Happy tax day, everyone! Whenever I log in to Turbo Tax, I think of Tim Geithner, and so I was trying to think of the other political figures who have made this year in taxes interesting:
- Tom Daschle
- Timothy Geithner
- Nancy Kellifer
- Kathleen Sibelius
- Cindy McCain
- Sarah Palin
Who am I missing?
As long as we are sorting through pieces of paper and trying to figure out whether a newly purchased, 30-year old doublewide is more like a car or more like a house, I wanted to pull out of the drawer a possibility that a friend of mine floated the other week. What if we moved from an income-tax based system to a wealth tax based system? Its something I don’t know much about, but I’m intrigued; its a model used in a half dozen other countries. I found an older article arguing for the wealth tax here. Robert Reich has argued something similar in recent years, and I understand there was a grassroots effort in California to push for a wealth tax.
In brief, the argument is that a wealth tax would help diminish some of our inequality, while encouraging productive activity over unproductive activity. I’d like to learn more about other countries’ experiences, and the arguments on both sides.
