Tax

02/06/2023

I’ve just read an article that highlights how the top earners in the US have slowly gone from tax payers, with the highest tax rate pealking at 90% under FDR, to govt lenders today.

That is, rather than pay tax, they now lend the govt money and get the bond rate as interest.

What an interesting idea. Remove taxation altogether and get everyone mandated to lend some percentage of their income to the govt.

The percentage of income to be lent would be higher for higher income earners, or the interest rate would be higher for lower income earners.

People might stop avoiding paying tax if there was a financial return.

And the govt might need to spend it more carefully if they needed to pay all that interest. Of course they could print the interest but only if they were incentivising enough growth to absorb said printing without causing excessive inflation.