What libs fail to recognize (or just refuse) is, when taxes are raised "only at the top of the income scale", everybody pays. Do you think businesses are simply going to absorb that cost? Why, why do you think that?
CC, I don't know why we need to believe that conservatives are traditionally smarter about how our tax system works any more than liberals. It's so complex that I find most people (regardless of their political philosophy) don't know very much about our tax system or how government (both sides of the isle) decides that it's going to tax us more because the standard of living in the Kingdom of Washington has fallen below what they're accustom to.
Hell, finding people who work for the IRS who can agree on tax questions is tough.
Not all "people"
at the the top, as it's called, pay taxes in the same manner as do businesses. And especially not in the same manner as the middle and working classes. A lot of people who have substantial wealth don't own businesses. They might be CEOs, etc, who are paid a lot. They might be billionaire hedge fund managers. But most people at the top don't earn a lot of their money from what's considered to be ordinary income. They lower their tax liabilities by via capital gains options and other tax reducing devices. And capital gains taxes aren't at all the same maximum tax rate the tax tables show for ordinary income. It's uncommon for top earning people to somehow fail to redistribute or convert their ordinary income into lesser taxed monies. And people with money really do have substantial tax advantages over people who don't.
Speaking of businesses. I constantly hear about the so-called high 35 plus percent tax rate on companies. Highest in the world. But our successful companies rarely, if ever, pay anywhere close to that amount. There is no "High Tax Rates", which are somehow mandatory because of gross earnings of a company. Companies, like say GE, don't pay taxes in the end because of a thing called "write offs and loopholes" that ordinary people (and even small businesses) aren't privy to.
So taxing the rich doesn't automatically impact corporations. It's not a trickle down situation. Holding on to assets or principal sums (wealth) that are, in and of themselves income producing, is the name of the game for wealthy people. In other words, more taxes means that how investments are made have to be revisited and perhaps makes some changes. People who have substantial wealth don't do seriously risky things to grow their money or assets. Tax free bonds, although low yield, is a common wealth "sustaining" tactic.
These kind of folks are "asset collectors (liquid or otherwise)", more than anything.
Now, I'm not talking about the Warren Buffets, Carlos Slims, or Bill Gates people (of which there are few in the world). They aren't even classified in the same way that most people who are considered to be really wealthy. They are mega-wealthy. They're like in the top one-half-of-one-percent. Their wealth is derived far from ordinary means. These type folks...they don't care about tax systems, period. They actually work in their favor, if anything.
Bottom line is: Aside from changing the entire way our tax system currently exists (which sucks). It's not the tax rates that need to be reformed. It's the tax loopholes. Most people don't even know what a genuine loophole is because they can't implement them - they don't accumulate enough growable money. Ordinary people are taxed in so many ways that they aren't even aware of the all. It's starting to become difficult to even list them. But I can tell you that people at the top often don't pay in all the ways that lower socioeconomic classes do.
Taxing is power for the government, but they exploit people and companies in different ways in order to tax. There's just not a lot that's really fair about our system, at this point. It enslaves most people. We're the governments' bread and butter, and the luxuries of the personal lives of those in high seats , and those who make it to the big show's - the origin of many of them's wealth.
