Simple way to do this: make hiring easier.
Exactly. Right now hiring and firing is hard and expensive. One of the pieces of software I've written for my company attempts to put total costs on attrition and it's staggering from a resource perspective. One of the main drivers of outsourcing isn't the employee wage, but the cost of getting rid of a bad employee.
It is odd that we've settled on a system that taxes upwards of 30% percent on things that increase wealth and provide social stability (hiring, working) rather than tax at 1% or 2% things that don't increase wealth and cause social unrest (large private fortunes)
Large private fortunes provide capital needed to start businesses or local governments bonding to do infrastructure. No capital, no business. Check the FDR taxes on certain types of wealth for serious historic failure and unintended consequences.
FDR taxes were largely about raising income taxes to punitive levels. The opposite of what I was suggesting.
The increase in capital generation brought on from 0% income tax would more than compensate for any destruction of existing capital.
Thanks. That's an interesting link, but it describes an income tax. It is just the kind of tax I'm arguing against. Its aim seems to have been to prevent individuals from delaying payment of income tax that was held within companies.
I know a person who wanted to hire a part time personal assistant, but didn't because the paperwork was ridiculous. The economics weren't great either - you pay tax, spend what's left on a personal assistant, who then winds up paying tax again.
One way to boost the economics of hiring would be to allow individuals to hire other individuals (this would mostly be domestic labor) with pre-tax dollars with a commensurate reduction in paperwork. It would cost the government a lot less per job created than most stimulus schemes I've seen proposed.