Tax evasion is bad. Everybody, companies and individuals alike, should pay their fair share in taxes and if they don’t the government should go after them to enforce compliance. If we allow businesses and individuals to evade taxes, the government and all of us will lose out because there will be lower tax revenues and increased pressure on the government to increase taxes on honest taxpayers to make up for the shortfall. Or do we?
Only economists can come up with this kind of stuff. The concept of fairness is a crucial item of the political. Sterilizing society from moral concepts, that are considered important regardless of tax levels, (un)employment data and the like, can only be the next expression of economist's myopia (and their entertaining belief that they have 'the rational pov'.
Apart from the fact that a lot of wealth is 'created' by individuals in close collaboration with respective western gov's titties, and the fact that a lot of that wealth is already taxed at low percentages, tax evasion is part of a broader economic loop that is undermining societies.
Take the AMZ loop: you play national and local gov's against each other to obtain tax favours, you pay wages so low only immigrants will do the work (in an almost militarist Taylorite regime), local housing and (non)integration problems are for the locals, while you move offshore as much of your profits as possible to countries with 'the best' rates. While we don't need to have any illusion about the rate Bezos eventually pays. Though economic orthodoxy would perhaps still describe him as a job creator, the local impact of AMZ can be described as the exact opposite. Just like Taylorite orgs like Walmart hurt the social fabric of communities. Yet what happens there is typically not the subject of economist's studies trying to capture it in some number.
Meanwhile western elites introduce new petty moral concepts like climate doom / climate justice (yet India just refused western hand outs to replace a guaranteed energy source - coal - with wind and sun), pronouns, post colonial education and art etc. Then they, as working class electorates move to the right, complain about illiberalism, the rising 'far right' etc (Trump was described a fascist by mainstream US media).
They'll be yelling 'fascist!' for many years i guess since even simple Capuchin monkeys get fairness and will punish you for a lack of it:
Sometimes they're of use. As this new piece on the UK covid response, B Johnson, Chris Whitty and SAGE shows. Here it was all left up to the medicos and their models...
Bamboozled! - The UK Covid-19 Inquiry shows that political leaders need policy advice not science lessons
Funny enough, after the pandemic some covid-modellers became climate modellers...Just like covid-censorship watchdogs / thinkthanks also 'moved on' and now have a much broader range ot topics to censor...
Interesting research, nice write up of it. Personally I am not a fan of tax rates of 50%+, they seem to shift the focus from "do more" to "do enough", or to "minimise tax take".
I think we need to take care in interpreting the findings.
Fair to say they apply to workers with limited fixed outgoings in solitary low status drudgery jobs.
It is less clear that they apply to
- those with high fixed outgoings eg bills, rent, children - where higher tax takes may cause workers to work longer hours out of sheer necessity - giffen type responses to high taxes
- those in jobs which they really enjoy or where they become more enjoyable if you do more
- those in jobs that confer status and other non monetary extrinsic rewards
- those in jobs where a bit of hard work gets you promoted to a much more rewarding (/fun /high status) role, or where working fewer hours may stall your career or get you demoted.
- large companies, which are not sentient beings and do not have the same range of alternative uses of their time and energy when faced with high taxes / evasion options.
I expect that part of the improvment is due to the chance of ebing caught. If this is lower than 50%, i.e. the governmetn is less efficient in discover tax evasion, the trade off is worse
Reminds me of the laffer curve, but can macro conclusions really be drawn from micro preferences? Also transfer mispricing and other creative accounting can shift significant foreign currency out of entire countries.
Only economists can come up with this kind of stuff. The concept of fairness is a crucial item of the political. Sterilizing society from moral concepts, that are considered important regardless of tax levels, (un)employment data and the like, can only be the next expression of economist's myopia (and their entertaining belief that they have 'the rational pov'.
Apart from the fact that a lot of wealth is 'created' by individuals in close collaboration with respective western gov's titties, and the fact that a lot of that wealth is already taxed at low percentages, tax evasion is part of a broader economic loop that is undermining societies.
Take the AMZ loop: you play national and local gov's against each other to obtain tax favours, you pay wages so low only immigrants will do the work (in an almost militarist Taylorite regime), local housing and (non)integration problems are for the locals, while you move offshore as much of your profits as possible to countries with 'the best' rates. While we don't need to have any illusion about the rate Bezos eventually pays. Though economic orthodoxy would perhaps still describe him as a job creator, the local impact of AMZ can be described as the exact opposite. Just like Taylorite orgs like Walmart hurt the social fabric of communities. Yet what happens there is typically not the subject of economist's studies trying to capture it in some number.
Meanwhile western elites introduce new petty moral concepts like climate doom / climate justice (yet India just refused western hand outs to replace a guaranteed energy source - coal - with wind and sun), pronouns, post colonial education and art etc. Then they, as working class electorates move to the right, complain about illiberalism, the rising 'far right' etc (Trump was described a fascist by mainstream US media).
They'll be yelling 'fascist!' for many years i guess since even simple Capuchin monkeys get fairness and will punish you for a lack of it:
https://youtu.be/-KSryJXDpZo
Agreed. Fairness is important to us. Any option to evade taxes needs to be offered equally to all.
yep. And there is a good reason that economists almost never make it in politics.
(We'll see how that crazy guy in Argentina fares).
Sometimes they're of use. As this new piece on the UK covid response, B Johnson, Chris Whitty and SAGE shows. Here it was all left up to the medicos and their models...
Bamboozled! - The UK Covid-19 Inquiry shows that political leaders need policy advice not science lessons
https://bit.ly/3sHWUIv
Funny enough, after the pandemic some covid-modellers became climate modellers...Just like covid-censorship watchdogs / thinkthanks also 'moved on' and now have a much broader range ot topics to censor...
Interesting research, nice write up of it. Personally I am not a fan of tax rates of 50%+, they seem to shift the focus from "do more" to "do enough", or to "minimise tax take".
I think we need to take care in interpreting the findings.
Fair to say they apply to workers with limited fixed outgoings in solitary low status drudgery jobs.
It is less clear that they apply to
- those with high fixed outgoings eg bills, rent, children - where higher tax takes may cause workers to work longer hours out of sheer necessity - giffen type responses to high taxes
- those in jobs which they really enjoy or where they become more enjoyable if you do more
- those in jobs that confer status and other non monetary extrinsic rewards
- those in jobs where a bit of hard work gets you promoted to a much more rewarding (/fun /high status) role, or where working fewer hours may stall your career or get you demoted.
- large companies, which are not sentient beings and do not have the same range of alternative uses of their time and energy when faced with high taxes / evasion options.
This is an argument for lowering the general tax rate, supportive of the diminishing returns 'Laffer Curve' model
I expect that part of the improvment is due to the chance of ebing caught. If this is lower than 50%, i.e. the governmetn is less efficient in discover tax evasion, the trade off is worse
Reminds me of the laffer curve, but can macro conclusions really be drawn from micro preferences? Also transfer mispricing and other creative accounting can shift significant foreign currency out of entire countries.