I wholeheartedly agree with FerdWulkan’s belief that the rich should pay their fair share, but his emphasis on raising tax rates perpetuates the illusion that the rich get rich because tax rates are too low. They get that way because the definitions of taxable income enables most of their wealth to escape taxation.
The fundamental problems are that we tax income but not wealth, and that an army of extremely well-paid accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists work to help the rich avoid paying taxes (see Donald Trump). They feast on the complex and esoteric rules that define the tax system, and that complexity defends then from public scrutiny.
The most effective tax dodges are highly technical and cannot be described in a few words. The rich also park a lot of their wealth overseas in places like the Cayman Islands, making extensive use of shell corporations and similar devices. Mega-yachts are rarely owned outright by individuals; they are owned by shell corporations that conceal their actual ownership.
Civics classes teach an idealized version of how bills become law; they don’t examine the inner workings of the committees that generate tax legislation, nor do they examine how the text of a bill actually gets written. (Hint: it’s almost never written by Congresspeople themselves.) The devil is truly in the details.
Paul Abrahams
Deerfield