Gawdzilla wrote:Devogue wrote:I think 50% as a top rate of tax is too much.
No matter how you earn your money, and no matter how much you earn, it's not fair that you have to hand over half of your earnings while someone else who may not have worked as hard or taken as many risks only has to hand over a quarter of theirs.
Its a cycle, Dev. The more people are taxed, the harder they work at avoiding the taxes, and the higher the taxes get in order to circumvent that avoidance. An upward spiral. [/flat tax rant]
Yes. I think that a flat rate of, say, 25% would be a good thing. If nothing else, it would be ethically fair. To charge one person more than another reeks of punishment or envy.
So someone earning £20,000 a year pays £5,000 in tax, while someone earning £1,000,000 per year pays £250,000 in tax - no loopholes allowed, no tax avoidance allowed, no fucking about with domicility and all that nonsense - pay your dues if you want a passport and any other benefits from your home country. And sort out inheritance as well - it's unfair how money is passed on to people by way of birth. Arrive with nothing, leave with nothing.
The £20k person has £15k on which to live (I did happily, and on much less, for many years) - their expectations in life match their financial and business ambitions. If their expectations rise then they can apply themselves to working harder, working to gain more qualifcations to earn more money, and so on - basic capitalism.
If someone else, by dint of talent, work ethic, risk or whatever finds their natural level of income within the free market to be £1m per year, then fair play to them - why should they be punished more than someone who has not?
In any case, money and capital are fluid, and any wealth accumulated by an individual will either trickle down to society as a whole in the long run through natural expenditure or it will rain down in a torrent if a wealthy individual is profligate or philanthropic by nature.