# What is a fair amount of tax for the rich to pay? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 26, 2010, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416 "2010-04-26T16:52:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/421 "2010-05-12T02:52:17Z")
> [@erez](#): > > This is a terrible argument (I guess that’s not surprising considering low knowledge of economics among liberals, as proved by a recent study 😉 ). Even if all these things you listed were actual benefits to entrepreneurs or other “rich” people, what percentage of government’s spending do you think goes to these activities? Very low. Largest portions of the US government’s spending (Social Security, national defense, unemployment, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, debt interest, transportation, Veterans, HUD, education) are things that do not benefit rich people much more than than their proportional income and some of them even benefit them less. The story is the same with local taxes (pensions, health care, education, welfare, policing, fire protection, prisons, water, waste, recreation, libraries, interest). Therefore, the rich are definitely not getting the benefits disproportionally greater than their income. > > What all the advocates of high taxes on the rich in this thread fail to understand is that we live in a world where people can make choices. If you try to squeeze every last cent out of them, people can decide to move to a different state or country or just to work a bit less and take up a hobby instead. Unemployed make similar choices when they reject landscaping job offers because they prefer to continue receiving unemployment benefits ([Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com](http://www.detnews.com/article/20100510/BIZ/5100335/1001)) and the rich can make them even easier. They might not do so immediately and not every one of them will make such changes, but if they do, the result will not be positive for the economy. Nobody is squeezing the rich. The whole point of this thread is they have had their taxes dropped over and over until they are paying far below their fair share. They have gone from a 90 % rate to under 10. Does that seem confiscatory to you? We all make choices. We should choose to have the rich pay their share of taxes. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/422 "2010-05-12T02:55:10Z")
The people on unemployment will get cut off if they refuse work. All the landscapers in the story has to do is report them. Who can live on unemployment anyway? ---
**Author:** ![erez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47c2d/32.png) [@erez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erez)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/423 "2010-05-12T04:30:37Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Nobody is squeezing the rich. The whole point of this thread is they have had their taxes dropped over and over until they are paying far below their fair share. They have gone from a 90 % rate to under 10. Does that seem confiscatory to you? We all make choices. We should choose to have the rich pay their share of taxes. This is absolutely incorrect. The rate that the rich pay is not under 10%. If you bothered to read your own USA Today link, you could click on the “Track taxes” link and you’d get 35% effective tax rate for someone making $1,000,000. This rate does not include local taxes, which are usually progressive as well. In that same article you quoted, they clearly say why the overall rate went down: > [@](#): > > Why the tax bite has eased: > > • Stimulus law. One-third of last year’s $862 billion economic stimulus went for tax cuts. Biggest reduction: The Making Work Pay tax credit reduced income taxes $800 for married couples earning up to $150,000. > > • Progressive tax rates. Presidents Clinton and Bush pushed through a series of tax changes — credits, lower rates, higher exemptions — that slashed income taxes for poor and middle-class families. A drop in income now can trigger big tax breaks and sharply lower rates, sometimes falling to zero. > > • Sales tax. Consumers cut spending sharply in this downturn, thereby paying less in sales taxes. As you can see, the first two reasons apply only to poor or middle-income people. > [@gonzomax](#): > > The people on unemployment will get cut off if they refuse work. All the landscapers in the story has to do is report them. Who can live on unemployment anyway? The law is not that simple. Work would have to be suitable: “The usual criteria include the degree of risk to a claimant’s health, safety, and morals; the physical fitness and prior training, experience, and earnings of the person; the length of unemployment and prospects for securing local work in a customary occupation; and the distance of the available work from the claimant’s residence.” There are more than enough reasons for almost anybody to claim that landscaping work is not suitable. BTW, I’m not claiming that people who don’t want to accept such jobs while unemployed are bad in any way; they are simply making a smart choice based on the current law. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/424 "2010-05-12T06:14:32Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > So no answer? Just subjective hand waving about “having lots of money left over after a rational level of spending” with no attempt to define what is “lots” and what is “rational”? > > Or is it that only those who can make more each night than they can spend the next day are rich? > > Sorry but very disappointing. For certain policies it makes sense to define richness by wealth, in others (like for taxation) we can define it by income. We know that being rich and feeling rich are two different things, since we tend to measure our wealth against others. Since we’re talking about tax policy here, we clearly care more about income than wealth. And the marginal utility of dollars earned varies less than linearly. It also varies with wealth - if you had nothing, the first dollar of your million dollar paycheck would still count for a lot, while if you were Bill Gates it wouldn’t count for much. Some things, like student loans, count wealth also. But changing tax rates based on wealth would be a pain to administer, so I don’t think it is a good idea. Since the marginal utility curve doesn’t have a radical bend when you hit some amount that one would call rich, I don’t think defining what rich means is very important. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/425 "2010-05-12T11:45:27Z")
> [@spazattak](#): > > I think 250k/yr is fair to call ‘rich’. At that point a household is easily pulling in over 10k a month. We’re looking at comfortably being able to afford a half-million dollar house, 2-3 luxury car payments, a modest vacation property and the best private schools in the area while maxing out retirement plans. Our household income is more than that but we do not do any of things except for maxing out retirement plans. I took our expenditure from last year and added in the estimated costs of the bigger house/vacation home/luxury cars and private schools. We would need an income of about $400,000 to be able to afford all those things. And that is without any additional saving beyond the 401(k) - not even for college. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/426 "2010-05-12T13:23:35Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > The people on unemployment will get cut off if they refuse work. All the landscapers in the story has to do is report them. Who can live on unemployment anyway? that can be a big if. I think most people would rather work, but some do turn down temp work because they’d rather collect; some work under the table for cash and still collect. It definitely not a long term solution. ---
**Author:** ![spazattak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@spazattak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spazattak)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/427 "2010-05-12T21:37:38Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > Our household income is more than that but we do not do any of things except for maxing out retirement plans. I took our expenditure from last year and added in the estimated costs of the bigger house/vacation home/luxury cars and private schools. We would need an income of about $400,000 to be able to afford all those things. And that is without any additional saving beyond the 401(k) - not even for college. ## We’re talking about ~13,000 take-home per month after 401k contributions 3000 - mcmansion 2000 - 2-3 luxury car payments 2000 - day care/tution for kids 1200 - vacation home (which is 50% more than our current house payment) 1000 - roth ira max for 2 supplemental retirement accounts (which can double as college savings) 1000 - lots of groceries 1000 - utilities 2000+ leftover for whatever… what am I missing? ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/428 "2010-05-12T21:53:31Z")
> [@spazattak](#): > > ## We’re talking about ~13,000 take-home per month after 401k contributions > > 3000 - mcmansion > 2000 - 2-3 luxury car payments > 2000 - day care/tution for kids > 1200 - vacation home (which is 50% more than our current house payment) > 1000 - roth ira max for 2 supplemental retirement accounts (which can double as college savings) > 1000 - lots of groceries > 1000 - utilities > 2000+ leftover for whatever… > > what am I missing? I got to 12k per month left after 401(k), tax (Fed & State) & Social security (I assumed two incomes, so each person has to reach the cap), so we are not far out there. We were very close on the home costs if that was just for the mortgage. I added some for maintenance on the vacation home, extra property taxes and insurance. And extra insurance for luxury cars on top of what I pay for our 100k+ mile cars. But the biggest differences are in schooling. The original email referred to the “best private schools.” I only looked up one, which happened to be Westminster in Atlanta. Tuition is $20k/year. I have 3 kids, so that gives $5k/month versus your $2k. So your $2k/month buffer has now gone. We are at -$4k per month counting the $1k difference in money available per month (I used a 1040 spreadsheet available online to calculate the tax, so I am pretty confident of that). So we need an extra $4k per month. Plus I don’t see anything in your budget for vacations - rich people take lots of those, even in addition to owning a vacation home - insurance, gas, clothing, gifts, recreation and more. My comment about needing $400k/year gives an extra $150k before taxes, which would be about $90k, or $7.5k/month after taxes. That still looks right to me. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/429 "2010-05-12T22:01:21Z")
> [@spazattak](#): > > … what am I missing? Well off the top of my head … real estate taxes, heat, water, electricity, our share of health insurance, noncovered medical expenses, gas, life insurance, disability insurance, car insurance (teen driver in the house, oy), clothes for the kids, toys for the kids, clothes for us, cable, telephone, household repairs, an occassional dinner out and maybe a movie, some ordering in, maybe a vacation once a year, the 529 for college (no the Roth don’t cut it) … I’m sure there’s more if I wanted to actually think about it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/430 "2010-05-12T22:09:29Z")
How much is a Mcmansion in your neck of the woods? Where I live $3k a month mortgage payment would get you a very moderately priced house - which is $500 K or so in the Bay Area, even after the collapse of housing prices. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/431 "2010-05-13T01:34:46Z")
You see **Voyager** my question came up because of the statement that I’m “not even in the vicinity of the category of ‘rich’ when people talk about fleecing the rich …” and without revealing what my income actually is (no one’s business here) I was curious as to what “rich” was then. Your second answer was pretty much spot on: we measure our wealth against others, and by implication, others’ against ours. My solidly middle class (okay, upper middle class) community outside of Chicago has a mean housing sales price of between $400-500K this last year, and that is down 37% year-on-year. These include some nice homes to be sure, but also some more modest structures. $250K/y can cut it but it doesn’t get you a mansion and a summer home and private school and multiple luxury cars. It does get you an excellent school district though. (Which some avoid in preference to nearby Catholic schools both at the grade school level and High School. Which aint cheap. I just don’t get that. But then I am not Catholic.) I have heard that “rich” is someone who makes four times what you make (or reasonably expect to make). Consequently it may be that a larger percent of the American population is rich in the mind of some here but a much smaller number seem rich to you. When people discuss higher taxes on the rich they generally mean those who are that abstract concept that they don’t actually know, not Uncle Voyager. Now personally I don’t consider myself “rich” but I do not mind paying a larger share than a significantly lower wage earner, in fact I think that I should. And I do. Even though my nth dollar has a pretty big utility. OTOH I think someone who really _is_ rich (to my perspective) should in turn pay significantly more than me. ---
**Author:** ![Amara\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7993a0/32.png) [@Amara\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amara_1)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/432 "2010-05-13T02:22:41Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > But the biggest differences are in schooling. The original email referred to the “best private schools.” I only looked up one, which happened to be Westminster in Atlanta. Tuition is $20k/year. I have 3 kids, so that gives $5k/month versus your $2k. So your $2k/month buffer has now gone. Tuition costs are generally only for the school year. If you both work then you probably need to include about ~1K per month per child during summer as well so you’d be even more in the hole! Our infant daycare (a center in CA and certainly not close to the most expensive one) is $1400 a month. I’m in the Bay Area. We aren’t at 250K a year but I don’t think that goes that far here…state and federal taxes, childcare, commutes and housing costs would certainly chew it up. I also think that there is a big difference between 1 person earning 250K a year (so maybe no childcare costs) and 2 people having that as their combined income. Second Edit: Health insurance costs and other medical costs are also non-negligible. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/433 "2010-05-13T02:31:17Z")
> [@erez](#): > > This is absolutely incorrect. The rate that the rich pay is not under 10%. If you bothered to read your own USA Today link, you could click on the “Track taxes” link and you’d get 35% effective tax rate for someone making $1,000,000. This rate does not include local taxes, which are usually progressive as well. > > In that same article you quoted, they clearly say why the overall rate went down: > As you can see, the first two reasons apply only to poor or middle-income people. > > The law is not that simple. Work would have to be suitable: “The usual criteria include the degree of risk to a claimant’s health, safety, and morals; the physical fitness and prior training, experience, and earnings of the person; the length of unemployment and prospects for securing local work in a customary occupation; and the distance of the available work from the claimant’s residence.” There are more than enough reasons for almost anybody to claim that landscaping work is not suitable. BTW, I’m not claiming that people who don’t want to accept such jobs while unemployed are bad in any way; they are simply making a smart choice based on the current law. In Michigan those provisions are long gone. You have to take a job if offered and the pay does not have to be comparable, nor does it have to be in your field. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/434 "2010-05-13T02:40:10Z")
> [@erez](#): > > This is absolutely incorrect. The rate that the rich pay is not under 10%. If you bothered to read your own USA Today link, you could click on the “Track taxes” link and you’d get 35% effective tax rate for someone making $1,000,000. This rate does not include local taxes, which are usually progressive as well. > > In that same article you quoted, they clearly say why the overall rate went down: > As you can see, the first two reasons apply only to poor or middle-income people. > > The law is not that simple. Work would have to be suitable: “The usual criteria include the degree of risk to a claimant’s health, safety, and morals; the physical fitness and prior training, experience, and earnings of the person; the length of unemployment and prospects for securing local work in a customary occupation; and the distance of the available work from the claimant’s residence.” There are more than enough reasons for almost anybody to claim that landscaping work is not suitable. BTW, I’m not claiming that people who don’t want to accept such jobs while unemployed are bad in any way; they are simply making a smart choice based on the current law. [404 Error Page - Tax.com](http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/MSUN-7YHGVN?OpenDocument) read the graph. the millionaires do not pay 35 percent. But if they did it would be too damn low. But they do not. It is closer to 20 and they find lots of ways to shield income. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/435 "2010-05-13T05:22:17Z")
[http://www.faireconomy.org/press\_room/2010/millionaires\_to\_congress\_tax\_us](http://www.faireconomy.org/press_room/2010/millionaires_to_congress_tax_us) Even some of those who are getting the breaks are offended by the unfairness of the tax breaks the rich get. They know it is unfair. Why you guys can’t get it, i don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/436 "2010-05-13T14:16:44Z")
> [@erez](#): > > This is a terrible argument … the rich are definitely not getting the benefits disproportionally greater than their income. I agree. Buying into this a la carte government where you should get something in proportion to what you pay is not a good idea. We are all born naked and helpless, some of us will be smart, some of us will not, some of us will be strong and healthy, some of us will not. I think a fair world is the world that each of these helpless babies would choose to be born into if they didn’t know whether they would be smart or healthy, boy or girl, black or white, rich or poor. Nobody has figured out how to overcome human nature enough to make the communist “from each according to their ability and to each according to their need” work. But that doesn’t mean that people should pay a la carte for the value of the services that government directly provides to them. You are simply never going to convince people who think the rich are overtaxed that they owe their wealth to the opportunities provided by our society. There are brilliant hardworking people all over the world but the ones born and raised in America and other relativelty high tax western democracies tend to become wealthier more consistently than the hard-working brilliant folks in other parts of the world. > [@](#): > > What all the advocates of high taxes on the rich in this thread fail to understand is that we live in a world where people can make choices. If you try to squeeze every last cent out of them, people can decide to move to a different state or country or just to work a bit less and take up a hobby instead. Unemployed make similar choices when they reject landscaping job offers because they prefer to continue receiving unemployment benefits ([Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com](http://www.detnews.com/article/20100510/BIZ/5100335/1001)) and the rich can make them even easier. They might not do so immediately and not every one of them will make such changes, but if they do, the result will not be positive for the economy. By your rationale we would see one of two things. A race to the bottom in taxation or a shift of the world’s wealth to Monaco. The first is not desirable and thesecond is not likely. If the developed nations of the world coordinated their tax systems instead of trying to poach each other’s capital (see our ridiculously low capital gains tax rate) and high income industries (see our taxation of hedge fund carried interest), we could probably achieve something closer to fairness than we have today. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/437 "2010-05-13T14:22:05Z")
> [@erez](#): > > This is absolutely incorrect. The rate that the rich pay is not under 10%. If you bothered to read your own USA Today link, you could click on the “Track taxes” link and you’d get 35% effective tax rate for someone making $1,000,000. This rate does not include local taxes, which are usually progressive as well. I don’t know which link you are talking about but, 35% is the top marginal federal tax rate. the effective federal tax rate for soemone making $1,000,000 is closer to about 22% on average. > [@](#): > > In that same article you quoted, they clearly say why the overall rate went down: > As you can see, the first two reasons apply only to poor or middle-income people. If you want to know how taxes on the rich have decresed, please see differences between Clinton tax schedules (go up to 39.6%, they were 50% for most of Reagan’s tenure), capital gains rate (now 15%, 20% under Clinton, 28% during most of Reagan’s tenure) and qualified dividend rate (always treated as ordinary income until Bush Jr. when the rate was dropped from 39.6% to 15%). ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/438 "2010-05-13T14:25:46Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > Our household income is more than that but we do not do any of things except for maxing out retirement plans. I took our expenditure from last year and added in the estimated costs of the bigger house/vacation home/luxury cars and private schools. We would need an income of about $400,000 to be able to afford all those things. And that is without any additional saving beyond the 401(k) - not even for college. Depending on where you live $250K is not “rich” but it is enough that you want for nothing, your kids can go to private school, you have several luxury cars and you can afford domestic help. That’s rich but not “rich” you are probably not earning disproportionately to your risk, ability and effort. Once you start making more than $1,000,000/year you are not earning based merely on your ability and effort. ---
**Author:** ![Honesty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f04885/32.png) [@Honesty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honesty)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/439 "2010-05-13T14:39:26Z")
Nice question! I’d much rather see more taxes on corporations than on individual citizens (regardless of being rich or not). Be that as it may, I would include and expand the tax brackets as follows: 12, 000 - 19, 000 5% 20, 000 - 60, 000 13% 61,000 - 200,000 18% 200,000 - 1.2 million 25% 1.3 mil - 8 million 35% 8.1 million+ 50% I’d also like to drastically narrow the scope of deductions to children and donations. The government has no business handing money to any specific industry (car, weather-proofing, etc) or offering a (up to) $3000 deduction to people who lost money on the stock market (Gee, I lost money at the Casino, why isn’t that deducted too?). ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416/440 "2010-05-13T15:06:52Z")
> [@Honesty](#): > > Nice question! > > I’d much rather see more taxes on corporations than on individual citizens (regardless of being rich or not). Be that as it may, I would include and expand the tax brackets as follows: > > 12, 000 - 19, 000 5% > 20, 000 - 60, 000 13% > 61,000 - 200,000 18% > 200,000 - 1.2 million 25% > 1.3 mil - 8 million 35% > 8.1 million+ 50% > > I’d also like to drastically narrow the scope of deductions to children and donations. The government has no business handing money to any specific industry (car, weather-proofing, etc) or offering a (up to) $3000 deduction to people who lost money on the stock market (Gee, I lost money at the Casino, why isn’t that deducted too?). That would not generate the tax revenue that we need. I still don’t see what the problem is with taking the Clinton tax rates and adding a couple of brackets at the top. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-fair-amount-of-tax-for-the-rich-to-pay/537416.md?page=23)