Should we publish the size of the millionaires’ taxes?

YesThis will benefit democracy

There is an essential journalistic principle: secrets should not be violated unless it is in the public interest. No doubt the documents revealed Propolica Falls into this category. The New York-based independent media shows that wealthy Americans pay very little or sometimes no income tax. Being offended by the breach of confidentiality is a failure to see the importance of this information to the informed public debate. The courage of a few sources is essential: without them, big scandals would never have come to light.

This survey falls into this category because it reveals with statistics and examples supporting why the US tax system is obsolete. This is simply unreasonable. The opposite of its founding policy is its justification: everyone pays their share, and the rich get paid more.

An example? Investigators estimate that by the end of 2018, the 25 richest Americans will have $ 1,100 billion in assets [environ 907 milliards d’euros]. 14.3 million ordinary salaried citizens are needed to amass the same wealth. However, 25 billionaires paid $ 1.9 billion in taxes, while others shared an additional $ 143 billion. So the rich don’t contribute much to the public effort, even the reverse. Moreover, coming out of an epidemic of increased inequality is even more shocking.

Benevolence as an excuse

Warren Buffett and others defend themselves by citing benevolence. This is paradoxical. Of course, everyone is free to use their wealth to their advantage, and even better than a game [de ces fortunes] Serve the most backward. But not at the expense of a collective social policy. A few wealthy citizens can not determine the causes, categories of people, what departments to seek help. This choice must be the result of a democratic process. Otherwise, it is the philanthropists who are in power, not the elected leaders.

Encouraging the legitimacy of practices and crucifying those who do not understand the system is a denial of reality or a bad belief. These millionaires did nothing illegal, and that is the precision of the tax system problem. If they cheat, there will be appropriate action instructions. In fact, they use only the means at their disposal to reduce their tax base to arid rule.

With a line of hypocrisy in passing: Many of these millionaires, business owners like Facebook director Mark Zuckerberg (not the only one) receive no pay. What appears to be a good gesture is, on the contrary, a means of paying lower taxes, because it is precisely the income of the work that is highly taxed. Beyond capital gain (

[…]

Source

Born in March 1998 from the merger New Daily, of Geneva Journal And some Lawson Gazette, This center-right topic, popular among executives, is offered daily in French-speaking Switzerland

[…]

read more