a capacity to pay behind it. So your bullshit is just that… bullshit
So my retired parents who live on 1/2 acre lot should pay more than a millionaire with a condo. Great.
Obviously, PJ, step #1 should be to eliminate all tax breaks for dividends and capital gains. Tax unearned income the way we tax earned income.
Yes, and subject unearned (i.e., skimmed) income to full FICA.
The NYT missed a simple solution.
Limits on personal wealth.
Real low limits.
And who decides these limits? Is it you? What makes you a proper arbiter over other people’s lives?
Fact is, sovereign taxes are not necessary in a system of true MMT (like the US Note). All income and capital gains taxes could be abolished and the government could simply spend money into existence – without debt and without interest.
But thank you for playing the divide and conquer game – the true tool of the banking elites.
Parasites don’t usually leave the host until they can’t get anymore blood out of it.
IMF new tactics: It is better to appear unreliable than to let people understand that you serve specific interests :
http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2013/02/imf-new-tactics-it-is-better-to-appear.html
Bottom line too many lies, too much fraud and theft, too many lost futures. The financial and multinational systems will not police themselves to have the absolute adherence to results the middle class have had to maintain. Its too late, the 1% don’t even care if anyone knows how indifferent and how much disrespect they have for the rest of working society. Maybe if they have to do without the (too low) tax rate, or lose their taxpayers paid subsidies, deferrals and actually lay bare the trillions in hidden untaxed monies in tax havens. So we are all looking forward to the 1% being an elite unto themselves.
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