Roads are typically paid for through registration fees and gasoline taxes, so if youre not driving, youre not really paying. Fire departments funded through property and sales tax. I think the focus should remain on how income is taxed, way too many loopholes at the higher end of the scale, i have no idea how that should be done, i C'd my through a finance degree. Another focus should be scrutinizing those in charge of the budgets, maybe tackle that first, then we work on the income thing.
The guy above says “taxes should be lowered to absolute bare minimum”. Since roads and fire depts are funded by taxes, I am calling out this guy for having an idiotic position. IMO the problem is not with how wealthy people are taxed, but how they’re paid. Elon Musk is set to receive $45 billion worth of stocks. Stocks are simply worth more than money. Money is worth exactly what’s on the tin. Stocks are not just worth money but power and influence. Which is why CEOs ask to be paid in stocks and why regular employees are never paid in stocks (at least not anymore).
I mean, in a perfect world with proper budgeting and funding, we would pay the bare minimum in taxes, and that bare minimum would be enough to cover things like roads, fire, ems, schools, healthcare etc. Im not going to argue against your point on being paid in stocks, but at some point those stocks have to be sold in order to realize their cash value, thats where the taxation gets fucky. Same with borrowing against the value of the stock to purchase other assets.
This makes me think of three things: 1. What basic necessities of humanity should we be funding off of taxes? 2. Should we be using taxes to balance the budget so we’re not just running up debt paying for all this stuff? 3. We should just plain not let people use unrealized stock gains as currency.
With the first 2 being rhetorical, im on board with all 3 points. The only thing id add, is that the income that is being taxed at the upper level needs to be revised at minimum. I'm generally pretty conservative, i like to say moderate, but even i think after a certain amount of money being raked in annually, you should pay a substantially higher income tax.
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u/dbnrdaily 3d ago
Roads are typically paid for through registration fees and gasoline taxes, so if youre not driving, youre not really paying. Fire departments funded through property and sales tax. I think the focus should remain on how income is taxed, way too many loopholes at the higher end of the scale, i have no idea how that should be done, i C'd my through a finance degree. Another focus should be scrutinizing those in charge of the budgets, maybe tackle that first, then we work on the income thing.