5 Powerful Reasons Why the Rich Should Pay Their Taxes and Not Game the System

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-powerful-reasons-why-rich-should-pay-their-taxes-and-not-game-system



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1. $2 of Every $5 Owned Today was Created in the Last Five Years, and Went Mostly to the Richest 10%, Mostly Untaxed

And most of it was accumulated passively, and unproductively, by just waiting out the stock market. As America's wealth increased from $47 trillion to an incredible $80.66 trillion in just five years, the richest 1% are estimated to have added an average of $5 million each to their fortunes. They pay no wealth tax, they can defer their income taxes, and they pay a reduced capital gains tax when they decide to cash in.


2. A Beggar Saving for a Hamburger will Pay More Sales Tax than the Entire Financial Trading Industry

There is no sales tax on financial transactions, no matter how speculative, and despite the fact that total trading value is many times more than the world economy. Derivatives trading was a major factor in the economic crash that depleted middle-class homeowner wealth in 2008. The trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange reached $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012 (that's a thousand trillion). Yet no sales tax is paid.


3. It's Not Possible for a Financial Person to be Worth 100,000 Teachers or Firefighters

Defenders of excessive incomes use the "meritocracy" argument. But based on merit, some of the biggest moneymakers may be among the least worthy of us. Consider hedge fund managers who profit from shortages of homes and food, pay a smaller percentage in taxes than people making thousands of times less, and have the opportunity to defer all of their taxes. Or super-wealthy stock owners, like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or the Koch brothers, who take more from society than they give, yet can make up to $10 billion in one year, enough to pay the salaries of a quarter of a million medical technicians, and all of which can be tax-deferred indefinitely.


4. Corporations Make Billions by Appropriating Public Research and Federal Assets

Google's business is based on the Internet, which started as the Defense Department's ARPANET; the National Science Foundation funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that was adopted as the Google model; and Google Maps came from the massive geographical database of the U.S. Census Bureau.