The left-wing French coalition hoping to introduce 90% tax on rich
The left-wing French coalition hoping to introduce 90% tax on rich
Multiple parties are jockeying for position in the aftermath of France's seismic snap election. The leftist New Popular Front (NPF) insists its ideas should be implemented.
Multiple parties are jockeying for position in the aftermath of France's seismic snap election. The leftist New Popular Front (NPF) insists its ideas should be implemented.
France's left wing New Popular Front (NPF) - now the largest group in parliament - has called for a prime minister who will implement its ideas including a new wealth tax and petrol price controls.
The leftist alliance secured the most seats in the recent French elections but fell short of the 289 needed for a majority in the National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament.
President Emmanuel Macron's Together bloc came in second and Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party finished third.
France's parties are now jockeying for position and it's unclear exactly how things will shake out, but the NPF has insisted it will implement its radical set of ideas.
a new 90% tax on any annual income above €400,000
Lmao. Probably not gonna happen but based af
Worked fine in America during it's "great" days that all these Trump voters seem to yearn for
Funny how they want to 'mAkE aMeRiCa GrEaT aGaIn' but don't want any of the policies that made America great, just the shitty racist ones that made life awful for non-white males. I'm just waiting for them to further limit it by land holding or wealth at some point..... Really take us back to when we were 'really great'
That was only on earned income and with a starting point so high that at some point only one person ever reached it.
That was before the explosion of jet travel. Now the rich fly around in their private jets to operate their businesses all over the world. They take advantage of the fact that governments can’t coordinate their taxes very well.
Love it. Wealthy in France is 200k, anyone who makes over 400k is uberwealthy
400k is a monthly salary of 33000€ You can live very comfortably from a tenth of that where i live in germany, which is a notoriously expensive city. So yeah even if you just barely go over the limit and have to live with a tenth of those 400k, you would still be completely fine.This is all ignoring already saved up wealth ofcourse.TLDR im dumb
The NFP proposal would make the top 10% French pay more tax and the rest 90% would pay same or less tax. They want to introduce more tax "slices" to make it adjust more progressively with higher income.
Yea 400k won’t happen, I could see something in the low millions being palatable to populace at large
Seriously, that's how much a doctor makes while carrying $300k in student loans. Yes, these are US numbers, and I'm sure France has both lower salaries and much lower or no student loans. But the point stands that $400k is a really high salary but not necessarily wildly wealthy if you are paying more in student loans than you do for your house.
What this will accomplish is force newly rich people to stay in their class while the wealthy class people get no change at all since they don't have a high salary. The wealthy stay wealthy while the poor have no chance to become wealthy, only merely rich.
Still good though, imo the win is that a big chunk of representatives are saying this is what the country wants.
Even if they do implement such tax, I wonder how many ways there are for rich people to avoid paying those taxes. They tend to be very good at skirting around such things. They even pay people who are professionals in the field of tax-around-skirting.
Maybe I’m just not used to the income needed in major cities in France, but that seems like pretty high tax rate for the income in major cities like Lyons or Paris. Can someone give me a little context? Does France do graduated brackets like the US? If that’s the case then I could see this being pretty fair.
They do. Someone with a salary of €400,000 would take home approximately €242,000 after income tax.
Up to €10,777: 0% tax rate From €10,778 to €27,478: 11% tax rate From €27,479 to €78,570: 30% tax rate From €78,571 to €168,994: 41% tax rate More than €168,994: 45% tax rateAccording to The EIU, the cost of living in Paris is similar to San Francisco.
Does France do graduated brackets like the US?
Is there any place that does taxes without brackets, just flat "pass this number and suddenly lose half of everything"? Does that even exist outside the imagination of Americans who have never understood or looked at taxes? Brackets should be the definition of income taxes, is it not? It's not an economic tariff applied regardless the volume of merchandise passing a frontier.
It's still just a fraction of the top 1%. Even $400,000 in the US would put you in the top 1%, nobody needs more than this amount of money, ever.
Honestly, they should probably leave income alone and just double down on the wealth tax.
Wage-based taxation has always been an awkward way to target the rich.
I have very different feelings about someone from a poor background who went into massive debt to develop their skills and become a top earner vs. someone who inherited a fortune and doesn’t put any effort beyond checking their bank balance periodically.
Plus, there is the “won’t they just leave?” argument. Which is mostly FUD, but in the case where someone’s wealth is based on their skilled labor they do have a much easier time just leaving. If your wealth is from owning a portfolio of apartment buildings, good luck taking those with you.
Does no one here understand how incone taxes work? The 90% rate is on annual income over €400,000. Average annual income in France was €41,000.
The end result is that basically no one will be subject to this tax bracket.
It is high enough that everyone at that level will mainly get their real income from stock/loan which aren't salaries.
Having this tax bracket or not having it is, basically the same for the super wealthy. The real method to tax them is through capital tax, not income.
The moving part is very real for the ultra rich in Europe.
In Norway they transfer their assets to their kids and send them to live in Switzerland for them.
Yeah, it's not FUD.
It's really gotta be a 100% tax (that is, a hard cap) or nothing. Wealth that slowly whittles away will tend to move elsewhere.
I see fud used on a semi regular basis. It's fear uncertainty and doubt. And I don't think most people know that.
I wasn't sure, but I was worried that's what it was
Wage-based taxation has always been an awkward way to target the rich.
Is it wages or is it income? Income covers much more than wages, and in a good system one would account for everything without loopholes. A comprehensive income tax that catches everything would go pretty far.
Wealth tax can be dicey, in theory. It would require a sell-off to actually have money that can be used to pay taxes, and the sell-off would change the value of the assets. For example, the S&P 500 is "worth" 46 billion dollars. That's more than twice the "money" that exists total, it's literally impossible to actually manifest all of that to dollars, so most of the "worth" cannot be "realized".
but in the case where someone’s wealth is based on their skilled labor they do have a much easier time just leaving. If your wealth is from owning a portfolio of apartment buildings, good luck taking those with you.
Nice one
If your wealth is from owning a portfolio of apartment buildings, good luck taking those with you.
Sell it to a holding company incorporated abroad. Own shares of that holding company instead.
I will enjoy hearing about how the rich will just move away from their fancy mansions on the Riviera and their suites in Paris to avoid paying this tax and then seeing it not happen.
Some of them, sure, but I wonder how many would consider it worth the price. This is an income taxe I'm assuming, so it's not like they'd lose out on actual wealth, investments, etc.
It might be worth it if even just half stay and pay the taxe.
Why would they move? This is an income tax, not a wealth tax and the wealthy typically have relatively little "income". Sure they may have a net worth of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of millions but their "incomes" (as defined by tax codes) can be surprisingly low.
Look at the CEOs like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos whose salary was a single US dollar. They were incredibly wealthy but had nearly no normal income.
So unless you jigger the tax code to capture the work arounds the wealthy use this income tax will hardly touch them. It will only catch high wage earners, like a software dev working FAANG or something.
Besides, the mere fact of implementing those tax rates makes high end luxury homes less valuable, because rich people from abroad will have less incentives to want to move there. So, if rich French people want to move from a very expensive home in France to a very expensive home in Germany, the new one will have to be less luxurious, because they won't be able to sell the old one for that much.
Problem is that the Uber wealthy have all sorts of extra tax vehicles that even the 400k/year income folks don’t have. With various holding companies owning the various assets you use (e.g your car, house, etc.) your on-paper income can be quite a bit lower. Throw in various deductions and that’s how you get super wealthy people paying less taxes than “regular” people. Progressive tax rates already exist, and while this increases the percentage at these incomes, unless it addresses all the other loopholes, this will conveniently miss the 1% and instead impact high earning professionals.
This does actually happen more than you think - it’s why all the world’s football and tennis stars miraculously decide to move to Monte Carlo as soon as they hit the riches. Which is exactly why we need a coordinated tax policy at an EU, EEA or global level, to make sure that you can’t just choose a neighbouring country and pay an order of magnitude less.
"Radical set of ideas"
Rational set of ideas.
Radical means change or far from the norm, so when the system we live in is crazy then radical often is rational. The terms are not opposed.
"Rational"
"Petrol price controls"
There is a slight argument to be made in order to stabilize transportation because people depend on the shipping of goods. However, there should be a differentiation between the shipment of necessities and luxuries. Ultimately this could come in the form of a higher tax on consumer goods and other for hire services.
a new 90% tax on any annual income above €400,000 (£337,954)
Sexy, but as other commenters mentioned before, taxing existing wealth is more sexy
That's true, but taxing wealth is significantly harder than taxing income or financial transactions (including inheritances).
Agree, focus on those loopholes that allow folks to have, for all intents and purposes, "income" without it actually counting. If you have spending money now that you didn't have in a spending form before that point, well that's income and we just need to make sure we cover all those scenarios that folks have figured out to "not count".
I imagine gross violations would be easy enough to detect - assuming it's something you actually use, anyway. Your buried treasure might be safe.
This type of taxation I would say is a version of the Ultimatum game. If the taxation is too high, they simply move and then you get nothing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game
It has to be high enough, but not so high that they just move to Switzerland
Sounds great, now how are they proposing to tax the wealthy. You know, those people who have a jet set lifestyle but no income to tax?
The answer would be of course they have income, and we have to adequately recognize it as such.
Borrowing money against stocks? Income. Capital gains on high value or nonessential assets (e.g. non-primary residences and stock)? Income.
Actual money has to come in at some point to manifest that lifesytyle and that is obviously income.
I've always thought that it would make sense to tax borrowing money against something, but you need to have a way to account for it being paid back with either yet to be taxed assets, or already taxed assets.
E.g
Has 100 million in bank.
Leveeages 10m to buy a house.
Sells stock to pay off loan monthly.
Now in this case we can tax the 10m (maybe at a different rate) but if they sell the stock to pay off the loan it should take into account the tax they paid on the loan.
Also if they pay the loan off with already taxed money (cash in an account) that loan then needs to have its tax refunded in some manner.
It can get pretty messy, but if the law only triggers when you do this over a certain threshold, those people would be able to afford the tax people to sort it out.
Stock dividends? Oh, you bet that's income. Income should be delta wealth, simple as.
Borrowing money against stocks? Income.
I actually take issue with this one, though. Debt doesn't just disappear, until you (or someone else) pays it back, rich or poor alike.
Edit: It doesn't but apparently in the US specifically the taxation isn't the same.
This is a bit of a misleading summary.
Melenchon speaks for his own party, France Unbowed (LFI), not the entire NFP alliance.
The NFP as a whole has not declared support for Melenchon's position, although his party controls 71 (~41%) of NFP's 180 seats in the National Assembly.
Macron has already indicated that he will not allow Melenchon to become Prime Minister, and the entire NFP will be aware that they must select a more moderate leader to represent them if they expect to gain enough support from the centre to operate as a minority government.
Thx stranger, so hard to get news from a single source if you're not a specialist on the topic
It's not just Macron or Ensemble, even within the NFP some parties don't want Melenchon from what I understand. At least the PS (Parti Socialiste, but they're actually just social democrats) which has 59 seats and therefore the second most seats in the NFP doesn't want him to be prime minister.
Macron has already indicated that he will not allow Melenchon to become Prime Minister
Good news for LePen, I guess.
To be clear the 90% tax is an income tax, which is actually not unprecedented as other commenters note. Melenchon has talked about 100% but I guess the other parties negotiated him down.
Actually, 90% income tax for the top incomes was common in western countries in the 50s.
Just 90% has the pro that you'll actually collect revenue. Nobody's paying out money that doesn't reach the intended party even a bit. However, I feel like 100% would be worth it just for the paradigm shift in the way we think about society - that maybe there should be limits to how "special" you can get, and that that's not spooky communism but simply realism about our mortal condition.
The real problem isn't the income the rich receive, it's their tax avoidance methods that never show up as any income. This effectively puts a barrier on anyone who isn't being a scummy shithead from ever reaching their level, it creates a safe harbor for billionaires to laugh from at anyone who ever reaches their level of influence, power, and wealth and might become their competitor if they do not do so in the manner of their oligarchic decades of experience within their inner circle.
This only convinces idiots, and is about as cluelessly meaningless populist legislation as anything fooling far right fascists. Literally ask yourself, who is the rich, because I can guarantee you it will only affect anyone from low to middle income classes who manage to find any wealth without seeking the horde of tax lobbyists true billionaires have.
Case in point, want to know what "rich" is for this piece of legislation? 90% tax on anyone who happens to earn above €400,000 (£337,954) for that year. I doubt this will even affect people earning above €400,000 every year because they have enough wealth and experience with paying the sort of tax advisors that will help orient them into tax avoidance. Billionaires are laughing at this measure.
I would not be surprised if this suggesting could be traced back to "think tanks" coming with this sort of bullshit that only caters and convinces the ignorant while shielding the actually rich. I realize most people will see this as a good thing because they see this as affecting "the rich", but it really and truly does nothing against the real problem, and I would not even mind it if it wasn't a sign that nothing will be done about billionaire and corporate tax avoidance schemes and that they are only trying to cater to a sentiment.
Have you seen the word "income"anywhere here ? ISF (Impôt sur la fortune) is tax on wealth, this law would say that if someone is rich we take some of its money. We use to have it in France before Macron removed it. Also the same leftist group is advocating for more funding towards fighting tax evasion amongst the wealthy.
EDIT: my bad the article does talk about income tax, point still stand, NFP still advocate for the ISF
Hell yes. Finally policy suggestions which make sense. Autocratphiles masquerading as communists are mad at this turn of events??
Have you no idea how capitalists function?
Actual communists are more intelligent than this.
Its just hilarious seeing 400k being wealthy my man. The really wealthy don't take a salary and instead have corporations and trust funds that pay them minimum salary and more stocks and shares. They then leverage these stocks and shares using cheap loans from their bank buddies for very low interest tates.
Income tax is a tax on the working class, not the capitalist class.
Does the french suggestion separate income types? It's very preferable to tax non-working high wealth & income even more than salary income.
Capitalists usually aim the tax pressure towards median salary income, and less for stocks, or property. The regressive model should be switched to progressive taxing.
Back in the 50s and 60s after WW2 the UK had a 95% tax band for the highest earners. This was due to the country struggling to pay off its debts to the USA after WW2. The Beatles even wrote their song Taxman about it in 1966.
Ultimately there is a problem with these super high taxbands whereby countries that try them will often encounter something called the Laffer Curve whereby overall tax take decreases as the tax rate increases. This isn't even necessarily tax evasion, all it takes is for wealthy people to be suitably motivated to avoid taxes.
In the UK now if your income breaches £100k then you are paying a higher rate of tax on everything earned over that amount but also you lose the £12.5k tax free allowance that all citizens are entitled to. Overall breaching £100k leads to you paying a marginal rate of tax of 60% even if you don't earn much over it. Because of this high earning jobs often let you put money into salary sacrifice pension schemes to avoid breaching the £100k mark. It only becomes worthwhile earning over £100k when you reach the region of ~£130k, which is substantially more. Essentially the system encourages tax avoidance by having this cliff which people who are behaving like rational agents will do anything to avoid. If it were less punative then some economists argue that the government would raise more money.
That's just a bad implementation, then. Tax brackets are progressive for a reason, having a cliff like that should be an obvious no no.
Not to say you don't have a point, because you do, but the govt could fix that particular issue very easily.
That's uh.... pretty fucking dumb.
How the fuck did anyone think a cliff like that would be smart.
It's especially bad with the recent inflation here causing fiscal drag. People are being dragged into higher tax brackets by their incomes rising in line with inflation (if they are lucky) but the tax bands are remaining at their pre-inflation levels so in real terms we are taxed more while earning less.
I think "the cliff" ended up being introduced in better times when £100k was an extremely good salary. It still is a good salary but it seems like when they introduced the policy they were likely thinking that folks earning it were making so much that it wouldn't be worth their while to put the effort into avoiding it. However with recent cost of living challenges the demand for avenues to avoid the cliff rose and employers started to respond by offering schemes like the salary sacrifice pension one I mentioned in order to keep their employees happy.
Edit: There are many ways to avoid taxes such as creating your own limited company, paying for your lifestyle as a business expense and then only paying corporation tax on those expenses (currently 20% in the UK). At the same time you draw a "salary" from your own company which is substantially lower than what you would be getting if you include the expenses and then pay income tax for a lower band. The reason most people don't do this - aside from the obvious moral implications - is that it's usually more effort than it's worth for them. At a certain point though, tax avoidance becomes so worthwhile that the temptation is too great for many to ignore.
You make it sound like a cliff, but you lose £1 of the £12.5k allowance for every £2 over £100k you earn. You don't suddenly lose the whole allowance at £100,001.
Laffer Curve is junk economics from Ronald Reagan's propaganda team. Cannot take seriously any argument that relies on it.
Shoot whoever wrote that bill. (Metaphorically)
Macron would probably sooner dissolve the republic and declare the third empire than allow this to happen, but I wish the NPF good luck.
As Macron likes to say: “Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet”
Petrol price controls is a terrible idea.
Why not subsidised (free) public transport, more cycle lanes more cycle parking, subsidised electric bikes, mandated EV charging.
Because motorists hate anything that would help them. Why would you not want a separate bike lane as a motorist? It reduces congestion and gets the cyclist you hate so much off the road at the same time! It's a win win!
In my experience, people tend to not want things that don't benefit them directly.
If they don't use the bike lanes they don't want them to take up what could be a car lane they would use.
Lots of places in France are so remote and sparsely populated that public transport does not work there, at least not yet. It may or may not work once autonomous vehicles are fit for rural areas, but this may take a while.
Give them money then. Don't give them cheap petrol.
Controlling Fossil Fuel prices can prevent other private entities from driving up inflation of commodities. It doesn't have to be permanent, you could effect a set goal for 6 years, evaluate the results every 6 weeks, and tweak the pricing to prevent inflation/deflation cycles.
While you control the transport costs, you can now plan on how much energy it is consuming to do the logistics. Even setup renewables for the remote regions with medium to large capacity backups ( not just chemical batteries, but pumped storage and other practical solutions ).
You could increase the buffer between different urban zones, commercial, industrial, heavy commercial, dense residential, suburbian.
- Energy storage densities.
- Vehicular traffic densities.
- Public transport frequencies.
- Private traffic exemption zones.
- Cycling/Pedestrian infrastructure.
- Rent-controlled segmentation.
- Recreational facilities , maintenance and usage.
All of these things can be measured, calculated, even funded by simply controlling the Fossil-fuel prices.
Imagine 10 or 20 stadiums with Extra-Large battery backups, only on game-nights the full bank would see utilization, rest of the time, half or even quarter of the load can be saved up for fluctuations. In emergencies the stadium provides power, safety, shelter and communal support.
So many things can be planned around transportation and logistics. Fossil-fuel literally drives a lot of the traffic. Measure, calculate and control that and you have a reliable method to make sensible common sense decisions. Transparent for all citizens to see the data and the correlation. Accountable for every cent.
lol it's like France loves to choose violence every time.
National sport. It's fifth time now. If right would become too hard to fight against, then it will be sixth.
Based
The problem with high wealth taxes is the same as the problem with nationalizing privately-owned businesses. Even if you're not worried about the people you tax fleeing the country (maybe they can't because their investments aren't mobile) you still have to worry about the fact that no one would build anything in France (even things not currently taxed) if there was good reason to think that France might suddenly decide to seize a large fraction of its value.
(High income taxes aren't as big a deal because wealthy people can restructure their investments in order to avoid most of them, but I wonder whether the lost economic activity is actually worth more to the country than the money raised by the tax.)
Most people who actually build everything do not have significant enough wealth to be affected. France doesn't need someone with significant wealth in order to build something. France can provide the financial capital. We do know that public investment spurs private investment, but private investment isn't strictly required.
Besides, we've already seen plenty examples of countries where people with significant wealth do not use it to build things in low tax destinations, especially where that low tax results in crumbling infrastructure and unstable labor and political climate.
I wonder whether the lost economic activity is actually worth more to the country than the money raised by the tax.
The answer is "yes" it's worth it. Answering "no" puts you in a race to the bottom which leads to dysfunctional economy and eventually some sort of political upheaval, during which wealth and factories are exceedingly likely to be taken away anyways. See history for references. Also every EUR creates more economic activity at the bottom, than the top. The vast majority of the aggregate demand in richer economies isn't comprised from the top 1%. The aggregate demand is what makes it worth making things and what drives significant private investment. Drive it down and there comes a point where no amount of tax cuts can offset it.
Yeah, the person you responded to doesn't understand investment. No one makes investments based on taxes. They make investments based on demand.
That's why people build in NYC which has a million taxes and regulations, while tiny island tax havens have little investment beyond tourism. No, Austin is not the next Silicon Valley no matter how many tax breaks they give out. No, Atlanta is not the next Hollywood.
Tax them. Tax the fuck out of their income and wealth.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
France's left wing New Popular Front (NPF) - now the largest group in parliament - has called for a prime minister who will implement its ideas including a new wealth tax and petrol price controls.
The leftist alliance secured the most seats in the recent French elections but fell short of the 289 needed for a majority in the National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament.
President Emmanuel Macron's Together bloc came in second and Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party finished third.
France's parties are now jockeying for position and it's unclear exactly how things will shake out, but the NPF has insisted it will implement its radical set of ideas.
It is possible that President Macron - who called the snap election in a bid to counter the rise of the far-right - could seek a deal with more moderate elements of the NFP.
His government last week suspended a decree that would have diminished workers' rights to unemployment benefits, which has been interpreted as a gesture toward the left.
The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The really wealthy don't take income. Instead they park their wealth in stocks and trust funds and leverage those as collateral for cheap loans from their buddies at the bank.
I thought communists were intelligent but this thread is
devoid of any intelligence.quite cheery about something that won't even impact any capitalist.Don't you all know what "Capital"ist means?
An income tax is a tax on the working class.
You morons should stop salivating and start eating more dried fruits.Edit: I realize calling people morons is a bit too much. Sorry about that. I was just miffed by a few who were cheering on punishing their own class. It's so hard to find class solidarity in this day and age.
I think there is a significant distinction between "regular" working class and "earning above €400,000 per year" working class.
Argument is correct.
Tone is asshole.
Upvote or downvote? I'm not sure on this one.
Sorry about the tone. I was just miffed by a few who were cheering on punishing their own class. It's so hard to find class solidarity in this day and age.
Income from capital can be, and is, taxed differently. In the U.K. there is Capital Gains Tax, for example. Why not adjust this instead of income tax?
Because capital gains taxes are only taken when a gain is realized. Me selling my 2 shares of Boeing will get taxed capital gains, but the person holding 200,000 shares and using them as collateral for untaxed loans will get no capital gains taxes assessed.
Also because making gains in the market is one of the few ways a working class person can set themselves up for retirement (as fucked up as that is), so raising the tax would hurt them more unless you have a tiered structure like we do for income tax brackets.
I don't know how France classifies "income", so it could be good at capturing income. It's our own fault when something that is obviously "income" doesn't technically count, in principle a tax system can capture everything that makes sense to count.
In the US, along with wages, interest income and dividend income also count as "regular" income and are taxed appropriately. Capital gains is... weirder and this is the first area ripe for opportunity to reform to capture "rich guy income is different than normal guy income", as long as it is intelligent about it (e.g. if you said, without qualification, all capital gains are taxed like crazy, then suddenly selling your house as part of moving becomes an unreasonable burden, which is why it already has an exemption, but just an example to say vaguely why we have to be careful about capital gains).
Then you get to the borrowing you mention, and I've seen a pretty reasonable approach to capture that as "income", in theory: https://equitablegrowth.org/closing-the-billionaire-borrowing-loophole-would-strengthen-the-progressivity-of-the-u-s-tax-code/
TL;DR: Currently borrowing doesn't count as realizing gains, change it so that borrowing counts as "selling" the stock, further mandating that the cost basis of all identical stock is a specific way rather than letting the shareholder pick and choose their most favored cost basis.
I'd be willing to concede some tax break on repayment of such a loan to reconcile "real income" being exchanged for it down the road, but at that point I think it would largely be academic because suddenly there's no point in borrowing against the stock rather than just selling it outright.
hell yea
Can we get a non Murdoch source on this?
This is not a tax on the rich, it's a tax on the upper middle class.
The... upper middle class....? An income of 400,000 euros? that's 10x the median income.
What tf is rich then?
Policies favoring the rich are always sold as favoring the middle class. If middle class means the rich, then upper middle class means the filthy rich.
People who make money by investing. In the USA, the top 1% earn their income through investments, usually the purchase and sale of stocks. These are not taxed the same as regular income because they made the argument that you can't really tax unrealized gains on investments that are sold, and it takes a while for the gains to actually materialize. Also, they tend to store their money, their liquid assets, in countries with looser tax laws, called tax havens. Much of their net worths are tied up in investments. Businesses, homes, art, classic vehicles, precious metals futures, oil futures, boats, etc.
Assessing the value of all of that is a chore, and they also pay lobbyists to keep the IRS defanged so that they don't have the resources needed to go after the 1%. And don't get me started on how much more speculative the stock market has become. Investors buy stocks, not on the expected dividends they'll receive as a share of the profits of the business, but on their ability to flip the stock and sell it at a higher price to another investor, who is only buying because they anticipate flipping the stock. It's like if a whole neighborhood of single family homes gets bought up buy a few house flippers, who make renovations, then put the houses up for sale, and sell to new flippers, who are only buying so they can make further renovations, increasing the value of the property again to sell to yet another flipper, ad nauseam.
People who don't pay income tax in the first place because they are so rich they don't need a normal income. Those need to be taxed more.
Rich is when you have little to no taxable income, and your wealth is mostly unrealised captial gains that you borrow against to fund your lifestyle, and you use various other strategies to offset whatever salary you do get with expenses or make it otherwise untaxable
I laugh so hard because the headline for me is great news, only now I realized it's sky news so it's supposed to be scaring people
Your instinct to search for a non-Murdoch source is correct, as they are trying to paint the entire NFP as holding the same positions as their most extreme member.
There is little to no chance of Melenchon becoming Prime Minister or having any ability to enact this tax.
However a marginal tax rate of 90% on income over €400k is well above the upper-middle class and would apply to only the wealthiest families, most of whom would still have other avenues to minimise the tax they actually pay.
400'000€ yearly income is not middle class. It is roughly the top 1%. Are you maybe mistaking property for income?
I would have preferred taxing on property instead of income, but as long as interests and profits and other benefits are part of income, it sounds reasonable to me.
The rich don't have income, they take out loans against assets
The sad thing about high taxes like that is that it can penalize normal people with a normal, high income job. 400k won't probably matter but in my experience, I have a high salary and I don't have the time or even the money to hire a bunch of people to optimize my taxes in a tax free-heaven paradise.
Normal working people shouldn't be taxed like crazy. Corporation is the thing we want to target. Large corporations. They have the mean to evade the laws.
The common man and women does not. Even if you have a small company, you do not have the time or the money to ignore the laws or taxes.
Capitalism isn't made for big corporations. It is made for small company competing with each other. How the fuck the common Man is supposed to compete with Walmart? Like, what??
Oh look, someone who doesn't understand how progressive tax brackets work.
The 90% only kicks in on any money made over €400k, bro. That means they're already making that 400k (less whatever the prior tax brackets are), and if they make €400,100 then only that extra €100 is taxed at 90%. This is so far from hurting "normal working people" that I can hardly believe your take isn't a deliberate troll.
I know how tax brackets work. That's exactly how you can optimize your taxes. You try to lower your income as much as possible with all the shenanigans that exists in the law. That's what I'm saying.
If I do 410k and I don't have time to optimize my shit, I'm penalized because very rich bro that owns company and shit can hire other bros to optimize their taxes.