Comparing personal income tax rates to corporate tax rates doesn't really make sense. At the end of the chain, corporations are always owned by human beings, who must pay tax as well (albeit possibly in the form of capital gains or taxes on dividends).

Point is, if you are upset, and I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't be, then the focus should be on the difference between tax on income vs capital gains / dividend income.

Something I've always been curious about: if capital gain taxes (for both individuals and corporations) were set to reasonable (high) levels, would there still be a strong argument for taxing corporate profits?

It depends on who you ask I suppose. I think it is reasonable to have 0% tax on corporations if the other taxes were correct. An issue is that under that regime many corps would choose to never pay a dividend, so that would have to be fixed somehow.

If the only tax on corporations occurred when dividends were paid, corporations would just stop paying dividends.

You’ll also have the problem we already have today, where individuals would construct their lives around a closely held corporation. When the corporation is closely held, income is supposed to pass through to the individual for taxation, but the incentives to evade theose rules would be much stronger.

In my perfect world most government revenue would come from land value taxes, with a smattering of Pigovian taxes on top, to the extent that the bureaucracy required to levy them wasn’t too onerous.

Ah cool. I see the benefits of having a straight land tax. An issue with that is that the value of land can be hard to figure out and is easy to game.

My ideal practical tax would be just a straight sales tax and nothing else. Income = Consumption + Savings, and since we want to encourage savings and investment it seems better and simpler to just do it that way.

Total libertarian dream scenario is no taxes, and government funds it self via slight inflation as a tax.

I get it, but I'd remove the first 6/7 of the post and add another 6/7 explaining the last sentence.

The first 6/7 is a condescending description of something obvious that doesn't respond to the OP's post, then reads histrionics into the post, then in the final sentences veers towards a real explanation, only to leave the rest as an unobvious exercise to the reader.

Which worker bees are paying 35-50%?

You just about have to make a million dollars per year in the US - and be in California or NYC - to pay 50%. One million dollars in income gets you to about 47% in LA, SF, or NYC. A quarter of a million dollar income will get you up to 35% - and those are the most expensive tax locations in the country.

$50,000 (the US median full-time income) gets you a combined effective rate, before deductions, of: 16% in Dallas, 20% in LA, 23% in Portland, 16% in Seattle, 24% in NYC, and 22% in Boise.

In Seattle, Miami, or Dallas, you'll pay a combined 36% on one million dollars in income.

> Which worker bees are paying 35-50%?

Lots of people in Europe. Which for sure is also a big market for FB. In Germany you are already have deductions of nearly 50% if your income is around 50000€.

I do not see how a person making 50k € in Germany would have a gross/net difference of 50 %.

According to [1], the gross/net difference would be about 34 % in the worst case (highest tax class, no children, not married etc.), which includes social security, health insurance and so on. The calculator gives realistic results for my own income.

[1] https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/

If I enter 50k there, and a tax class 1, then I end up with

Netto: 2.456,06 € 29.472,66 €

which means 40% deductions. Which is approximately what I meant (yes, 50% was slightly too high).

You have to enter a value in the tax allowance field ("Jährl. Steuerfreibetrag"). The first 9000 € (if not married) a year are not taxed.

At 50k you are paying between 10-15% income tax.

> Which worker bees are paying 35-50%?

With the “and other witholdings” it's pretty easy to hit, as typical withholdings beyond income tax include state and federal payroll taxes, employee share of group health insurance and HSA withholdings, pre-tax parking withholdings, retirement contributions, etc.

You are not including all the other taxes and withholdings that serve to raise that percentage. Personal income tax is only one -- disability, medicare, state tax, and so on. Total tax burden to all parties needs to be no more than 20% or so.

If the government here offered a quality of life equivalent to what I experienced living in western europe I'd be fine with it. But we are not getting my 35% worth of government service

You're not including payroll, sales, or property taxes, though.

Even making $100K+ in Cali puts you around 38% fed + state income tax.

> Even making $100K+ in Cali puts you around 38% fed + state income tax.

No, it doesn't.

It put you—in 2017, the number is lower in 2018—assuming no deductions—at a combined 37.3% marginal rate, but a substantially lower overall rate.

My total outlay for 2017 was around 35%, taking 1 deduction, and my income is near that $100k mark. And I still had to fork over an extra $600 on tax day.

On California state plus federal income taxes (the claim I was responding to) that's simply impossible even if you refer to AGI and not gross income before deductions. If you are including some other taxes, such as payroll taxes, it's possible but not the claim I was responding to.

FB paid 43% in Q4 '17. Corporate taxes aren't the same as individuals.