Wealthy people own companies. Companies are perfect tool for accumulating wealth, since you can reinvest profits forever and pay income tax (corporate rate) only on stuff you intend to extract to your own name, which is usually not much compared to total amount of generated income.

Right… to get at that wealth through taxes you would need a wealth tax or a tax on corporate profits along with outlawing stock buy backs.

Private person, on the other hand, is taxed on whole income and may qualify for usually laughable deductions. Got huge bonus from your job at the end of the year and plan to get few months off work to “invest in yourself” and learn a new trade? Tough luck, buddy, you are “rich” now - welcome to higher tax bracket, government will take their cut first and let’s see what you’ll be able to afford with what’s left.

That’s not how a progressive taxes work. Under progressive tax you get taxed at a higher rate as you make more money, but only the amount above a certain threshold is taxed higher, you’re not going to receive less money because you make above a certain amount as you seem to be implying. It’s explained more fully in this short video. https://youtu.be/VJhsjUPDulw

In terms of reinvesting in yourself, yes there should be universal access to education. If you’re capable and desire to improve yourself through education that should be free and you should be paid to pursue that self improvement. A society made up of smarter people benefits us all, we should make that investment.

VAT is a scam to fuck people who have to spend their income for actual living. If you live paycheck to paycheck you’ll end up paying VAT on your whole income.

Agreed VAT is a regressive tax that taxes the poor more. We see 100% eye to eye here.

Wealthy people don’t get their income in salary, salary is for working class. Dividends, capital gains, royalties - in any jurisdiction it’s possible to find something which will be less severe than income tax, which is also often not progressive or capped at something like 20%.

Well, yes which is why I said I support sovereign wealth funds. That is the state owns portions of companies directly in the same way other shareholders do. This cuts out the wealthy people entirely. The State can then use dividends of that fund to invest in social services. It can also use it’s position as a shareholder to give working people better labor contracts.

Dividends, capital gains, royalties - in any jurisdiction it’s possible to find something which will be less severe than income tax, which is also often not progressive or capped at something like 20%.

So you support lowering incoming taxes and raising taxes on dividends, capital gains, royalties? Sound like a decent policy to me. Well this is something else to consider; its almost like its more complicated than my original sarcastic comment implied.

Social security contributions are easily bypassed by employing yourself as CEO for minimal salary. Boom - now you have same healthcare as people who have to pay great chunk of their whole paycheck for it.

Uhh… yeah we should close that loopholes, right? Even if we didn’t close that loophole I still think its a much better system for healthcare than in the US.

If we restrict ourselves to EU citizens and your particular country is really anal or maybe 20% or something tax is too much for you anyway - you are free to move to Cyprus, Malta or Switzerland, which will have 0% capital gains if you meet not too tough conditions. Or “move”, you just have to get a residence there to declare as your primary one and be present at least sometimes - there’s no border control, it’s really hard to track if you spent there more than half a year for tax residency purposes, this is usually a matter of long legal battles and you won’t even get into that territory if you’re not doing anything too bizarre.

Not all that familiar with these kinds of tax dodging schemes within in the EU. But US corporations do similar things with the Cayman Islands. We could probably close these loopholes with enough political will. But again the easier and cleaner solution is a sovereign wealth fund which I mentioned in my first comment responding to you and you have not yet acknowledged as a way of raising funds.

I’m living and doing business in EU and it took me quite a lot of time to get from nothing into the position where I can utilize at least some of the benefits of the above - but you have to be completely fucking blind to not see that it’s rigged and tax burden on people who don’t try to game the system is completely disproportional.

Perhaps that is how things are but how should things be?

^This is what the law and order crowed says when the law is for wealthy and powerful people.

Honestly, I was being a bit facetious by responding to an overly simplistic comment in an overly simplistic way. Personally, I think we should fund universal welfare programs by cutting out the ultra-wealthy middle man with a sovereign wealth fund like they do in Norway. No need to tax the ultra-wealthy if they don’t exist because they can’t extract the wealth from the people in the first place.

*Fully paid by higher progressive taxes on wealthy people.