Set up a flat tax to close to 40%.
Can be paired with an automatic credit for around half of the poverty line.
Tax=(income × 0.40) - (poverty / 2)
The poor people get a negative income tax, while the people who earn more pay more.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
64 points (97.1% liked)
No Stupid Questions
47928 readers
503 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
That's just progressive tax brackets with extra steps.
Take their moneys.
I wouldn't tax rich in any special way.
I'd get rid of all income taxes, and tax the shit out of luxury good consumption
Bad idea. People will buy less.
Since when building savings is a problem?
With a gun to their head
(which i must point out is historically how the people who invented taxes, i.e the sovereign, would have done it)
Like the French.
"Give us half your money or give us half your scalp"
There's just an upper limit on what any one person can own.
Ten houses, one private airplane, one yacht, and $100 million worth of 'stuff.'
No more than 1% of any company.
That's just off the top of my head for discussion. Feel free to jiggle with the numbers.
No more than 1% of any company doesn't sound reasonable. Imagine creating a company and only being allowed to own 1%. Heck, if you just made a company who even are you going to sell the other 99% to?
This is the rate for billionaires.
Take the number advertised on the Forbes list and their self reported number. Tax then according to which is the higher.
Tax unrealised gains on holdings annually not on realisation. Tax banks for giving loans against stock holdings, with rate of interest under 2%.
With bullets. On all of them.
Tax stock when it is given for bonus or pay package. The gov gets the top end tax rate with of the stock to be sold over the next 12 months.
I would do a small transaction tax like 1% that should hopefully put the brakes on short term trading and tax inheritance the same as lottery winnings. Tax investment the same as income. for corps tax them based on their entire holdings right up to their top owner with all its subsidiaires but they can deduct any tax they pay in authorized countries (so the way we do sanctions now we could take away their taxes being able to be deducted).
the only sure way is to abolish private property and give the businesses to the workers
EDIT: formatting
A potential mathematical approach to equal taxation that works in any country:
- Calculate the average income of every citizen. Let A = the average income (amount per year)
- Set a baseline tax amount for the average (e.g. 10%). Let P = baseline tax percentage
- Given a person's income, calculate how far above or below they are compared to the average. Let I = a person's income. We can calculate the difference, D, with D = I - A. A positive value means the person's income is above average, whereas negative is below.
- Calculate the difference as a percentage. Let Q = D / A
- Calculate the percentage of the tax percentage. This will determine how much more or less a person will have to pay: R = Q * P
- Finally, calculate the person's unique tax amount: T = P + R. If R was a positive value, that means the person will pay more. If R was a negative value, they pay less. If R = 0, they pay the base amount.
Example: Let's say the average income per year is $50,000 USD, and the baseline tax rate is 10%
So A =50,000 and P = 10% / 100 = 0.1
Given a person's income: $30,000/yr:
I = 30,000
Calculate the difference:
D = 30,000 – 50,000 = –20,000
Q = –20,000 / 50,000 = –0.4 (–40%)
Calculate how much more/less the person pays:
R = –0.4 * 0.1 = –0.04 (–4%)
Calculate the unique tax amount:
T = 0.1 + (–0.04) = 0.1 – 0.04 = 0.06 (6%)
There might be a better set of formulas, but this is what I came up with. Let me know if I made a mistake in my math.
load more comments
(2 replies)
America used to tax billionaires already in the 1900s. Nothing new to invent here.
An incremental step would be to look at the tax cuts of the last few decades, and role them back. That especially includes other types of income and passthroughs
As someone who has participated in startups, the options and shares market is a rigged game. We also need to restore rules for the ultra wealthy so they play the same game as we do
One rifle per family.
At least until the bottom 50% has as much as the top 50%
Not exactly a solution for the ultra rich oligarchs, but a progressive consumption tax would be a good policy. It would be applied as a sales tax on everything, everyone would get regular rebate checks to cancel out the tax on spending up to the exemption. It could make all the megayachts more expensive.
Attainder.
Flat tax on spending, flat tax on financial assets, flat tax on out of state transfers. Just no matter what anyone does with their money, it's taxed.
load more comments
(4 replies)