On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:26:40 +0100, SteveH was popularly supposed to have said:
You still don't get it, do you?
Trying to tax rich people is a hiding to nothing; they always manage to wriggle out from under the tax.
The easiest way to do it is to have a flat tax, set as low as you can so the very poor are not actually troubled by tax at all.
Flat taxes are harder to dodge, and fairer all round so the compliance rate is better and the dodge rate is lower. All in all, you usually get more tax from simple low-tax regimes than you do from complex high-tax regimes.
You also see higher levels of worker motivation under low tax regimes, better economic growth and better prosperity. Yes, you will have a percentage of no-hope losers who don't do particularly well, but there isn't much you can do about this.
Under a high-tax regime you also have no-hope losers sitting on benefits, but you also have a much greater number of lazy workshy dodgers parasitising off the state, and this lot cause far more trouble than coping with a few losers ever did.
-- By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, By the beans of Java do thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning, By caffeine alone do I set my mind in motion
