75% Tax Rate

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19754016

Well, it's gone through. Hollande's vision of a socialist utopia where profit is severely punished. Luckily I'm not in France, so I'm in a position to watch it all go to shit and see Rand proven complete right with a modern day example.

-A new 75% tax on the richest earning more than 1m euros
-A 45% income tax rate on incomes over 150,000 euros a year
-A freeze in government spending, excluding debt repayments and pensions
-The elimination of a ceiling on "l'impot de solidarite sur la fortune", or wealth taxes, so that assets of more than 1.3m euros will be taxed at 1.5%
-The reduction of tax exemptions for loan payments by large corporations
-Capital gains and dividends will now be subject to the income tax regime

>>29
I can agree that 75% is a bit on the harsh side (continuing the example in >>4, I'd personally just as soon go with continuing the 50% chunk indefinitely), but let's face it; taxing the «luxury part» as such, is one step in the direction of everyone being actually equal to the law.

One of the core points in Socialism, that made the whole idea so appealing to so many, was the idea of «contribute according to ability». This does include taxation on income. And no, this does not demean the common worker, as they don't have a whole lot to contribute with.
Just to show that even Socialism can get things right every once in a while.


Btw, wasn't there this hearing thingy in the US at the start of the latest crisis thingy? The one where some of the biggest (failing) corporations had their leaders go to Washington – by corporate jet, no less! – to beg Washington for alms? The one where one of the senators asked if anyone of those leaders would be willing to give up (or at least share) their corporate jets, as one step towards saving on expenses? The one where the most repeated phrase was «Let the record show that no hands went up»?

What I'm driving at here, is that in the long run, you can only get so many people willing to keep pulling their own weight, when the richest people around, keep coming of as a bunch of greedy pricks.


Also, I remember hearing about a time when the right to vote depended on whether or not one had paid one's tax. Even if we're not going quite there, this will at least give rich folks the moral right to be bitching over where «my tax money» is going… ;-)


As for the dry stuff: I won't speculate what it says that nobody else noticed the mistake in the math (in >>4). With the first 10,000 exempt, the sub-1M taxable chunks become 10,000×0%=0; 150,000×25%=37,500; 840,000×50%×420,000; total 462,500 tax from that first million. That leaves you with 535,500.
An income of 2M then leaves one 1M×75%=750,000 to the 462,500 = 1,207,500; total 60.375%, leaving 792,500.
3M gives 2M×75%=1,500,000 + 462,500 = 1,962,500; total 65.42%, leaving 1,037,500.