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[Jervill]

That could explain why North Dakota's millionaire per capita rose more than any other State last year.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101338309

North Dakota also has a rather massive oil boom occurring right now.  Plus, the population of ND is ~700,000 while MN is ~5 million, so per capita stats are going to change rather strikingly in ND on what would be considered a small change in even a medium sized state.

[Bauglir]

You know, while we're on the subject of taxation, here's Bauglir's ideal Corporate Income Tax rate and Personal Income Tax rate, with dollars paid as a function of dollars earned. Looks like it'd be vaguely similar to the actual system, only with much higher caps, but I like differentiable functions and I'd like this to be roughly what's aimed for after deductions and such (as in, what the combination of deductions and base taxation should create averaged across the nation, with a cutoff at around $10000 earned or so where it starts making no economic sense for anybody involved to be assessing, collecting, or paying.

I think the curves for other sorts of tax would be much wonkier and have much higher caps, but I'm no economist so I'm not even going to venture into that territory.

[Descan]

I just want to remind everyone that Iceland has less than half the population as North Dakota.

That is all.

[Reelya]

You know, while we're on the subject of taxation, here's Bauglir's ideal Corporate Income Tax rate and Personal Income Tax rate, with dollars paid as a function of dollars earned. Looks like it'd be vaguely similar to the actual system, only with much higher caps, but I like differentiable functions and I'd like this to be roughly what's aimed for after deductions and such (as in, what the combination of deductions and base taxation should create averaged across the nation, with a cutoff at around $10000 earned or so where it starts making no economic sense for anybody involved to be assessing, collecting, or paying.

I think the curves for other sorts of tax would be much wonkier and have much higher caps, but I'm no economist so I'm not even going to venture into that territory.

You have to break that down or it'd be a nightmare for normal people to calculate their taxes. Any tax system that requires you to calculate x*(0.4/(1+e^(-x/50000+3))) will be useless in practice no matter how pretty the curve is.

[Bauglir]

Oh, obviously. You'd be in a situation where you just report your income and the damn thing spits out what you owe. We have these nifty inventions called computers these days that can handle it in a jiffy.

[LordSlowpoke]

I just want to remind everyone that Iceland has less than half the population as North Dakota.

That is all.

it also has a decently competent government and a fuckton of geothermal resources, amongst others?

what purpose did you expect that reminder to serve exactly

[Descan]

That America is fuck-hueg, even your "Middle-of-nowhere" places are bigger than some entire countries :V

[alway]

Oh, obviously. You'd be in a situation where you just report your income and the damn thing spits out what you owe. We have these nifty inventions called computers these days that can handle it in a jiffy.

Or just do what a normal person does and use an accountant to type in the numbers for you.

[Reelya]

Also, my state (MN) just announced a one billion dollar budget surplus...again.  All that since we *gasp* raised taxes on the wealthiest earners, how horrifying.

Raising taxes never works because you end up with less money because high earners "go galt" and stop producing if you do that. They make themselves  poor to spite the taxman. You have to lower taxes to raise revenue, because that will be a reverse-galt with poor people becoming rich overnight because they see the taxes fall on millionaires and start working harder as a result. People prefer to live in the gutter than have to pay 37% taxes on income over $1 million, but drop that to 35% and they'll leap at opportunities to make money they would have scoffed at before.

What you wrote cannot be true and I refuse to cite evidence of my position, because it's just true and doesn't need evidence.

[wobbly]

What you wrote cannot be true and I refuse to cite evidence of my position, because it's just true and doesn't need evidence.

Except this is clearly false & I refuse to cite evidence on why, because it's just false and doesn't need evidence.

[Putnam]

I cannot abide by anything even remotely related to saying that anything being presented as fact "doesn't need evidence".

[Mictlantecuhtli]

You have to lower taxes to raise revenue, because that will be a reverse-galt with poor people becoming rich overnight because they see the taxes fall on millionaires and start working harder as a result.

citation needed

[Leafsnail]

Comon it's clearly a joke.

[aenri]

Oh well, I'll bite.

In what was called Slovak tax miracle of 2003/2004, we here in Slovakia reduced tax rate almost universally /corporate from 25 progressive to 19 flat, personal 38-2 progressive to 19 flat and many others (like removing tax on inheritance, gifts, property transfers)/ and enjoyed great decline of public expenditure (from 45,1% of GDP in 2002 to 34,2% of GDP in 2007) and high growth of tax revenue (nominal amount of corporate taxes paid increased by 120% in years 2003-2008) in years after reform.

Source: Here, page 122 onwards, happy reading.

Unfortunately our current socialist government pretty much destroyed the effects of this flat tax reform and we now again have different rates for personal and corporate taxes, special taxes for very rich, funny loopholes in VAT tax code and other socialistic nonsense.

[Reelya]

Problems with the Slovakia theory:

- GDP growth was actually pretty good before the tax reforms were implemented, averaging ~4.5 - 5% per year for the 3 years before the tax reforms. And GDP growth ROSE every year from 1999-2004. So it's a bit iffy to label a change in legislation from 2004 as being responsible for the rises from 2004-2007 in GDP growth. There was a previous 5 year-long boom with GDP growing faster (even in percentage terms) every year. So, GDP growth rising again in the next couple of years after that would just be expected even without the tax changes. There was no "new trend" in GDP that can be attributed to the tax cuts.

In fact, by 2007 the economy collapsed, only 3 years after the tax reforms came in. So you have 3 years of good growth, which you attribute to the tax changes. but tax changes just don't cause that sort of growth spurt instantly, they actually take a couple of years to kick in, as investment shifts. So in other words at the peak point where the tax reforms should have fixed things, a 10 year trend of improving GDP growth suddenly failed in a catastrophic decline.

As for government spending: it fell from 55% GDP in 2001, to 40% GDP in January of 2004. And 2004 was the year of the tax reforms. It was already on a downhill trend, but that pretty much flattened out 2 years after the tax reforms. There was a 15% decline before the tax reforms and another 5% after the tax reforms, not the 10% change from 45% - 35% you cited: that has one name, bullshit intended to deceive you. Declines in government spending slowed down after the reforms, they didn't speed up. It's definitely in the "your being lied to" category, because even that 10% decline you noted? Most of it happened before the tax reforms.

My theory is that the government knew there was already a boom on, and they took the opportunity to slash taxes on the rich because they knew this would be hidden in the rising revenues from taxes they were already getting.