Soaking the rich doesn't work, ask Britain...

[billc]

Well, the British apparently tried the Buffet tax, the much loved tax that Obama wants to use to make the rich pay their fair share. Unfortunately, it didn't work, as it always never works...

http://news.investors.com/article/602119/201202231855/britain-raises-taxes-loses-revenue.htm

Tax Policy: The British government introduced a higher tax rate on the rich in 2010, promising that it would bring in added revenue. But, as any sensible person could have guessed, just the opposite has happened.

Gordon Brown's Labour Party government launched the 50% rate in income taxes allegedly as a means to bring in more revenue.
The London Telegraph reported earlier this year that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs estimated the British version of the Buffett Tax would "show a 'surge' in revenues totaling hundreds of millions of pounds from the first year."
The "surge" wasn't even a trickle. In fact, there was actually a reversal. Collections fell by $800 million compared to income tax payments a year earlier.

As government sources explained to the Telegraph, the lower revenue is the result of "well-off Britons" changing their behavior so they could "avoid the new higher rate."

Ah, but of course. Why didn't British lawmakers think of that before they recklessly predicted that revenue would increase by roughly $1.6 billion?
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=280972228


Despite the inverted results and the obvious problems they will cause, the British left is insisting that the rate remain in place. Why? Because, the Telegraph reports, the left believes that "it is important to demonstrate that the rich are paying their fair share."
The jealous urge to punish the rich and to enforce a subjective fairness that blinds lawmakers in Britain is the same disorder afflicting politics in this country.

 

[Empty Hands]

Clearly the answer is to set the rate to 0%. Infinite money!

 

[Sukerkin]

Not an unexpected result for the first year of a tax. The evaders are mostly from the self-assessor tranche and they have simply taken dividends early and so on because they are self-interested rather than public spirited. Give it another year when evasion will be harder and if they leave the country, well, that's just a continuation of the trend that has been going on for a number of decades now (including when the Tories were in charge ... as they are now ... unfortunately}.

We are importing the poor of Europe and Asia and exporting our skilled and wealthy - sounds like an excellent plan to me ... oh wait ...

Perhaps the long term goal is to be so poor that the immigrants that we never wanted will leave again? Then we can start over.

 

[billc]

That is exactly why you need more police with more power to enforce the tax code. Stop the rich at the border and confiscate all their wealth. The obvious solution is to not let them leave. The greedy bastards don't realize how much more good the government could do if the greedy bastards would just pay their fair share. Any wealthy person, perhaps designated by a lapel pin of some sort, who is caught trying to leave the country with the money that belongs to the people, should be arrested at once and detained, perhaps in an isolated camp, where they can be shown why they need to help, rather than hurt, the people. More police with more power will make this possible.

 

[Haakon]

Clearly the answer is to set the rate to 0%. Infinite money!

The government already thinks it has infinite money. Their spending certainly has no relationship to revenue what so ever.