For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

Re:For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest American... by gnicholas on Monday October 07, 2019 @02:34PM (#21184369)

> but our annual raise are often in line with inflation should they be excluded?

This misunderstands the point of indexing gains for inflation, or applying a lower rate to income that is mixed with inflation. The point is that you pay tax on the income in the year it is earned (or soon thereafter). It doesn't matter what the money was earned for, whether you got a raise, or anything else. The point is that it's all money that you just got right now. It's different when you are taxed on a mix of "real" gains (in the economic sense) and inflation.

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Re:For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest American... by dragonwriter on Monday October 07, 2019 @02:56PM (#21184606)

> The point is that it's all money that you just got right now.

That's less true if you have hyperinflation, but at normal inflation rates ignoring inflation across the tax year is a pragmatic simplification with modest effect for gains that aren't long-term in nature (which may not exactly coincide with all income not subject to favorable taxation as LTCG.)

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Re:For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest American... by DesiLurker on Monday October 07, 2019 @02:49PM (#21184529)

No you are misunderstanding my core point, the 'Inflation' is just a colloquial term we have coined for prices generally rising for many reasons some of which may be related new money being created because of money printing & Fed lending window. it just effects different sectors differently, so a TV may not go up so much but medicine goes up a lot. inflation is just average measure of that. if you provide protection from that to one type of gains then you are essentially telling society to go pile up in that & guess whats been happening lately.

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