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| Majority of Americans favor wealth tax on very rich: Reuters/Ipsos poll |
| 2020-01-10 |
| WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The idea of imposing a wealth tax on the richest Americans has elicited sharply divergent views across a spectrum of politicians, with President Donald Trump branding it socialist and progressive Democratic presidential contenders Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders prominently endorsing it. But it may have broad public support, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found nearly two-thirds of respondents agree that the very rich should pay more. Among the 4,441 respondents to the poll, 64% strongly or somewhat agreed that "the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs" - the essence of a wealth tax. Results were similar across gender, race and household income. While support among Democrats was stronger, at 77%, a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agreed with the idea. A wealth tax is levied on an individual’s net worth, such as stocks, bonds and real estate, as well as cash holdings, similar in concept to property taxes. It is separate from an income tax, which applies to wages, interest and dividends, among other sources. Asked in the poll if "the very rich should be allowed to keep the money they have, even if that means increasing inequality," 54% of respondents disagreed. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #22 Sorry, that’s just nuts. Expect a letter from the IRS at some point. |
| Posted by: KBK 2020-01-10 23:28 |
| #21 Skid (or anyone else) - if you're self-employed, you go to your state's Secretary of State's office and file Articles of Organization (fee in MA is $200) with some unique corporate name. Then go to the IRS and get an EIN (Employer's ID number) using the corporation's information (name & address). Take all that paperwork to your bank and open up a corporate checking account (in the corporation's name, of course). That's it. Annual reports are then filed, well, annually. in MA the fee is $109 per annum. Next step - file IRS Form 2553 with the IRS as soon as you can. This is a request for the corporation's shareholders to be taxed at the individual level, where (in general) tax rates are lower, and the individual's income is only subject to regular income tax, not the self-employment tax which is an additional (approx.) 14.2% of tax on that income. I saved one client $20K doing that. Send an e-mail if you need anything else, or just ask on this / some other thread. |
| Posted by: Raj 2020-01-10 19:44 |
| #20 Sooo stupid. Raj, tell us about incorporating ourselves. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2020-01-10 17:45 |
| #19 ^ Me neither, but this is not theoretical... we have real experience now, derived from California's ruinously high taxes. The result: the formerly world-class higher educational system in the state has gone downhill, the energy infrastructure is a joke, the roads aren't maintained, and the state has either failed utterly to move forward with new, large-scale infrastructure projects (e.g. de-salinization plants) or else thrown away billions on idiotic projects such as the Train to Nowhere. We have seen the future of wealth tax / super-high income tax America. It's Mexifornia, and it sucks. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-10 13:53 |
| #18 I wouldn't mind paying a bit more....if I knew the money was going to a worthy cause, not just pi**ed away like most of what we've already sent our Washington masters. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-01-10 13:48 |
| #17 "Real Socialism" requires complete suspension of normal human behavior. Power has a tendency to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-01-10 13:03 |
| #16 The French tried this recently and it was such a failure that the French scrapped it altogether. What do you expect from people who gave you the phrase "Real Socialism was never tried"? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-01-10 12:21 |
| #15 #12 - spot on! "Your retirement savings/pension/severance? You didn't build that! We need those 'investments' so you can have a |
| Posted by: Frank G 2020-01-10 12:18 |
| #14 I wonder how many would been in favor if they were told, "Oh, by the way, in five years there's a 67% chance you will be considered 'very rich'?" |
| Posted by: Bobby 2020-01-10 12:05 |
| #13 Thou shall not covet You wouldn't have the Democrat Party without covetousness and all the larceny that comes with it. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2020-01-10 12:04 |
| #12 Along with 'nationalization' of 401Ks and other personal retirement plans. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2020-01-10 11:39 |
| #11 require stocks and other assets to be marked-to-market annually for tax purposes I'm afraid that may exercise happen sooner rather than later. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2020-01-10 11:38 |
| #10 Fools. The French tried this recently and it was such a failure that the French scrapped it altogether. We are led by morons. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-10 11:36 |
| #9 The problem I've got with this is that it creates a whole new taxing mechanism. And once you turn that tiger loose there's no particular reason to assume that it will only eat what I think of as "the richest." It's not hard to imagine a future Dem Congress defining "the richest" to mean "Republican with $2 in his pocket." If you take it a step further and require stocks and other assets to be marked-to-market annually for tax purposes, there lies madness. |
| Posted by: Matt 2020-01-10 11:28 |
| #8 Lemme see - we have a top marginal Federal tax rate of 37% which is levied on taxable incomes over $510,000 to which additional taxes may / will be assessed, like the Alternative Minimum Tax (which enforces a 26% effective tax rate), the Net Investment Income Tax (3.8% additional tax on certain incomes) and the Additional Medicare Tax (.9% additional tax on certain incomes). This, of course, leaves out state and local income tax levies. Reuters - in what manner do we not already have a 'wealth tax', albeit an indirect one? |
| Posted by: Raj 2020-01-10 09:59 |
| #7 How about importing billionaires instead of welfare immigrants? Anyone (within reason) with a billion $ to invest in America automatically gets automatic citizenship. Let their dollars compete for American workers instead of American workers competing with 1+ million new immigrants every year for limited investment dollars. |
| Posted by: Gomez Ominter3435 2020-01-10 08:04 |
| #6 oops...Little Billy Gates still hates me...add him to the list. |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2020-01-10 07:48 |
| #5 lessee - Bloomberg, Steyer, Bezos, Soros.... I could perhaps be persuaded..... |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2020-01-10 07:46 |
| #4 how about wealth tax on the assholes in congress since they inexplicably become multi-millionaires with a relatively upper middle class salary. turn 'serving' the people back into a hardship that was undertaken by those who were already accomplished in other areas of life, instead hollywood for ugly people |
| Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 2020-01-10 07:36 |
| #3 Personally, I favour capitalist taxes .i.e. Paying for government product at the market rate. Government's product is called title and it's mostly given away at far below value. To the establishment's great accumulation. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2020-01-10 07:00 |
| #2 Disdain for the accomplished among us. Fairness, equality, redistribution of wealth, typical communist tactics. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-01-10 06:54 |
| #1 Thou shall not covet - You already have the top 10% paying over 70% of the taxes. It's always easy to spend other people's money. How's that working in CA and NY? The more you seek to steal, the more they'll seek to keep as both of you corrupt the system to do so. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-01-10 06:50 |
