It'd be nice if every country got on the same page, because all would benefit.
But if just one doesn't, the super-wealthy will all flock there to house their monies. I guess because you don't become a billionaire by paying your fair share.
God forbid.
How much do you want them to pay?
According to the IRS publicly available data (because the resident jaded Dawg only listens if you can cite a source), the fabled 1% pay 46% of all federal taxes collected. The top 10% earners pay 76% of taxes collected. (I don't recall if that was for one particular year or a period of time, but anyone can scrape the data for themselves from irs.gov)
So....how hard exactly do we hammer these guys/gals?
Billionaires definitely have tax shelters (hell, I did too when I owned my own business and I was nowhere near the Top 10%, let alone 1%ers) and they certainly leverage loopholes. People also miss the facts of how that stuff works over time.
CD is right about one thing. You could confiscate ALL of the American billionaire's money, and it would barely make a dent, or change hardly anything.
Griping about billionaires has always sounded to me like a sound byte for people bitter about not having that much net worth. Which, fine, but just don't act like taxing them more is going to lead to any wanted results. And it's just goofy as far as understanding what it is those people "have." No billionaire has billions of dollars sitting around in a bank, which is what people seem to think. They own stuff. How exactly does the federal government propose to take buildings, stocks, etc. and redistribute that to the poor people those unselfish altruists in DC would absolutely serve, if only they could get those billionaires to pony up. It's like people think the Elons of the world are Scrooge McDuck, rolling around in his massive vault of gold coins.
