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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
United States43604 Posts
On August 29 2015 03:16 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 02:40 KwarK wrote:
Which tax would you rather have than taxing the dead? Government will pay for things one way or another. I'd rather the dead were taxed than pay income tax on my labour or consumption taxes on my spending. Even if that meant one day my estate were taxed. If you object to one tax you must either propose an alternative or a way of cutting spending. Don't try and reverse this dicussion. It started with a wish for an increased wealth redistribution - thus you are the one who should propose reasonable taxation and come up with a bloody good reason why the state is entitled to a bigger piece of the slice other than "because we think we can spend your money better than you".
I think it's absolutely relevant. Inheritances increase long term wealth inequality, especially when they're above a certain size. Other taxes, such as sales taxes on food, are regressive. You could scrap a sales tax, add an inheritance tax and keep the slice of pie taxed the same size while also addressing intergenerational wealth inequality.
You're objecting to inheritance taxes purely on "taxes are too high, all taxes are wrong". That won't work.
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On August 29 2015 03:03 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 02:57 cLutZ wrote:On August 29 2015 02:40 KwarK wrote:
Which tax would you rather have than taxing the dead? Government will pay for things one way or another. I'd rather the dead were taxed than pay income tax on my labour or consumption taxes on my spending. Even if that meant one day my estate were taxed. If you object to one tax you must either propose an alternative or a way of cutting spending. One tax, income or consumption. It is optimal for your tax system to not affect the decisions of people (unless you want it to, I.E. tobacco taxes). That's an ideological perspective that people might not share. I for one think a single tax is undesirable. On consumption it will invariably hit the poorest and most vulnerable disproportionally hard. Income tax has too many loopholes. Spread taxes out all over the monetary system, imho.
Its not ideological, its about a tax system that says that buying a sandwich is just as valuable as buying apple stock, instead of the modern system that vastly prefers the sandwich.
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On August 29 2015 03:23 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 03:16 Ghostcom wrote:On August 29 2015 02:40 KwarK wrote:
Which tax would you rather have than taxing the dead? Government will pay for things one way or another. I'd rather the dead were taxed than pay income tax on my labour or consumption taxes on my spending. Even if that meant one day my estate were taxed. If you object to one tax you must either propose an alternative or a way of cutting spending. Don't try and reverse this dicussion. It started with a wish for an increased wealth redistribution - thus you are the one who should propose reasonable taxation and come up with a bloody good reason why the state is entitled to a bigger piece of the slice other than "because we think we can spend your money better than you". I think it's absolutely relevant. Inheritances increase long term wealth inequality, especially when they're above a certain size. Other taxes, such as sales taxes on food, are regressive. You could scrap a sales tax, add an inheritance tax and keep the slice of pie taxed the same size while also addressing intergenerational wealth inequality. You're objecting to inheritance taxes purely on "taxes are too high, all taxes are wrong". That won't work.
The discussion has been concerning 2 questions,
1) Should an increased wealth redistribution occur? If so, why? And how?
2) Increasing inheritance tax to reduce income tax
You either embrace the premises of the discussion you jump into, or we start over. Isolating nr 2 whilst ignoring nr 1 leads to a flawed understanding of the arguments as I have neither argued that all taxes are wrong, nor that taxes are too high. I can even quote myself from this very thread here:
On August 28 2015 05:52 Ghostcom wrote:
Look, I'm a very happy tax payer. I'm 26 years old and I'm already paying the highest tax-rate in Denmark - I'm currently paying roughly 60% income tax of my last earnings.
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On August 28 2015 20:15 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +WASHINGTON/ATHENS - Many of the top brass of the International Monetary Fund always had concerns about the plans to bail out Greece. That much was clear as far back as May 9, 2010, when the IMF's 24 directors gathered in Washington to sign off on the fund's participation in the first, 110-billion-euro ($125 billion) rescue alongside European institutions.
A Reuters examination of previously unreported IMF board minutes shows that a near majority of directors round the board table that day thought the Greek program would not work.
"We have serious doubts about the approach," said Brazil's then director Paulo Nogueira Batista. He slammed IMF forecasts for Greece as overly optimistic - "Panglossian." Arvind Virmani, the director from India at the time, said the program imposed "a mammoth burden" that Greece's economy "could hardly bear."
But they and others who feared the IMF was walking into a quagmire had little room for maneuver. The fund's powerful Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and a handful of his advisers, feared Greece posed a threat to the wider euro zone financial system. They had already decided to plunge into the crisis. The doubters were given a blunt retort, according to the minutes.
"Let me be clear on a couple of things," said then Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky, who chaired the board meeting. "There is no Plan B. There is Plan A, and a determination to make Plan A succeed. And this is it."
Five years later, after the biggest bailout in the fund's history, Greece failed to make a $1.7 billion payment as required at the end of June – the first advanced economy ever to default on the IMF. Worse, after having received more than 240 billion euros in international aid, Greece's economy is still in tatters. Europe agreed a further bailout of 86 billion euros this month.
Fresh interviews with more than 20 senior officials, as well as an extensive review of IMF board records, illuminate the turmoil and divisions within the fund, then and now. They show Strauss-Kahn and his top advisers set the fund, which by tradition has always been led by a European, on a course known to be flawed, and that non-European shareholders doubted would work.
To drive through the Greek bailout, the fund bent its own rules. It lifted an IMF ban on the fund lending money to countries – like Greece - that were unable to pay their debts. It also allowed European politicians to dictate initial terms in the Greek rescue, ruling out a debt restructuring that could have given Greece a fresh start. And it shaped economic forecasts to fit political ends.
The fallout still weighs on the fund. The IMF now says it will not participate in the latest Greek bailout unless Europe allows debt restructuring on a scale Europe has so far rejected.
Strauss-Kahn, who quit the fund in 2011, would not be interviewed for this article. But supporters of the fund's actions say he and the fund had little choice other than to help in the Greek crisis. The fund went against its previous policy, they say, to prevent the Greek crisis causing wider financial chaos.
"With Europe hanging in the balance ... to say the fund would not be involved ... would not have been acceptable," said Siddharth Tiwari, who was secretary of the IMF executive board in 2010 and is now the head of the fund's strategy, policy and review department.
The Greek bailout did indeed stop "contagion" in financial markets. European banks escaped potentially disastrous losses, and other deeply indebted European countries stuck with their programs of economic reform.
But Greece has paid a heavy price. One senior IMF economist, while agreeing the fund had to intervene, said of the bailout: "Objectively we made Greece worse off ... You're lending to a country that is already unable to pay its debt, and that is not our mandate." www.reuters.comThere is a lot more it's a very interesting read.
I think this article makes clear that a lot of economists at the IMF seemed to understand what was going on even back in 2010 but unfortunately, being led by two former French finance ministers, who were very much part of the EU political establishment, the concerns of IMF economists were ignored as it was captured by the same kind of groupthink that has paralyzed Europe. What's damning is even as Christine Lagarde foresaw the failure of the 2nd bailout she still signed off on it, waiting three more years to take action.
"All the ministers were congratulating themselves and Christine Lagarde stood up and said something like: 'Guys, don't congratulate yourselves - because in three years you’re going be called to give more money.' She didn't believe that this was a final deal."
One omission from this article is they have quotes from officials up and down the IMF...with the notable exception of Olivier Blanchard, the IMF Chief Economist during the whole crisis. As I understand it the chief policy adviser for the IMF, with decades of experience as an economist rather than a career politician like Lagarde or DSK, it was his job to ensure the numbers could actually add up, and in theory Blanchard is someone who should have "known better." I wonder if we will ever get to find out what he really thought about all this.
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I keep reading about these floods of immigrants into Germany and other European countries. It blows my mind that Europe is allowing this and even supporting it. Perhaps I am more conservative than I realize, but it just doesn't seem sustainable.
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United States43604 Posts
The flood is not, in absolute terms, a huge number of people. Europe is a big place. Also it's difficult to stop them, Europe has long borders and a lot of internal mobility. Also a lot of the immigration people complain about is from within Europe. Although there is a lot of anti immigration feeling in places it's often directed more at fellow Europeans (such as Romanians for example) than it is against other groups.
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On August 29 2015 03:16 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 02:30 kwizach wrote:On August 28 2015 17:05 Ghostcom wrote:On August 28 2015 10:35 kwizach wrote:On August 28 2015 05:58 Ghostcom wrote:On August 28 2015 05:53 Velr wrote:And how is inheritance tax interacting your income tax? In fact it could even lower it. I'm all in favor of taxing assets instead of income. But this is a bad topic to discuss here, tax codes are too diffrent among countries. 2 people could have nearly the same basic views, but due to the diffrent taxrates and taxes in general they have to pay in their countries they would argue for diffrent stuff  . Because inheritance tax would follow the same argumentation. Why should I work if I can't leave anything for my children? Who said you couldn't leave anything for your children? A percentage of the inheritance goes to the state, and they get the rest. The more you work, the more they'll get. Please don't quote me out of context. You jumped in at the end of a debate concerning heavily taxation of inheritance in the name of wealth-redistribution and decided to not even quote my full post. To explain, the point was that there is a point where the percentage my kids get is so small that there is no reason for me to actually accumulate any (taxable) wealth which would overall lead to a loss for society. I did not quote you out of context. You raised the question of why you should work if you "can't leave anything for [your] children", and the premise of your question is not rooted in the reality of the type of inheritance tax we're discussing. Nobody is suggesting taking the entire inheritance away, or even having a 100% tax rate beyond a given cutoff level of wealth (with the amount below that level being taxed less). Even with the inheritance tax, therefore, the principle "the wealthier you are, the more your children will inherit" still applies, and if that's your motivation to work you will have no reason to stop. And by the way, one could make the exact opposite argument, namely that an inheritance tax encourages parents to work more, since that's the only way they'll leave as much as they want to their children. On August 28 2015 17:05 Ghostcom wrote:
The proposal by Velr was to use inheritance tax to fund the welfare state, however when people stop accumulating wealth to tax at their death, you will end up with a hole in your budget. Thus raising the inheritance tax to lower income tax is a pretty useless idea - especially as inheritance tax is from a philosophical point of view somewhat dubious. First, people will not stop accumulating wealth. There is zero evidence or reason to support the idea that this might be the case. Second, there's nothing dubious "from a philosophical point of view" about an inheritance tax, like I explained at length. On August 28 2015 17:05 Ghostcom wrote:
Lastly, there is a rather obvious difference between an income and an inheritance - you parallel to the worker is false. You're going to have to do a bit better than "your parallel is false" if you want to discredit my argument. In both situations, a given person earns money/wealth that was not previously his/her. In one case, that person works hard for that money and is taxed on his income. There is no reason why in the second case, where the person does zero work to earn that money, his earning of the money should not be taxed. If anything, working hard for your money should lead you to be less taxed than not doing any work for it. My reasoning was my previous post to the one you initially quoted - had you actually bothered to read, you would have known.
I did read your previous posts, in fact I read the entire discussion prior to commenting. And like I said, the statement that you made and that I replied to is rooted in a premise that is disconnected from the reality of inheritance tax. It makes no sense to ask the question "Why should I work if I can't leave anything for my children?" since 1. you can leave something to your children and 2. the more you earn, the more you will leave to your children. I understand that your concern is that taxing too much will dissuade people from putting the extra effort to keep making money, but there is simply no logical or empirical basis to support this idea.
On August 29 2015 03:16 Ghostcom wrote:
You didn't explain at length - you simply stated that inheritance is equal to income and then argued from that point on. As the base premises is wrong, you haven't proven anything. An heir is significantly different to a worker in that one is selling a commodity (his time), whereas the other receives a gift from his dead relatives. It is fine to argue that such a gift should be taxed at the same level as paycheck (I disagree), but to equate the two is flat out plainly wrong.
False, I did explain at length why there is nothing morally dubious about an inheritance tax, by pointing out that there is no reason to consider it problematic to tax money/wealth that is earned by doing nothing at least as much as money that is earned by working hard. There is absolutely nothing wrong with treating the income you receive for your work and the inheritance you receive from your dead relatives as transfers of money/wealth - that's what they are, and that's why the easily identifiable difference is that one transfer of money occurs only by working for it while the other occurs after doing absolutely nothing. From that perspective, it is perfectly valid to hold the position that hard-earned money should not be taxed at a higher level than free money. I never said that the link between the two extended further than that, so I'm not sure what your objection is except "inheritance and work income are not the same". Yes, obviously, but that doesn't make the comparison and the reasoning behind it invalid.
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Interesting to see how strongly some people feel on the topic of inheritance taxes.
Unfortunately, it's not really a matter that's as black and white as we'd like to think it is. Taxes are by necessity a hit to the economic well-being of individuals (hopefully justified by what the government does with the money, but this is often not the case), and people always come up with interesting ways not to pay them, if need be. Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. Working out a proper tax code is unfortunately a matter that is not so easy that we could come up with a solution here.
Personally, I believe that extremely high tax rates are more punitive and confiscatory than beneficial. And I think that any taxes that are confiscatory rather than economic in nature are idiotic. Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole.
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On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. [...] Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole.
The argument I and others have been making is that it would not be fair not to tax inheritance - please do not strawman our position. There are plenty of countries where inheritance/estate is taxed, and I suggest you read William G. Gale, James R. Hines and Joel Slemrod (eds.), Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation, Washington, D.C., Brookings, 2001. The volume's aim is to study in-depth the effects of the estate tax in the U.S., and the conclusions are pretty straightforward: "The supposed negatives of the estate tax - its effects on savings, compliance costs, and small businesses - lack definitive supporting evidence and in some cases appear to be grossly overstated."
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On August 29 2015 14:14 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. [...] Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole. The argument I and others have been making is that it would not be fair not to tax inheritance - please do not strawman our position. There are plenty of countries where inheritance/estate is taxed, and I suggest you read William G. Gale, James R. Hines and Joel Slemrod (eds.), Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation, Washington, D.C., Brookings, 2001. The volume's aim is to study in-depth the effects of the estate tax in the U.S., and the conclusions are pretty straightforward: "The supposed negatives of the estate tax - its effects on savings, compliance costs, and small businesses - lack definitive supporting evidence and in some cases appear to be grossly overstated."
This one? http://www.nber.org/papers/w8205.pdf . Seems like it.
Seems like a whole lot of cherry-picking and selective vision in your analysis of their conclusions. You could just as well have summed up their conclusion from the following paragraph:
"A tax with high rates and numerous avoidance opportunities is ripe for change. Even given the goals and constraints given above, many people feel that transfer taxes could be better structured. Many others feel that having no transfer taxes would be preferred to the current situation."
And what do you even mean by "not fair" anyways? That's a really vague statement.
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It's entirely true that tax inheritance is not needed if capital is collectively owned. I guess that's what LegalLord want to say, that in a perfect society we don't need it.
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On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Interesting to see how strongly some people feel on the topic of inheritance taxes.
Unfortunately, it's not really a matter that's as black and white as we'd like to think it is. Taxes are by necessity a hit to the economic well-being of individuals (hopefully justified by what the government does with the money, but this is often not the case), and people always come up with interesting ways not to pay them, if need be. Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. Working out a proper tax code is unfortunately a matter that is not so easy that we could come up with a solution here.
Personally, I believe that extremely high tax rates are more punitive and confiscatory than beneficial. And I think that any taxes that are confiscatory rather than economic in nature are idiotic. Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole.
No one is talking like an inheritance tax would " solve the worlds problems". its being argued it would be a way for the state to get some income to help fun the welfare state.
Secondly no one is talking about punitive level of taxes either. I don't even think anyone is talking about how high an inheritance tax should be, just that the basic principle is a good idea.
Yes, make taxes high enough and they become very oppressive but that is not even being discussed here.
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I'm not personally a fan of inheritance taxes, purely on ideological grounds since it amounts to taxing the same money several times. If it was properly taxed when a person earned it, they should be able to do what they want with it, including giving it to their next of kin.
An exception I would like to see tried is treating aged pensions as a debt secured against the person's estate, which is collected from the inheritance when they die.
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Inheritance laws are a reflection of the power of the family vis-a-vis the state as the core social institution, and their viability depends on the mores maiorum of the people involved. Invocations of "perfect societies" belong to the Star Trek production corps sooner than to thinking men. What we mean by perfection is an aesthetic love of parallelism, the rigid reduction of men to statistical variables who can be manipulated ostensibly for their happiness, but in reality for our own.
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On August 29 2015 09:20 KwarK wrote:
The flood is not, in absolute terms, a huge number of people. Europe is a big place. Also it's difficult to stop them, Europe has long borders and a lot of internal mobility. Also a lot of the immigration people complain about is from within Europe. Although there is a lot of anti immigration feeling in places it's often directed more at fellow Europeans (such as Romanians for example) than it is against other groups.
I think the main reason why anti-immigration rhetoric is not directed at people from outside of Europe is because of fear of being called "racist".
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On August 29 2015 19:48 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Interesting to see how strongly some people feel on the topic of inheritance taxes.
Unfortunately, it's not really a matter that's as black and white as we'd like to think it is. Taxes are by necessity a hit to the economic well-being of individuals (hopefully justified by what the government does with the money, but this is often not the case), and people always come up with interesting ways not to pay them, if need be. Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. Working out a proper tax code is unfortunately a matter that is not so easy that we could come up with a solution here.
Personally, I believe that extremely high tax rates are more punitive and confiscatory than beneficial. And I think that any taxes that are confiscatory rather than economic in nature are idiotic. Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole. No one is talking like an inheritance tax would " solve the worlds problems". its being argued it would be a way for the state to get some income to help fun the welfare state. Secondly no one is talking about punitive level of taxes either. I don't even think anyone is talking about how high an inheritance tax should be, just that the basic principle is a good idea. Yes, make taxes high enough and they become very oppressive but that is not even being discussed here.
The idea that you could use inheritance tax to reduce income tax (as was mentioned here before) is very much so a form of magical thinking, which is where that statement comes from. It would be very hard to fund such a tax break without making the inheritance tax rather confiscatory.
In principle, an inheritance tax can work, but some advocate it for the wrong reasons. It seems to be more a matter of "it's only fair" and "the rich don't deserve to be that far ahead of the rest of us." Those reasons are inherently punitive in nature, which is the real problem here.
The report that kwizach recommended is actually a very reasonable analysis of the pros and cons of such a tax, in contrast to the rather biased and one-sided viewpoint he has based off of it.
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On August 29 2015 23:11 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 19:48 Gorsameth wrote:On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Interesting to see how strongly some people feel on the topic of inheritance taxes.
Unfortunately, it's not really a matter that's as black and white as we'd like to think it is. Taxes are by necessity a hit to the economic well-being of individuals (hopefully justified by what the government does with the money, but this is often not the case), and people always come up with interesting ways not to pay them, if need be. Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. Working out a proper tax code is unfortunately a matter that is not so easy that we could come up with a solution here.
Personally, I believe that extremely high tax rates are more punitive and confiscatory than beneficial. And I think that any taxes that are confiscatory rather than economic in nature are idiotic. Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole. No one is talking like an inheritance tax would " solve the worlds problems". its being argued it would be a way for the state to get some income to help fun the welfare state. Secondly no one is talking about punitive level of taxes either. I don't even think anyone is talking about how high an inheritance tax should be, just that the basic principle is a good idea. Yes, make taxes high enough and they become very oppressive but that is not even being discussed here. The idea that you could use inheritance tax to reduce income tax (as was mentioned here before) is very much so a form of magical thinking, which is where that statement comes from. It would be very hard to fund such a tax break without making the inheritance tax rather confiscatory. In principle, an inheritance tax can work, but some advocate it for the wrong reasons. It seems to be more a matter of "it's only fair" and "the rich don't deserve to be that far ahead of the rest of us." Those reasons are inherently punitive in nature, which is the real problem here. The report that kwizach recommended is actually a very reasonable analysis of the pros and cons of such a tax, in contrast to the rather biased and one-sided viewpoint he has based off of it.
I tried to explain that to people too, but he seems to have a hard time understand the difference between justified taxation and such that are confiscatory because apparently all taxation is confiscatory. -_-
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On August 29 2015 22:20 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 09:20 KwarK wrote:
The flood is not, in absolute terms, a huge number of people. Europe is a big place. Also it's difficult to stop them, Europe has long borders and a lot of internal mobility. Also a lot of the immigration people complain about is from within Europe. Although there is a lot of anti immigration feeling in places it's often directed more at fellow Europeans (such as Romanians for example) than it is against other groups. I think the main reason why anti-immigration rhetoric is not directed at people from outside of Europe is because of fear of being called "racist".
Everyone is racist. Mouths must pretend otherwise by denying their own attributes while amplifying those of others, but the very cattiness with which our public snipers aim their words is among the things fermenting a society of self-deceit and hypocrisy. Honest people will sometimes exaggerate their racism simply in order to deny the lie that they are not.
In a society which is tragically both reverential and honest like Germany, the benevolent racism which I often get from acquaintances is both a recommendation and an impeachment for the quality of their minds. Germans know the world better than most other nations, because of their attraction to exotic places. A love of exoticism necessarily emphasises contrasts rather than similarities, whereas the orderliness of their minds subordinates daily facts to those hypnotic impressions. When in my daily life a German verbally connects my positive qualities with my race, I feel an intense mixture of admiration and condescension for the mind which draws such conclusions. On one hand, understanding differences is more impressive than understanding similarities, and the mind which preoccupies itself with the former rather than the latter is by nature the stronger. On the other hand, his hypotheses are wrong as a matter of fact. What he attributes to my race has nothing to do with my race. That is the problem with categorical thinking: observational patterns congeal into laws, and are pressed into the service of a "social science" which is surreal.
Eastern Europeans are a different quality, because the political socialism they enjoyed for 40 years protected them from the mental socialism which overtook the West during that time. It is not that they are more offensive, it is that their behaviour is less regulated by the fear of causing offense. Thus when someone from the Ukraine or Russia targets me with their malevolent racism they are never personally malevolent. In my experience therefore, the shots of our public snipers miss the mark of truth. Contrary to popular fiction, "Racists" do not hate people for belonging to a certain race. What really happens is they assign race as the common denominator of people whom they are inclined to hate anyway.
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On August 29 2015 15:24 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 14:14 kwizach wrote:On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. [...] Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole. The argument I and others have been making is that it would not be fair not to tax inheritance - please do not strawman our position. There are plenty of countries where inheritance/estate is taxed, and I suggest you read William G. Gale, James R. Hines and Joel Slemrod (eds.), Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation, Washington, D.C., Brookings, 2001. The volume's aim is to study in-depth the effects of the estate tax in the U.S., and the conclusions are pretty straightforward: "The supposed negatives of the estate tax - its effects on savings, compliance costs, and small businesses - lack definitive supporting evidence and in some cases appear to be grossly overstated." This one? http://www.nber.org/papers/w8205.pdf . Seems like it. Seems like a whole lot of cherry-picking and selective vision in your analysis of their conclusions. You could just as well have summed up their conclusion from the following paragraph: "A tax with high rates and numerous avoidance opportunities is ripe for change. Even given the goals and constraints given above, many people feel that transfer taxes could be better structured. Many others feel that having no transfer taxes would be preferred to the current situation." And what do you even mean by "not fair" anyways? That's a really vague statement.
I was quoting it from p. 58 of the volume, but yes, that is a .pdf of the "overview" chapter of the book. It's not the full book though, only the first chapter.
There is no cherry-picking and selective vision. Their conclusion clearly states that the supposed negative effects of the estate tax "lack definitive evidence and in some cases appear to be grossly overstated". I'm not sure how you think the passage you quoted is supposed to say anything different. It simply evokes the fact that some people would rather see no tax, which is hardly a shocker, and the fact that many feel it could be better structured. That's not an argument against an inheritance/estate tax, but instead in favor of structuring it better. The arguments against the estate tax, namely that it has negative effects, are debunked in the passage I quoted which is the relevant one in the context of the argument that I was making in this discussion.
It's not a vague statement at all because I've spent several posts explaining why I meant by fairness in taxing inheritance, a position that you strawmanned as "inheritance isn't fair". I suggest you go read my previous posts and pay more attention to them if you'd like to respond to my fairness argument.
On August 29 2015 23:11 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 19:48 Gorsameth wrote:On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Interesting to see how strongly some people feel on the topic of inheritance taxes.
Unfortunately, it's not really a matter that's as black and white as we'd like to think it is. Taxes are by necessity a hit to the economic well-being of individuals (hopefully justified by what the government does with the money, but this is often not the case), and people always come up with interesting ways not to pay them, if need be. Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. Working out a proper tax code is unfortunately a matter that is not so easy that we could come up with a solution here.
Personally, I believe that extremely high tax rates are more punitive and confiscatory than beneficial. And I think that any taxes that are confiscatory rather than economic in nature are idiotic. Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole. No one is talking like an inheritance tax would " solve the worlds problems". its being argued it would be a way for the state to get some income to help fun the welfare state. Secondly no one is talking about punitive level of taxes either. I don't even think anyone is talking about how high an inheritance tax should be, just that the basic principle is a good idea. Yes, make taxes high enough and they become very oppressive but that is not even being discussed here. In principle, an inheritance tax can work, but some advocate it for the wrong reasons. It seems to be more a matter of "it's only fair" and "the rich don't deserve to be that far ahead of the rest of us." Those reasons are inherently punitive in nature, which is the real problem here.
Please go ahead and show me where I, Gorsameth or anyone else is supposed to have adopted such a punitive stance. Perhaps you should stop grossly caricaturing the arguments of other posters and pay attention to what's actually written instead.
On August 29 2015 15:24 LegalLord wrote:
The report that kwizach recommended is actually a very reasonable analysis of the pros and cons of such a tax, in contrast to the rather biased and one-sided viewpoint he has based off of it.
It's not a report, it's a book of which you found the overview chapter. And yes, it's a very reasonable analysis, which is why it explicitly says that the supposed negatives of the estate tax do not seem to hold up to scrutiny. There is absolutely no bias in reporting that this is their conclusion, no matter how badly you want to escape that fact. Nobody here is advocating making the inheritance tax absolutely confiscatory, which is the ridiculous strawman that you've constructed to misrepresent our position.
On August 29 2015 23:15 dismiss wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 23:11 LegalLord wrote:On August 29 2015 19:48 Gorsameth wrote:On August 29 2015 11:26 LegalLord wrote:
Interesting to see how strongly some people feel on the topic of inheritance taxes.
Unfortunately, it's not really a matter that's as black and white as we'd like to think it is. Taxes are by necessity a hit to the economic well-being of individuals (hopefully justified by what the government does with the money, but this is often not the case), and people always come up with interesting ways not to pay them, if need be. Generally, and opinions that boil down to "just do XXX and the world's problems will suddenly solve themselves" tend to be quite short-sighted and ineffective. Working out a proper tax code is unfortunately a matter that is not so easy that we could come up with a solution here.
Personally, I believe that extremely high tax rates are more punitive and confiscatory than beneficial. And I think that any taxes that are confiscatory rather than economic in nature are idiotic. Too many people here are arguing that "we should take from the rich because inheritance is unfair" rather than considering whether or not it would actually be good for the economy as a whole. No one is talking like an inheritance tax would " solve the worlds problems". its being argued it would be a way for the state to get some income to help fun the welfare state. Secondly no one is talking about punitive level of taxes either. I don't even think anyone is talking about how high an inheritance tax should be, just that the basic principle is a good idea. Yes, make taxes high enough and they become very oppressive but that is not even being discussed here. The idea that you could use inheritance tax to reduce income tax (as was mentioned here before) is very much so a form of magical thinking, which is where that statement comes from. It would be very hard to fund such a tax break without making the inheritance tax rather confiscatory. In principle, an inheritance tax can work, but some advocate it for the wrong reasons. It seems to be more a matter of "it's only fair" and "the rich don't deserve to be that far ahead of the rest of us." Those reasons are inherently punitive in nature, which is the real problem here. The report that kwizach recommended is actually a very reasonable analysis of the pros and cons of such a tax, in contrast to the rather biased and one-sided viewpoint he has based off of it. I tried to explain that to people too, but he seems to have a hard time understand the difference between justified taxation and such that are confiscatory because apparently all taxation is confiscatory. -_-
I don't have a "hard time" understanding anything. I never advocated in favor of any form of inheritance tax that would be too confiscatory. I defended the existence of an inheritance tax and disputed the idea that it would not be fair to have one. Seriously, instead of declaring that other posters are having "a hard time" understanding something, perhaps you should take a second to read what's being said.
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On August 30 2015 00:01 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2015 22:20 maybenexttime wrote:On August 29 2015 09:20 KwarK wrote:
The flood is not, in absolute terms, a huge number of people. Europe is a big place. Also it's difficult to stop them, Europe has long borders and a lot of internal mobility. Also a lot of the immigration people complain about is from within Europe. Although there is a lot of anti immigration feeling in places it's often directed more at fellow Europeans (such as Romanians for example) than it is against other groups. I think the main reason why anti-immigration rhetoric is not directed at people from outside of Europe is because of fear of being called "racist". Everyone is racist. Mouths must pretend otherwise by denying their own attributes while amplifying those of others, but the very cattiness with which our public snipers aim their words is among the things fermenting a society of self-deceit and hypocrisy. Honest people will sometimes exaggerate their racism simply in order to deny the lie that they are not. In a society which is tragically both reverential and honest like Germany, the benevolent racism which I often get from acquaintances is both a recommendation and an impeachment for the quality of their minds. Germans know the world better than most other nations, because of their attraction to exotic places. A love of exoticism necessarily emphasises contrasts rather than similarities, whereas the orderliness of their minds subordinates daily facts to those hypnotic impressions. When in my daily life a German verbally connects my positive qualities with my race, I feel an intense mixture of admiration and condescension for the mind which draws such conclusions. On one hand, understanding differences is more impressive than understanding similarities, and the mind which preoccupies itself with the former rather than the latter is by nature the stronger. On the other hand, his hypotheses are wrong as a matter of fact. What he attributes to my race has nothing to do with my race. That is the problem with categorical thinking: observational patterns congeal into laws, and are pressed into the service of a "social science" which is surreal. Eastern Europeans are a different quality, because the political socialism they enjoyed for 40 years protected them from the mental socialism which overtook the West during that time. It is not that they are more offensive, it is that their behaviour is less regulated by the fear of causing offense. Thus when someone from the Ukraine or Russia targets me with their malevolent racism they are never personally malevolent. In my experience therefore, the shots of our public snipers miss the mark of truth. Contrary to popular fiction, "Racists" do not hate people for belonging to a certain race. What really happens is they assign race as the common denominator of people whom they are inclined to hate anyway.
just wanted to ask if: - the bolded part, is based on on-line experience or in-life experience?.
for what its worth, i could confirm it if it's based on-line experience.
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