aceventura3

A reoccurring theme in many of my posts is that rich people pretty much can plan the amount they will pay in taxes. If income tax rates are too high, rich people have the option of lowering current taxable income while still accumulating wealth and living lavishly. An economist Kurt Huser shows that tax revenues collected as a percentage of GDP pretty much remains constant regardless of tax rates. What happens is that when tax rates are lower GDP grows at a faster rate, hence everyone wins.



What this means is that the worst thing Democrats could do for the average working American is roll back Bush's tax cuts.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1211...n_commentaries

If the folks in Washington would take note of the above graphic, perhaps they could learn to keep federal spending within the range of less than 20% of GDP. Given their unwillingness to do this, they have amassed a massive national debt.

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Aladdin Sane

You have missed the main point of taxation in the era of the nanny state. Everyone knows that raising rates does not automatically lead to more revenue, but politicians don't care. Since they know what is best for everyone, they use taxation to reward and punish, to pick winners and losers, to engage in social engineering, and in general to make life "fair." They see taxation as the great leveler.

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Ustwo

Its getevenwithemism.

The democrats are all about promoting class and race divides.

Its better for votes to be the 'party of the working man' than 'the party for all Americans'.

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flstf

I agree that raising taxes seems to be bad for GDP but in all fairness the wealthy should pay at least a little higher percentage of their income as the poor and middle class do to support our government. As it stands now lower income people who spend almost everything they make on goods and services probaby pay a higher percentage.

ASU2003

To the most working class people, making 25k/year, while the rich guy is making 100k is a better situation than making 35k/year while the rich guy makes 200k (or 2 mil, 20 mil, whatever).

They just have the idea that maybe someday they will be the rich guy.

But, I also support a major cut in government spending as well and reducing a lot of tax laws to make them straight forward and simple.

roachboy

so you're using a supply side economist's work as data to demonstrate a supply-side hypothesis and you draw from it supply-side conclusions.

it's what we call a tautology.

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loquitur

roachboy, you are questioning the virtual horizontality of tax collections on the graph? Or have you simply come up with a way not to have to deal with the implications by discounting the source? If you question the accuracy of the graph, explain why. If not, explain why the conclusion is wrong. What you posted is a cop-out.

C'mon, you know better than that.

Ustwo

But if it lowers over all tax collected, all you are doing is a feel good measure, a little 'get even with them is'm. The government is already mostly paid for by the rich at income tax levels, and by mostly I'm talking just about all of it. It only matters where you decide 'rich' is.

Being a master of economics and money tell us oh roachboy, what should we be using?

One of your theories of government? Perhaps the one that leads to genocide and poverty, or maybe just one that leads to poverty?

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roachboy

i dont see this as a coherent discussion.
i dont see the possibility of a coherent discussion arising from it.
i am inclined to dismiss supply side economics out of hand.

i don't see the logic behind the op's central claim demonstrated by the data that is provided.

all i see is a repetition of conservative orthodoxy about taxation, followed by a series of the usual suspects making the usual non-arguments in support of the op's non-argument.

the only thing i question really is whether i should have bothered to post anything to this at all.

i question this even more now.

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loquitur

roachboy, what I see is a quantitative presentation in graphic form of a fact you find inconvenient to your worldview and prefer not to address. And you're bobbing and weaving any way you can to avoid addressing it.

Is the graph accurate or not? If it is accurate, is what it shows relevant? If it is not accurate, why not? If it is relevant, what is your response. If it's not relevant, why not? If the conclusions drawn from it are wrong, why?

This isn't so difficult. It's called "confronting reality."

roachboy

if that's what you see, loquitor, you'd be wrong.
seriously--you are talking about a flat-rate tax advocate from the hoover institution whose papers on taxation are kinda wacky--i've been reading some of them while you've been working up your tiresome little post accusing me of whatever you imagine me to be guilty of---and are working off a wsj editorial that puffs this work up, imputes a false status to it because it supports supply side assumptions about taxation.

do a little research.
it's bizarre what you find when you actually bloody look.

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it make you sick.

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loquitur

But you still haven't explained whether you think the graph is wrong. Is it? do you have a source that shows tax revenues diverging signficantly from 20% in response to fiscal and tax policy changes? Put it out there, roachboy. so far all you have said is "consider the source."

FWIW, that proposition isn't new. I've seen that graph before, or one very much like it. Tax collections vary in a narrow band of about 18 to 22%, IIRC. It gets trotted out a lot.

flstf

I don't think you are considering the amount of taxes paid indirectly by consumers which are added to the cost of everything they buy by everyone in the production/distribution chain. The less you make the higher percentage of income you pay.

Ustwo

I just paid an extra 50 dollars a day for a hotel room in taxes, but that was all local tax.

Most of those taxes outside of the federal gas tax and those like it really have no part in the debate as far as I can tell.

Raising taxes on the rich will do nothing to fix any problem.

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Willravel

The Hauser graph (the Laffer Curve in disguise) IS a good example of poorly conceived supply-side econ. As some of you may guess, I believe supply side economics is about corporatism and the more fascist components of capitalism, not about beneficial and applicable economic theory.
The genie is already out of the bottle, and some individuals will continue to shift, hide and underreport, but of taxes are decreased they will be keeping even more. The idea of "if taxes on the rich decrease they'll magically become honest" is the worst kind of naïveté and speaks in volumes of the failures inherent in supply side.

The worst part, though, is that most of the idiots pushing ideas like the Laffer Curve don't even understand it (yes, I'm talking about Bush, Cheney and Santorum). Here's a question:
Did Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s on the left side of the peak increase receipts?

dc_dux

Federal spending when Clinton left office was 18.5% of GDP...with tax cuts targeted to the working middle class and no runaway spending.

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Willravel

When I get in a discussion about economics, I always get the feeling that conservatives believe that liberals aren't educated on the subject. I find it gives liberals an upper hand.

Just something I find funny.

Edit: I'm more interested in finding out why under the Reagan supply side we saw a per capita revenue from personal income taxes raise about .05%, but under Clinton it rose an average of 6.3%.

BTW, under Bush the per capita increase has been about 2.3%. Under Obama? Smart money is on the mid 6s by 2012.

host

ace, we went 'round on this on October 12, 2006: (I tried to show ace, back then, that all of the "stimulus" he seemed to think was a positive result of Bush tax cutting, was instead a result of "MEW"...a rapid increase in the amount of "Mortgage Equity Withdrawal", made possible by a rapidly emerging residential real estate bubble that drove housing valuations dramatically upward, in a very brief period of time.....while dramatically increasing federal spending was adding $3-1/2 trillion to the national debt in just seven years.)

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=44

ace, your post #39 on this thread....a PR piece from the white house that falsely touts spending cloaked in "off-budget" machinations as "deficit reduction", was thoroughly debunked in my post #31, on your thread:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=105663

.....4 months ago, when you tried to "offer it" here, the last time.

These points in the OP, IMO, put the points in your last post, in proper context:
ace, anybody....even incompetent management.....can "increase" GDP (or....revenue) by 75 cents for every 1.15 dollars of combined "true" deficit spending and Mortgage Equity Extraction, added to the economy annually....

ace, this will probably be my last post related to our discussion here....the message that you telegraph to me in post #39 is a repeat of this, on the last post on your thread of four months ago:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=105663
......ace, when the Bush administration came into office, it brought an agenda that included two major "to do" items: ....removing Saddam from power in Iraq, and reversing the tax burden of it's wealthy patrons.

We see the results....dual fiascos... in Iraq, and in federal spending. Just as the stable and cost effective system of containing Saddam with a "no fly zone" and sanctions strategy had cost no downed aircraft in 12 years of allies "no fly zone" enforcement, and by Wolfowitz's estimate to congress in early 2003, about $30 billion.

The following table must be posted again, because it contains the federal treasury annual debt total....(that is why I call it "total") actually accrued.
The marketwatch PR piece that you posted in #39 here, continues part of the debt and some excuses. The following uses the same criteria for the last four presidents...."total debt".

It displays a parallel to what happened since 2001 in Iraq. A budget and taxation regimen that had produced a downward trend in deficits, from 1993 to 2000.... ($360 billion annual deficit, down to $18 billion, annually), and still afforded satisfactory GDP growth, was "revised" by the incoming Bush administration, and the results are similar to the "results" in Iraq:
IMO, ace, the Bush II era tax cuts have been a fiscal disaster, much like the decision to discontinue the "no fly zone" and sanctions to keep Saddam in what Cheney described in 2001, as "a box", and replace that policy with invasion and occupation.

MEW and a smaller deficit would, without budget busting tax cuts, have supported GDP growth. Temporary and more progressively designed tax cuts, (as in the 1993 tax cut compromise between Clinton and republicans in congress) in response to severe recession....which, thanks to the ramping of the housing bubble, never happened, should have been saved, along with large federal deficit spending, until an actual GDP decline, emergency.

What recession fighting "weapons" are left for the next presidential administration, ace? The one that took office in january 2001, had three key options available.... the option to lower interest rates, easy because there was no predicament of huge federal borrowing needs that forced higher interest rates to attract potential foreign treasury bond purchasers....

...the option to increase deficit spending for it's stimulative effect on GDP growth, either by temporarily cutting taxes, or investment in capital projects as the Japanese officials have done since 1990....or....when oil prices starting rising...by funding R&D and tax incentives for alternative energy investment, as Carter had done in the late 1970's.....

ace, you get the idea, I'm sure. The next administration has only one option,
lowering interest rates. Cutting taxes and increasing deficit spending are harder to do now than in 2001....before five years of vigorous tax cutting and when the deficit was no higher than $32 billion annually..........

It they try to lower interest rates, they run into the problem of how to attract buyers of $500 billion in annual treasury bill issuance, vs. just $32 billion in 2001. They also have the gnawing, deficit aggravating problem of servicing the interest on existing debt of $8500 billion, compared to only $5674 billion on Sept. 30, 2001....

NEW COMMENT, on May 21, 2008.,,, I'm going to look for 2007 tax revenue, 2007 MEW, and 2007 national debt increase. As far as national debt, we have the $32 billion increase for the 12 months prior to 2000 year end 9/30/00.

Stay tuned !

Okay, I'm back.... here is recent data:
Here is the amount the federal government spent in FY ending 9/30/07 that was greater than it's FY 2007 revenue:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo5.htm
09/30/2007 ____ $9,007,653,372,262.48
VS
09/29/2006 ____ $8,506,973,899,215.23

So, we have an "artificial" stimulus to the economy of $501 billion, in FY 2007 vs. just $32 billion, in FY 2000.
(Remember...the amount spent in FY 2000 that was greater than FY 2000 revenue, was just $32 billion....)

Here is a MEW graph, ace:
Moving forward, another year:
<h6>My point, ace... is that there is, and has been since FY 2001, massive fiscal stimulus from the sources of nearly $3-1/2 trillion in federal debt created from 10/01/00 through 9/30/07, accompanied by historically unprecedented stimulus from MEW....but even with that, these figures haven't grown impressively:</h6>
I do not understand how you can present a chart for discussion, as your OP does, that does not examine the catalysts for GDP growth, except to credit tax cuts as the principle driver. It is especially suspect to do so, during a period when the national debt increased from $5.65 trillion, to $9 trillion, and MEW was contributing to consumer spending in a suddenly upward spike

guyy

So if lowering taxes on those oh-so-burdened rich guys leads to higher economic growth, where's the economic growth? I see a recession.

In some thread a week or so ago, someone was touting Hayek and Friedmann over Keynes and Marx. Well, back in the days of Reagan and Thatcher, i'd hear that Keynesian theory couldn't explain/deal with stagflation, and that the Ronnie, Thatcher, and the Chicago boys had solved inflation. Only they didn't. It's back.

And besides the regressive taxes popular with the right and especially net "libertarians", ( = soak the poor) encourage people to cheat, steal, underreport, buy cigarettes in Indiana, and engage in other unproductive activities.

aceventura3

Host,

For a moment move away from national numbers and think about what your behavior would be if you were "rich" (you may be, I don't know). Then to illustrate the point, use two extreme marginal income tax rates of 90% and 10%. If you have choice, which you would have if you are rich, and you can earn an addition million dollars how would you uses tax management strategies?.

Under the first scenario of a 90% marginal income tax rate, what would you do? How much effort would you put into deferring the income? Accelerating expenses to off-set that income? Moving that income into non-taxed trusts? Moving that income into lower taxed entities or income streams, i.e. corporate tax may be lower, capital gains tax may be lower, municipal bonds may be tax free? At $1 million, the tax would be $900,000.

In the second the marginal income tax rate is 10%, the tax would be $100,000. How much less effort do you put into managing your tax burden here? How much effort relative to the $900,000 tax burden?

Hauser's law suggests that you would put in an effort in both scenarios to the point where your end tax burden reaches an equilibrium point. If that point is $90,000, you put in enough effort to reduce your $900,000 tax burden to $90,000 and you would do the same for your $100,000 tax burden. I know this is not a perfect representation of his data, but the total is the sum of the parts. At some point you have to look at individual behaviors.

Are you suggesting that in the 90% marginal tax rate scenario, that you would pay the tax without employing any tax management strategy?

__________________
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"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
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flstf

You are probably right, I just used this thread to once more point out that I believe the poor and middle class probably pay a higher percentage of their modest incomes than the wealthy to support our government. I don't think this is a view that is widely held.

Rekna

We need to close the tax loopholes. No more writing stuff off on your business. It is ridiculous. I know people who save every receipt and write every thing off on the business. Including their vacations, there food for them and their kids, their ipods, anything they buy is written off. The government needs to crack down on that kind of evasion.

loquitur

Rekna, what you just described is tax fraud. That's an enforcement issue, not a loophole issue.

There are very legitimate business expenses that are not loopholes - and if you eliminated them, the people who would suffer are the ones who work in restaurants and hotels. I do a lot of business over lunch, and I travel a bit for business. Yes, I treat those as business expenses; it does lead to business and more economic activity. I understand there are some people who begrudge others the "glamour" of living out of a suitcase alone in a strange city, but it's hardly a loophole (especially if the strange city is, say, Youngstown, OH or Flint, MI or Bristol, TN).

flstf

Perhaps individuals should be allowed to pay taxes only on what is left over after expenses like businesses?

loquitur

I think some people are missing the point of Ace's graph. It isn't that people do illegal things when rates are high and stop cheating when they come down (though I'm sure there is some amount of that, but nothing huge). The point is that people structure their activities differently depending on whether it benefits them or not. Tax considerations always affect business decisions - both whether to do something and how to do it. Risks might be worth running at low tax levels that aren't worth running at high tax levels, for instance. Stuff that generates taxable income now rather than deferred a few years is preferable at a low tax rate. Higher rates encourage activity that generates paper losses. And so on and so forth. That's why that graph looks like that: higher rates suppress certain kinds of activity and lower rates increase that activity.

No one should be surprised that people respond to incentives.

Willravel

Liq, do you remember what happened in the 80s when Reagan gave supply-side it's shot? Now compare that to the 90s when Clinton flipped supply-side on it's head.

FUCKING THING SUCKS! FUCK IT!

This is of course a reference to BillO flying off the handle and in no way represents Willravel's opinion of the topic at hand. It was made in jest.

host

People all have to live somewhere, ace. If you are correct, no wealthy people would live in western Europe, since their behavior would be influenced largely by tax considerations, France evidently is able to operate in a much more fiscally sustainable model than the US is, even with a relatively generous social benefits structure there.

Consider:
<img src="http://www.portfolio.com/images/feeds/blogs/corporate.gif">
Corporate tax revenue in the US has been declining.

<img src="http://www.portfolio.com/images/feeds/blogs/insurance.gif">
Surplus Social Security payroll collection has been rising, and then borrowed and spent by our government.

<img src="http://www.portfolio.com/images/feeds/blogs/both.gif">
Tax revenue trend with Social Security revenue subtracted....remove Social Security taxes collected, and the tax revenue trend seems to be moving down ace, not steady as Hauser claimed!

aceventura3

Host,

I noticed you avoided responding to a direct question regarding what your behavior would be, why?

Since you won't respond consider the liberal minded wealthiest man on the planet, Warren Buffet. Uncle Warren says his taxes are too low, he comments that his secretary pays a higher percentage of her income than he does. O.k., but let's look at billionaire behavior.

In 2007 his net worth increased $10 billion. I bet his income taxes paid did not change. Want to know why?

Warren Buffets' company pays him a modest salary, that did not change much. So his income taxes are based on a constant amount from year to year.
Warren Buffet's company doe not pay a dividend, which would be taxed as income.
Warren Buffet does not sell stock in his company, which would generate long or short term capital gains that would be taxed at the capital gains rate or as income.
Warren Buffet's children have their own wealth based on their investments in his company. They are already rich and don't need his estate after he dies. There most likely will be no estate tax.
Warren Buffet is giving billions to charity, namely the Gates Foundation. This is tax free. He seems to trust the Gates Foundation more than he trusts government.
If Buffet want to fly anywhere in the world, he owns a charter jet company. He gets the service at no personal cost. If he want a lifetime supply of free ice cream, guess what, he owns Dairy Queen.

Basically Uncle Warren can can do whatever he wants and have no personal income tax consequences. He manages his taxes. The joke is on everyone that buys into his false concerns about how little he pays in personal taxes.

On your point about France. If Uncle Warren wants to buy a home in France he will do it, one way or another, but I bet he will do it in a way that minimizes the tax consequences. It is the middle class and near "rich" who don't have choice and carry the real burden.

At least acknowledge that you understand this, so we can move on.

__________________
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"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
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loquitur

Will, I remember that when taxes were cut in '81 it ended a recession and was the beginning of a long, extended wave of prosperity that we are still in now. In the years since then, slowdowns have been quite moderate and infrequent. When I was growing up we had a recession every three years or so, and some of them were nasty. To a degree, the '86 tax simplification helped the process along. After Reagan's big cuts in '81 (which accompanied big spending cuts, though not enough to balance), there was a huge and sustained expansion. Compare to Carter, Ford, Nixon........

Clinton didn't turn supply side on its head at all. The small hike in '93 wasn't big enough to reverse the huge technology-driven growth in productivity and investment that was unleashed by the computer industry. Govt policy had very very little to do with the growth in the '90s. The peace dividend plus the computer industry drove the expansion. All the Bush cuts did was restore taxation levels to historical norms; the prosperity in the 90s boosted tax receipts way above normal expectations.

Willravel

You're referring to the Reagan Recession (caused by the oil and energy crisis of the 70s coupled with some of the worst decisions to come out of the Fed), yes? The one where, in response to outraged citizens, President Reagan was forced to raise corporate taxes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Equ...ty_Act_of_1982

Reagan raised taxes (to the tune of $100,000,000,000), like some sort of Democrat, in order to get the horrible and sudden recession under control.

loquitur

Will, with all due respect, you were 4 years old at the time - I remember the thing; I lived through it. The so-called "Reagan recession" was caused by Paul Volcker raising interest rates almost to 20% in order to wring out from the system the stagflation that was caused by the cumulative damage done by Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. It was deep and it was painful but it had precisely zero to do with Reagan; it was totally driven by monetary policy and moreover, the "malaise" started before the 1980 election. IIRC that recession was over by mid '82. By the time the tax cuts kicked in and worked their way through the economy, it was months later. What you're forgetting is that the tax cuts were enacted in '81 - and when that happened, the resulting wave of investment and risk started to show up in '82. You can look it up. That then accelerated when the tax code was rationalized in '86 and most tax shelters were killed off, which meant money was redirected to productive uses. The 80s also benefitted from Volcker having killed off inflation in '79-'81; it wasn't just the tax cuts, though the tax cuts were a huge part of it becaue they got rid of the economically distortionary decisionmaking that the tax code was causing.

Really, Will, you're just cherry picking stuff from history books (which I understand because you're not old enough to actually remember what was happening). What do you think caused the boom of the 90s - (i) a tiny adjustment of marginal rates or (ii) a combination of the peace dividend (resulting from Reagan pushing the USSR over the economic cliff) and a huge increase in productivity driven by technology, coupled with low energy prices?

Willravel

All this means is that you read the WSJ when it was happening. No information from that time was lost. Jeez, you act like it was ancient Egypt and all of the records were lost in a sandstorm or something. What we have now, in 2008, is a more complete historical context which includes long term effects.

You're way above using ageism fallacies, Liq. If I didn't know any better, I'd think someone else was posting in your account.

I'll address the rest of this when I get home from work.

loquitur

it's the difference between agenda-driven research and the freshness of memory, Will.

Cynthetiq

right there is much difference in reading about something than actually living it.

while it is sucky to read the gas crisis of the 70s, it was very painful to actual live it and sit in the car as a kid fidgeting and waiting in a very hot vehicle.

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sapiens

And one is not necessarily more accurate than the other.

Willravel

So what you're telling me is that none of the information you got in the 80s was biased, but all of the information I have now is? You're digging a deep hole there, Loq. It may be time to admit you're down there before you hit China.

Cynthetiq

no I wasn't stating anything about accuracy, but the emotions and feelings are much different.

You can't compare how you fell when you read something about the holocaust versus if you actually lived it.

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Willravel

Cynth makes a very good point: I wasn't in the holocaust. I want to make sure everyone is 100% clear on that point.

sapiens

Agreed.

dc_dux

IMO, this pretty much sums up the fallacy in ace's Hauser's law chart.

Hauser attempts to make a direct correlation between the decline in the marginal tax rates of A SINGLE GROUP (the top tax payers) with the steady rate of TOTAL tax revenue as a percent of GDP.



A more honest chart would compare the decline in the marginal tax rates of the top taxpayers with the revenue as percent of GDP derived from taxes from that income group.

As host's chart points out, the relatively steady rate of tax revenue as a percent of GDP is due more to the increase revenue from FICA taxes over that extended period of time.

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