Tax in Australia

ah yes....

Just wait till the house you retire into get revalued by a broke government and says hey you now live in a 5 million dollar house we need to tax that and you have to sell and move to a cheaper place..happening in many places now.
Or you live knowing your dependants cant pay your death tax and so you know they will have to move out of town with the riff raff after you die!

the disincentive to work...the government will look after me after it taxes the rich...
or lets be communist thats the way forward....Cuba has a real nice standard of living..not ( maybe one guy does?)

Anyone dumb enough to think the worlds starving masses are due to money need to read a newspaper.
Every single starving person in Africa, for example, is a result of a political problem.
Ethiopia's number one export earner......FOOD

Only poor people pay estate/death duty/tax anyway.

Anyone with half a brain already moved all their assets to a company and made the others the share holders and rents all the toys back.

PS Unrest in the US, wait till China and Japan call in their loans......

 

You are absolutely right on the property tax point powerabout.

Here in new York the property tax burden is crushing.

But why? Well, over the years the US federal government lowered the top marginal income tax rates. The federal estate tax was also lowered, but that's a whole different story. To keep deficits manageable the Federal government cut revenue sharing to the 50 states. Since the states lost revenue from the feds the states often raised taxes. Since the politicians usually realized that raising income taxes was dangerous to their re-election they pushed the tax burden down to local governments. Guess what they did?

Yup, raised the property tax rates.....you see the tax assessor is generally appointed, not elected, so they aren't an election risk.

Now of course the really rich generally live in states with low overall (property/income/investment) taxes. People in need of help come to places like New York where they can get some assistance. You know, that guy with the kid with cerebral palsy.....the lazy guy......

As I think about it more, I have to agree that some concentration of wealth to those who actually achieve is natural. The question we face is to what degree we, as a society, allow that wealth to accumulate. How much is too much?

I have a question......Back in the 1930'S in Deutschland the Nazi party rose to power. I'm by no means a historian but I do know that the Nazi's were known as the National Socialist Party. I know that there were many economic issues in post WW1 Germany. Can anyone comment on weather there was a serious concentration (as is occuring today) of wealth in pre Nazi Germany. If so could this wealth concentration have contributed to the rise of someone like Hitler?

I'm not trying to suggest that the above is true, I'm just wondering.......

Thanks,

MIA

 

I'm not a historian either but I think what happened in German was the league of nations kicked the **** out of the Germans they had inflation and debt due to short term borrowing....and we all know a way out of this...WAR.
They also got wacked by the depression and had gridlocked politics.
Hitler rose up as a joke but before the people realised, he had real power.
Promising to fix the country that appeared to be held down by foreigners and also inventing an enemy, the Jews and the Russians, off he went.
WWII and the world was smarter so the super power the US made friends and pumped tons of cash in.
Industrialist did get rich during Hitlers time, no doubt about that and they existed before, during and after his time.
As an industrial nation it was far more advanced that anywhere else in Europe from 1900 on
I dont think they had a Rockerfeller type problem to deal with, Hitler only nationalised the people not any other working assets.
Only thing we have to be careful of in our world is the Fascists are created by the left and the right and I see both left and right governments of today
becoming totalitarian.
Many scientists in Europe have said if you dont fully agree with the Governments view on Global warming you are derided with as much scorn as if you were a witch 400 years ago and goodbye funding.

I can see captial punishment coming back in Europe but it will only be for tax evaders as the current fervoir seems to be to try and deflect the wholesale gross miss management of the long term viability of the major goverments who now seem to be only concerned with ensureing the polititans get their final salary index linked pensions and the next generation can deal with the debt.
One of the TV channels in the UK ran a series based in the future whereby a war has started re todays workers versus retired people. It was very intersting.

I have to tell you a true story a couple of years ago..
Skiing with some Dutch friends of mine in a German speaking part of Switzerland full of Germans, in the bar at the end of the day as you do, hundreds of people boozing and talking..all of a sudden dead silence as a young guy was being interviewed on the TV, I cant speak German so stood there till finished and asked my friends what was that about ( also noting the bar stayed very quite????) they said he has just been elected as a the youngest polititian ever in Germanys history and his campaign is to NOT pay 50% of his income tax to the goverernment as that is only used to pay pensions and will be for the whole of his working career. He was still in University.

So to sum up I dont think young people think the Waltons have their money they know the government had it and wants more and has wasted it all.
Less and less people vote in the western world...that can only be the first sign
Lets face it you get everything you want today either cheaper or better many times both...except Government!
I have taken the view Goverement is same as a supermarket, I dont like it I move me and my business to a better one. Getting permit/passport today has never been easier. Very few Governments have woken up to the fact they they are competing for the Waltons of the world to come and domicile themselves.

 

I'll give you an example of revalue your house in France.
A retired postman living in a pile of rocks at a very nice but not rich sea side island.
The rich decide its the new in place, a few years later his tax bill is more than his pension so he is forced to sell and move away from where he grew up.
It made the news across Europe.

Italy is revaluing all your property assets so they can cancel your pension, Just happened to our neighbours sister.

The UK is using what they call 'council tax' a bit like the US did to pass the buck to local government, they also passed the pension deficit down...
Well if the rises , some have been 100% go on some councils will have the local tax greater than the the state pension in a few years.