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Massachusetts passed a 4% millionaire's tax last year. Now every public school student is going to get free lunch
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Made me curious what the total tax rate would be in Mass. Apparently it has a flat 5% income tax, plus 4% millionaires tax, plus federal rate for income over about 578k is 37%, so altogether it’s 46% for income over a mil in Mass.
Definitely think it should be higher for such wildly high income. Also disappointed to see for being a relatively progressive state Mass has a flat rather than progressive income tax.
Higher, nothing. There should be a rate above which it's taxed at 100%. No one needs to be as rich as Musk or Zuckerberg or Bezos.
And no millioneir will keep his money in a state where those are the tax rates. If you make it too high you literally get nothing.
Awww. Too bad for them. What will we do without millionaires hoarding their wealth?!
No, he's saying they will keep it. Just in a way that mass gets literally nothing
So either they will get a lot of money or things won't be any different except millionaires won't be there hoarding wealth?
I'm not seeing a downside yet.
I think they mean the millionaires will find other ways to hoard it to avoid tax levels they won't stomach. Fair? No. Reality? Probably.
People make the same argument about not returning to the tax rates of the 1950s. I say let's try it and find out.
I ... honestly would be up for this approach. When do you run for office, sir?
It would take massive and severe state action to deprive the rich of that wealth, and that money would still not find its way into the hands of the poor because the state, and corrupt bureaucrats within it, would take it for themselves.
The poor themselves would have to band together, organize, steal back all the resources from the rich, and distribute it amongst themselves fairly. And that won't work without a deeply organized plan everyone in the group already agrees to, and even then it might not because the sociopaths and evil people among the poor -- which comprises of a lot of them, sorry-not-sorry but it's true -- will just hoard all of those resources, creating a new ruling class.
Stuff like a ruling class is just the human condition because humanity is inherently evil. The non-evil humans will have to accept that reality is like this, figure out who is trustworthy and who is not, band together the like-minded, isolate themselves and pray a sociopath or evil person never infiltrates their ranks, figure out how to suss them out, and kill them.
Until humanity itself evolves to be more docile, it'll never change.
And yet you guys wonder why millionaires move to Texas. You increase the taxes above a certain number and they'll take all their wealth, consumption and their taxes to another state.
Taxes should be sustainable. High taxes on rich people aren't sustainable because they'll leave taking whatever taxes they pay and whatever consumption they do which contributes to the economy.
As your income increases, your ability to reduce taxable income also increases. The goal of the state is basically to target the lazy.