this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
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There are so many ways to avoid paying income taxes in a country. Perhaps the easiest is taking a loan with security in stock. Wealth tax and taxing stock in general is practiced in my country with great success (should be much higher still) and is in fact great for the economy: it forces people to invest or see their fortunes diminish. Your statement shows lack of knowledge and imagination that other systems than the one you preside in could exist.
How do they pay those taxes though? I imagine by forcing the companies they've invested in to give them a higher dividend? Or do they actually sell stocks in order to pay the tax?
They can do either depending on what is most profitable. Usually they will try to do some scummy tax evasion maneuvers or cry on national television, but ultimately paying these taxes is of no issue to them in reality. The reason they do not want to part with stock, hence their crying, is because holding on to it is so damn profitable to them. They may even go to lengths of taking loans instead to pay taxes before selling ownership of stock.
They also get tax write offs whenever a stock decreases in value, so this is just sharing a small part of their spoils when times are good and business is booming. In exchange they get well functioning public services, a highly educated work force, stipends for starting companies and so on. In reality the top 0,1 % percentile pay less taxes than the bottom 10 % per capita as percentage of their income.
You don't know how any of this works, but you've been fed a lie about how it supposedly works and now you think you know how it works and try to lord your false knowledge over others. A wealth tax that includes stocks would simply be another calculation to make as to whether they're worth holding.
Just take the list of the fortune 500 and have the IRS hit them up for cash individually, then.