Tax Rates In The United States, Explained.

Donny please.

Also taxes !

Oh look more "eat the rich!" biased discussions by people who don't understand economics.

Progressive taxes are dangerous, especially when they are used to fund everything. Humans operate on incentives not compassion, progressive taxes remove the most basic human incentive to seek a better life. Why make good decisions early in life, study hard, avoid getting into legal troubles, and all the things that lead to social mobility when the net result is the same lifestyle regardless? Our current tax system transfers wealth from the top performers to the most under-performing as a way of buying the votes of those under-performers.

Also Vox should be the last place anyone goes for economical information. They are the equivalent of using healing crystals and essential oils to treat cancer.

Low the income tax, raise a sales tax on luxury items. "Luxury" being items from companies homed in other nations or the upper end products. A $1300 PC from HP is regular, a $3000 Mac would be "Luxury".

Believe it or not this is actually what most of the nations in the world do and what we mean when we say "non-tariff trade barriers". It's a way of advantaging local brands while also getting the wealthy to pay more. It's human nature to show off wealth, we *like* to brag and you'll find that taxing the top models of brands will do just that.

Of course it'll never happen. Conservatives don't like it cause taxes, Liberals don't like it because it doesn't let them do central planning of economies.

Oh they'd still be living in the USA, their tax homes on the other hand would be overseas and there are several that work for this purpose. That plus most wealth isn't in the form of "regular income" which you liberals love to tax.

If anyone makes more then ~$33,000 USD a year then they are in the top 1% of worldwide earners. After that earnings gets extremely localized due to cost of living have such a dramatic effect on disposable income. Someone making $70,000 USD in Oklahoma has far more disposable income then someone making $120,000 USD in Northern Virginia or California. This is why progressive gross income tax structures are so bad on a national level and we should instead move to a flat tax on *net* income, which is income after expenses. We kinda sort do this now with the deductions system yet those are so situational and abused that it defeats the purpose. Instead a national list of acceptable expenses to use as a deduction, then a flat percentage of disposable income.

Yes the US's corporate tax rate was beyond stupid at 35% of net. This is why companies would do crazy things with their money to avoid profits hitting "net" income, deferrals, price transferring, foreign investment, *anything* that would shift income away from net. Investments didn't even need to return a profit, they would just have better then a 35% loss. Thing is, only super corporations could pull the financial stunts required to reduce that tax burden, small and mid sized companies didn't have the resources and had to take the 35% hit on the chin. Now it's been made 21% which had been a big boon for small and mid sized business's while not changing much for big companies. Apple for example has something like a real tax rate of ~4%, they get it this low by shifting money around and keeping most of it locked inside international investments.

Economically many of them live in off shore tax heavens.