Re:Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang
by zo1 on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @05:38AM
(#8295735)
"Yes it would be unfair to tax them at a higher rate for doing fundamentally the same thing - how would we justify one tax rate for one investor in a company, but another rate for this other investor?"
Because taxation has gone way beyond what it was initially meant to do. That's why it's a hard problem; we're trying to make value and fairness judgements and using that as a basis for applying tax.
To me, personally, people can't claim fairness if they're treating people differently based on their arbitrary value judgements. Until we start treating "fairness" as a universal, with no subjective component.
Re:Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang
by boomlinde on Thursday September 11, 2014 @01:44PM
(#8303956)
What do you imagine fairness to mean without subjective components? I'd say that value is a subjective concept and I cant think of a definition of fairness that is not based on value.
Re:Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang
by icebraining on Wednesday September 10, 2014 @04:33AM
(#8295523)
Why can't a small investor spread their investments? Isn't that what index funds are for?
Exactly, there are good reasons for this. The problem is that it would be grossly unfair to tax a small business owner or small investor at say income tax levels because their risks are so much higher. On the other hand a big investor will millions or billions ends up paying the same tax rate as that small business owner or investor, but is able to spread their risk across many investments reducing the overall risk. Yes it would be unfair to tax them at a higher rate for doing fundamentally the same thing - how would we justify one tax rate for one investor in a company, but another rate for this other investor?
Taxation is a hard problem.