Love this. Step in the correct direction. Property Taxes are coming under fire next, and given their long racist history, it's about time.
Love this. Step in the correct direction. Property Taxes are coming under fire next, and given their long racist history, it's about time.
Is it?
Why should tip income not be taxed but other income should be? How is that fair? What principle makes that just?
Are bartenders and servers more deserving of avoiding taxes than cooks and janitors, for some reason?
It's not about benefitting the employees, but the employers. It's meant to push back against livable wages.
The employers already had all kinds of bizarre tricks to keep tipped workers down.
My girlfriend works for a local chain restaurant. Some of the things she tells me about seem like they shouldn’t be legal (forcing everyone’s cash tips to be pooled with non tipped teenagers they don’t want to pay, for example. Pretty sure the company has had previous class actions against them. This was just a small local chain in a middle/upper middle class suburb.
I saw a post on Nextdoor the other day where another restaurant closed, laying off the workers without paying them for hours worked. The general consensus about how to get the money you worked for: you don’t. The state has no labor board and there was little option for recourse.
Not that I'm a fan of tipping culture or the "creator" economy, but it seems like tips and donations to your favorite youtuber are obviously gifts to me? From irs.gov:
> You make a gift if you give property (including money), or the use of or income from property, without expecting to receive something of at least equal value in return.
Which is obviously true for tips and donations. If it is a gift, then the giver owes taxes, and there is a $19k/year/recipient exclusion, so small gifts like this would always be exempt.
Progress, not perfection.
Towards what? No taxes at all? That's not desirable if you want things like public schools and rule of law.
And if you want more progressive taxation, then support more progressive taxation. Treating classes of workers differently is not a way to get to more equitable progressive taxation.
Agreed. Why aren’t capital gains taxed at a higher rate than income?
(Please don’t give me bullshit answers based on hundred year old economic theories just because you’re a wanna be libertarian)
>Why aren’t capital gains taxed at a higher rate than income?
The federal capital gains rates are higher than the effective tax rates paid by a family making a median income, but I suspect you are asking why the capital gains rates are not higher than the highest marginal rates.
One issue is simply that capital gains tax rates generally don't account for inflation. If you build a business over a few decades and sell it, much of the increase in value will be simply due to inflation. Do you want to encourage long term investment, or make it so only financially illiterate people do long term investments?
Because rich people earn more from capital gains than income?
I suspect much of the attacks against property taxes aren't to right any historical wrongs, but is part of the attack against public education, since property taxes are a major source of funding.
No. It’s the idea that you’re renting your paid off home from the government. And the government gets to decide what it’s worth.
No, you're renting the physical space -- a scarce part of the commons -- from your community.
(I do think property taxes should be a land-value tax and not include improvements you've built.)
> No, you're renting the physical space -- a scarce part of the commons -- from your community.
Property law in the US and most western democracies doesn’t remotely agree with that. Land is not a communal or solely government owned resource, and the govt doesn’t ‘rent’ it out.
Stop paying your property taxes in the US and see how long it takes before the government forecloses. It is effectively rent under a different name. In exchange the government will protect your property ownership rights so that you don't go on vacation and find someone else now gets to claim your home since you weren't there to stop them.
Note: I think this is a good thing and that property taxes are vital to our local communities well-being.
What is you idea for how to collect revenue for government services? Import taxes?
Ideally: nothing.
Places like that exist. You should try living there, see how you like the quality of life.
I hear Somalia is a wonderful place to live if you've got a lot of money and your own army to defend it.
I can't because people wont leave me alone.
What do you mean? Who is stopping you from moving to Dubai?
I'm a libertarian but I know it is impossible for a society to exist without even just a few taxes.