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Reading all the comments so far I have not seen one mention of taxing organized religious institutions. For something that (sadly) has so much influence of far too many lives it is far overdue to have them share the bounty from their tax-free windfall
I think if the churches wish to remain tax exempt then they need to not get involved in politics. No donation to any party, and no rallying for any politician on any level.
I think it’s perfectly fine for a religious organization to be tax exempt provided they provide the same level of service as other non-profit orgs. I also think we desperately need to overhaul the requirements and auditing practices of organizations claim to be non-profits.
I don’t think a religious organization on its face deserves to be tax exempt.
I feel like we need a general rule that if the head of your organization makes an appearance in or owns a room where everything is literally plated in gold then you immediately lose non-profit status.
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Everytime I hear arguments against wealth tax, gift tax, property tax or inheritance tax. It’s the same argument, it’s unfair towards the people who has worked all their life and want to leave their already taxed money to their family.
In Norway we have no inheritance tax and no tax on gifts. Most people have no taxes on homes either. We do have some wealth tax.
My main issue with the arguments against it is that its is lacking imagination. We make the rules, we can decide to make it fair. We can set a limit for when taxation occurs at a really high number. Just so that 98% of Norwegians get zero taxes on these things.
Zero taxes for inheritance up to 1 000 000 euros and then 75% on every euro above. Is possible.
Zero taxes on gifts up to 50 000 euros a year is possible.
No taxes on homes worth less than 1 000 000 is possible.
Bringing wealth with you when you permanently move out of the country is possible for values less than 5 000 000 euros for instance.
Then adjust for inflation every year (like we do with many of our welfare systems)
If we do this we can get rid of the wealth tax that the rich hate so much (because they are disadvantaged owners compared to owners of businesses in other countries)
No regular people will feel these taxes at all, and they make sure that the wealth is distributed over time. It’s still possible to get rich, and remain rich. But your children can be rich but not insanely rich.
Exactly what the rates should be is up for debate, but this system is in my opinion a better one.
You can index the values to a multiple of the median salary instead of a fixed number.
You can take this a step further and ask why we have this aggregation of wealth at all. Private wealth consolidation is a form of malinvestment resulting from a handful of individuals who are told they can effectively loot the economy unchecked.
Taxation “solves” the problem by clawing back some of that malinvestment. But if you recognize it as malinvestment from the outset, you can see arguments against having these private aggregators of wealth at all.
Instead of taxes, why not simply impose a maximum income? In baseball, you’d call it a salary cap.
if there was a maximum income people would still bitch and whine about those with mansions aquired through non monetary means.
Perhaps the next step is to improve our land use policy, such that one individual isn’t afforded a mansion’s worth of real estate.
a farm uses more land than most small mansions though, and plenty of individuals own farms.
Farm collectivization isn’t a new idea
Starting to see upvotes over 1k on lemmy is encouraging, glad to see we are still growing
Too late we’re already an oligarch dictatorship
Taxes won’t work now anyway. A redistribution of wealth is required.
That’s what tax is.
Tax is a redistribution of new wealth. A redistribution of existing wealth is required.
Not through a dictatorial government it’s not.
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And some guy says “hey man, you need to give back like 20% of that. And that’s kinda lowkey generous tbh.” And their response is literally like “no.”
Beyond every great fortune is a great crime.
Why would you think the modern day Robber Barons could be swayed by social need? If they cared about social need, they wouldn’t be billionaires to begin with.
Why would you think the modern day Robber Barons could be swayed by social need?
If they need say first aid or a blood transfusion or the mob to stop beating them to death I think they could be persuaded to understand that we live in a society.
Oh sure. But then they wouldn’t be Robber Barons so much as they’d be French Aristocracy on Bastille Day. Totally different position.
And even then, when Robespierre had King Louis by the balls, what did Marie Antoinette do? Austrian mercenary jailbreak.
“I’d rather fight to the death to keep my yacht than let anyone else have public health care” is just hardwired into some of these people.
I’ll make the same argument that I made in another thread, but now that I’ve got Bernie on my side, maybe people will listen.
TAXING THE RICH DOESN’T MEAN RAISING THE TAX RATES.
It means regulation, oversight, and accountability. You can set the tax rate to any number you want, but it won’t matter if no one is making them pay it. We have to hold them accountable first, and then we can bring the rates back up to something from the pre-Reagan era.
Funny that trump is trying to get rid of regulation, oversight, and accountability.
Funny how he prefers tariffs over taxes so he and his rich buddies don’t have to pay out more from their end.
Harvard is missing from that list as well
