France's 'Millionaire Tax'

[Geilinor]

As tge NYE said today..."socialism at its finest" (sarcasm)
Later saying "killing capitalism..."

High taxes on the rich is not socialism and does not "kill capitalism" in any way whatsoever

I see they've forgotten Eisenhower's 91% rate. Back then, Republicans believed that high income tax on the rich stabilized society. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare.html

[Occupied Deutschland]

High taxes on the rich is not socialism and does not "kill capitalism" in any way whatsoever

I see they've forgotten Eisenhower's 91% rate. Back then, Republicans believed that high income tax on the rich stabilized society. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare.html

Back then, the US was also the only industrial power in the world not upfucked to every degree imaginable.

Also, read your source.

Or lower. Marc Linder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, has shown that a more comprehensive interpretation of income that includes capital gains suggests the real effective tax rate for millionaires was 49 percent in 1953. The effective rate dropped throughout the decade, reaching 31 percent by 1960. That 31 percent is just slightly higher than the 29 percent level a Congressional Budget Office report figures the average effective tax for the top quintile will be in 2014. And that number for 2014 doesn’t include taxes in Obama’s health-care law.

A second fantasy about the 1950s is that government soaked the rich. Joseph Thorndike and Martin Sullivan in Tax Notes magazine took a look at the tax distribution of the decade. They found that those earning more than $100,000 paid less than 5 percent of the taxes collected in the U.S., a far smaller share than the wealthiest shoulder today.

A third aspect of the 1950s, and one that differs from today, was that taxes then were headed downward -- there was “directional stability.” Everyone understood that taxes were dropping, at first, modestly or unofficially, through loopholes, then officially in the rate cuts of the early 1960s under Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

Even Eisenhower pushed for a reduction in dividend taxes, though he succeeded only modestly. The prospect of lower taxes encouraged growth. Today, by contrast, whether they apply to dividends or income, taxes are set in the “up” direction. The only debate, as we saw this week, was by how much, and when.

A final reason that the 1950s were different from today was American primacy. In those years the U.S. might set its taxes, nominal or real, at whatever level it liked.

[Xirtam]

High taxes on the rich is not socialism and does not "kill capitalism" in any way whatsoever

I see they've forgotten Eisenhower's 91% rate. Back then, Republicans believed that high income tax on the rich stabilized society. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare.html

Yeah I mentioned that in my earliest post /this one

scoobydoobiedoo

[Geilinor]

I see they've forgotten Eisenhower's 91% rate. Back then, Republicans believed that high income tax on the rich stabilized society. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare.html

Back then, the US was also the only industrial power in the world not upfucked to every degree imaginable.

Also, read your source.

Or lower. Marc Linder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, has shown that a more comprehensive interpretation of income that includes capital gains suggests the real effective tax rate for millionaires was 49 percent in 1953. The effective rate dropped throughout the decade, reaching 31 percent by 1960. That 31 percent is just slightly higher than the 29 percent level a Congressional Budget Office report figures the average effective tax for the top quintile will be in 2014. And that number for 2014 doesn’t include taxes in Obama’s health-care law.

A second fantasy about the 1950s is that government soaked the rich. Joseph Thorndike and Martin Sullivan in Tax Notes magazine took a look at the tax distribution of the decade. They found that those earning more than $100,000 paid less than 5 percent of the taxes collected in the U.S., a far smaller share than the wealthiest shoulder today.

A third aspect of the 1950s, and one that differs from today, was that taxes then were headed downward -- there was “directional stability.” Everyone understood that taxes were dropping, at first, modestly or unofficially, through loopholes, then officially in the rate cuts of the early 1960s under Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

Even Eisenhower pushed for a reduction in dividend taxes, though he succeeded only modestly. The prospect of lower taxes encouraged growth. Today, by contrast, whether they apply to dividends or income, taxes are set in the “up” direction. The only debate, as we saw this week, was by how much, and when.
.

Nobody in France is going to be paying 75% either.

[Occupied Deutschland]

Back then, the US was also the only industrial power in the world not upfucked to every degree imaginable.

Also, read your source.

Nobody in France is going to be paying 75% either.

Under its new design, which the council found constitutional, the tax will be a 50 percent rate on the portion of wages above €1 million in 2013 and 2014.

Including social contributions, the rate will effectively remain about 75 percent, though the tax will be capped at 5 percent of a company’s turnover.

It is possible that Reuters got it wrong though. Care to prove their error?

[Geilinor]

Nobody in France is going to be paying 75% either.

Under its new design, which the council found constitutional, the tax will be a 50 percent rate on the portion of wages above €1 million in 2013 and 2014.

Including social contributions, the rate will effectively remain about 75 percent, though the tax will be capped at 5 percent of a company’s turnover.

It is possible that Reuters got it wrong though. Care to prove their error?

The rate over 1 million will be 75%, which is what they presumably mean by "effectively". The actual rate paid won't be 75%, the tax bracket will be 75%.

[Euronion]

go ahead, let them tax their wealthy people even more. With many rich French citizens paying the majority of their income in taxes already, I'm sure that it will only prompt even more French citizens to give up their citizenship. At this rate France won't have anymore rich people to tax.

What the hell is with this pointless self-serving argument?
"if you tax the rich too highly they will move to places with lower taxes for the rich" this is the exact kind of logic that gives rich people a place to run from high taxes

You don't seem to understand, I WANT rich people to run to places with lower taxes.

[Xirtam]

What the hell is with this pointless self-serving argument?
"if you tax the rich too highly they will move to places with lower taxes for the rich" this is the exact kind of logic that gives rich people a place to run from high taxes

You don't seem to understand, I WANT rich people to run to places with lower taxes.

So what you're saying is that you don't care about the poor amirite?

[Corumm]

French rich people are the new huguenots

[New Chalcedon]

I think it more than a tad high, but your recitation of the "facts" leaves something to be desired. The milionaires' tax is an effort to balance the French budget - an effort which also includes radical cuts in public spending, not growth in it. They're already cutting €15 billion in spending (with no planned increases to offset it) and raising less than €3 billion in revenue in an effort to meet the deficit-reduction requirements of the EU (conversely, the UK - which is under no such requirements, not being a Eurozone member, is still running a deficit of 6% of GDP, compared to France's 4.6%). Granted, this is off a very high base (the French public sector is over 50% of the economy, which I consider to be simply silly), but to present this as a left-wing effort to expand the state, when it is in fact an effort to clean up the shambles that the Eurozone slump and Sarkozy's policies made of French public finance, is highly-misleading at best.

Which would be completely unnecisary had the French government maintained a better budget.

Point to me a Western nation which didn't slide into steep deficits when the GFC hit, be they governed by Left or Right. Fact of the matter is this: a budget deficit below 5% of GDP (France's is 4.6% today) is doing better than Bush's last budget did (9.2% of GDP) or better than the British budget is doing (6% of GDP)....of course, those two nations still maintain the power to issue their own currencies, and can therefore borrow more cheaply. They also didn't sign the idiotic "no budget deficits above 3% of GDP, ever" suicide compact that is the Eurozone.

But having a go at the present French government for the deficits they largely inherited, and claiming that it's the inevitable result of left-wing governance (when the previous President and Parliament were UMP, which is to say center-right, and ran up even larger deficits), is simply dishonest.

[Xirtam]

French rich people are the new huguenots

How so?

[Euronion]

You don't seem to understand, I WANT rich people to run to places with lower taxes.

So what you're saying is that you don't care about the poor amirite?

Oh I care deeply about the poor, I also care about the rich. Personally I find the demonization of the rich to be quite alarming as well as the principle that somehow it is okay to take well over half of what a successful person makes for themselves to be justifiable. Whether you like it or not, the rich have their money, I don't see why we need to obsess about taking it all from them. If you're looking for total equality you're not going to get it, the only way to fix poverty is to increase social mobility. Poverty will never be eradicated and no amount of taxation is going to change that fact. Every government that has tried has failed and I don't see why France is any exception.

[Euronion]

French rich people are the new huguenots

How so?

people hate them.

[AiliailiA]

"Millionaire tax" is grossly inaccurate. A millionaire is someone with a million dollars (US) of wealth.

Someone with a million dollars of income isn't necessarily a millionaire. But if they have that income for two or more years and DON'T become a millionaire, they're either very generous to charity or they're an idiot.

According to Credit Suisse (pdf) there are 2.2 million adult millionaires in France. That's dollar millionaires, the number would be slightly less for Euro millionaires (the Euro is worth about US $1.38 at the moment).

Not 2.2 thousand, as inaccurately reported in some media outlets. 2,211 thousand. 2.2 million dollar-millionaires in France.

This tax is said to apply to about a thousand people in France. It is not a wealth tax so it doesn't apply only because a person has a million euros worth of assets. It should not be called a "millionaire tax".

[New Chalcedon]

So what you're saying is that you don't care about the poor amirite?

Oh I care deeply about the poor, I also care about the rich. Personally I find the demonization of the rich to be quite alarming as well as the principle that somehow it is okay to take well over half of what a successful person makes for themselves to be justifiable. Whether you like it or not, the rich have their money, I don't see why we need to obsess about taking it all from them. If you're looking for total equality you're not going to get it, the only way to fix poverty is to increase social mobility. Poverty will never be eradicated and no amount of taxation is going to change that fact. Every government that has tried has failed and I don't see why France is any exception.

So, how much of what "they make for themselves" is acceptable to take? One half? One third? One quarter? One tenth?

Somehow, I suspect that your preferred answer is "nothing". And they didn't make it all by themselves - as so cogently argued by Elizabeth Warren, they made it by moving goods on roads built with tax dollars, made by workers educated with tax dollars, shipped through ports and airports maintained by tax dollars, protected by police and military paid for by tax dollars......when is it OK to demand that they actually pay that back? Or are the rich a class of their own, which gets to take and take and take and never give anything back?

[Geilinor]

So what you're saying is that you don't care about the poor amirite?

Oh I care deeply about the poor, I also care about the rich. Personally I find the demonization of the rich to be quite alarming as well as the principle that somehow it is okay to take well over half of what a successful person makes for themselves to be justifiable. Whether you like it or not, the rich have their money, I don't see why we need to obsess about taking it all from them. If you're looking for total equality you're not going to get it, the only way to fix poverty is to increase social mobility. Poverty will never be eradicated and no amount of taxation is going to change that fact. Every government that has tried has failed and I don't see why France is any exception.

Poverty can't be eradicated, but it can be reduced. Scandinavia has the lowest poverty rates in Europe.

[Euronion]

Oh I care deeply about the poor, I also care about the rich. Personally I find the demonization of the rich to be quite alarming as well as the principle that somehow it is okay to take well over half of what a successful person makes for themselves to be justifiable. Whether you like it or not, the rich have their money, I don't see why we need to obsess about taking it all from them. If you're looking for total equality you're not going to get it, the only way to fix poverty is to increase social mobility. Poverty will never be eradicated and no amount of taxation is going to change that fact. Every government that has tried has failed and I don't see why France is any exception.

So, how much of what "they make for themselves" is acceptable to take? One half? One third? One quarter? One tenth?

Somehow, I suspect that your preferred answer is "nothing". And they didn't make it all by themselves - as so cogently argued by Elizabeth Warren, they made it by moving goods on roads built with tax dollars, made by workers educated with tax dollars, shipped through ports and airports maintained by tax dollars, protected by police and military paid for by tax dollars......when is it OK to demand that they actually pay that back? Or are the rich a class of their own, which gets to take and take and take and never give anything back?

You suspect incorrectly, I think that between 30-40% of their income is a decent amount.

[Euronion]

Oh I care deeply about the poor, I also care about the rich. Personally I find the demonization of the rich to be quite alarming as well as the principle that somehow it is okay to take well over half of what a successful person makes for themselves to be justifiable. Whether you like it or not, the rich have their money, I don't see why we need to obsess about taking it all from them. If you're looking for total equality you're not going to get it, the only way to fix poverty is to increase social mobility. Poverty will never be eradicated and no amount of taxation is going to change that fact. Every government that has tried has failed and I don't see why France is any exception.

Poverty can't be eradicated, but it can be reduced. Scandinavia has the lowest poverty rates in Europe.

It does, and poverty can't be eradicated, I'm glad we could agree. Though there comes a point where you have to make a choice of reducing poverty by stealing people's money (a Robin Hood Democracy) and accepting that people are entitled to their wealth and that perhaps instead of throwing money into programs that give services the poor, you should throw money into programs that lift people out of poverty and make them productive tax-paying citizens.

[AiliailiA]

Nobody in France is going to be paying 75% either.

Under its new design, which the council found constitutional, the tax will be a 50 percent rate on the portion of wages above €1 million in 2013 and 2014.

Including social contributions, the rate will effectively remain about 75 percent, though the tax will be capped at 5 percent of a company’s turnover.

It is possible that Reuters got it wrong though. Care to prove their error?

"on the portion of wages over €1 million". The first €1 million of their income is taxed just the same as it would be if they earned €999,999.

Your error in reading, not Reuters' error in writing.

The next highest tax bracket is 41%, but that doesn't apply to all of the first €1 million either. It applies to all income above €69,783 (single adult household), €139,556 (2 adult household) ... to €279,132 (2 adults, 3 child household). The next bracket down from that is 30% and there are two more below that.

[AiliailiA]

Poverty can't be eradicated, but it can be reduced. Scandinavia has the lowest poverty rates in Europe.

It does, and poverty can't be eradicated, I'm glad we could agree. Though there comes a point where you have to make a choice of reducing poverty by stealing people's money (a Robin Hood Democracy) and accepting that people are entitled to their wealth and that perhaps instead of throwing money into programs that give services the poor, you should throw money into programs that lift people out of poverty and make them productive tax-paying citizens.

Where does government get that money?

Is it only "stealing" if they do it a bit? Taking 66% of someone's money is stealing, but taking 20% of it isn't?

[Xirtam]

So what you're saying is that you don't care about the poor amirite?

Oh I care deeply about the poor, I also care about the rich.

If you really cared about the poor then why would you allow them to suffer in the way they do living paycheck to paycheck with extreme difficulty accommodating and feeding themselves while the rich are busy doing drugs rolling around in expensive cars and buying up million dollar mansions?
More importantly, if you really care about everyone, why are you not concerned about the kind of revolution having a whole class of landless people who have to work for mere survival and the ways in which it could effect rich people as well as civil liberties?

Personally I find the demonization of the rich to be quite alarming

Do tell me how the rich are being demonized.

as well as the principle that somehow it is okay to take well over half of what a successful person makes for themselves to be justifiable.

How is it not justifiable?
Do you seriously believe that successful people get to where they are purely by their own efforts?

Whether you like it or not, the rich have their money, I don't see why we need to obsess about taking it all from them.

I never advocated taking it all, and we need to take high amounts of money from them to fix problems like disease, crime, illiteracy, and poverty.

If you're looking for total equality you're not going to get it,

I'm not advocating that.

the only way to fix poverty is to increase social mobility.

And you don't particularly seem to be supporting that.

Poverty will never be eradicated and no amount of taxation is going to change that fact.
Every government that has tried has failed and I don't see why France is any exception.

Places like Norway have much less poverty than places like the US.

[Xirtam]

Poverty can't be eradicated, but it can be reduced. Scandinavia has the lowest poverty rates in Europe.

It does, and poverty can't be eradicated, I'm glad we could agree. Though there comes a point where you have to make a choice of reducing poverty by stealing people's money (a Robin Hood Democracy) and accepting that people are entitled to their wealth and that perhaps instead of throwing money into programs that give services the poor, you should throw money into programs that lift people out of poverty and make them productive tax-paying citizens.

The idea that in this day and age you can eradicate unemployment is simply utopian.
The amount of jobs on offer is lower than the demand for jobs, and unemployed people need money, simple as that.
How would you fund these programs without taxing the rich?

[Euronion]

It does, and poverty can't be eradicated, I'm glad we could agree. Though there comes a point where you have to make a choice of reducing poverty by stealing people's money (a Robin Hood Democracy) and accepting that people are entitled to their wealth and that perhaps instead of throwing money into programs that give services the poor, you should throw money into programs that lift people out of poverty and make them productive tax-paying citizens.

Where does government get that money?

Is it only "stealing" if they do it a bit? Taking 66% of someone's money is stealing, but taking 20% of it isn't?

Taxation is effectively stealing, but when you tax more of a person's income than they actually get, that escalates it. It's similar to saying "I stole a loaf of bread" and "I stole a diamond necklace"

[Vitaphone Racing]

Do tell me how the rich are being demonized.

while the rich are busy doing drugs rolling around in expensive cars and buying up million dollar mansions?

[Xirtam]

Where does government get that money?

Is it only "stealing" if they do it a bit? Taking 66% of someone's money is stealing, but taking 20% of it isn't?

Taxation is effectively stealing, but when you tax more of a person's income than they actually get, that escalates it. It's similar to saying "I stole a loaf of bread" and "I stole a diamond necklace"

If you believe that taxation is theft, then why would you advocate any taxation at all?