My effective rate is already >40%, and you are proposing another 20%. That would mean others are getting more of my salary than I am.
There’s nothing magical about exceeding a 50% marginal tax rate. (Hitting 100%, sure, that would be bad.)
There’s definitely a psychological threshold there for most people. I ran an informal survey a few years back about what tax rates people would consider fair, and there was a very strong clustering at 50%.
I have a hard time understanding it myself. The whole point of taxation is redistribution, so why would you care whether you’re “winning” versus the marginal tax rate?
>The whole point of taxation is redistribution, so why would you care whether you’re “winning” versus the marginal tax rate?
A substantial portion of the population doesnt think taxation should be used for distribution at all. They think the fundamental point of taxation is to pay for public goods that everyone uses like roads, police, and firemen.
You’re right -- that is actually what I had in mind (in addition to welfare), but I was imprecise.