With the important difference that the price is non-negotiable, and set by the service provider alone. The people highlighted on the website chose to park their property elsewhere, so the government had zero cost in protecting that.

The price is not in proportion to the quality of service at all, it's proportional to the income of the citizen. Which is consistent with what most people understand taxes to be: a wealth redistribution mechanism, rather than a service fee.

> If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

If all the people which avoid some taxes currently (basically every large corporation) close down operations in the US and move to a country with more favorable conditions, the theft (under your definition) would stop. Do you think the net gain would be positive?

However, this type of accountability is somehow not there. So it seems the rules are different, depending on what side you are.

Finally, a fundamental property law states that something is your property unless you voluntarily pass the claim to someone else. This principle certainly holds between private entities. The question is why it doesn't hold for the state?

Hunh? Most (all) of the states involved have some form of democratic government don't they? I know some of them still have monarchs (why?), but I believe their policy makers are elected by the general population, are they not?

Now, what I'd like to see is each person's vote multiplied by the amount he pays in taxes (all taxes: property, sales, income &c.). That would be fair, and it'd give an incentive to pay up too.

Considering that selling in the US is so profitable and the market for buying stuff in the US is so competitive, that's very unlikely to happen. Most US companies would experience a catastrophic fall in income if they stopped doing business in the US.

If you don't want to pay taxes in a country, then don't do business in a country.

Because taxes are perceived to be so unfairly high in certain economies, many devote significant time and effort into "innovating" around policy which is completely legal. Transfer pricing, long-term capital gains distinctions and LLC/Trust configurations, to name a few.

It makes sense to do this, because the disincentives of NOT pursuing legal tax minimization strategies are severe. You'll lose almost half your income. The more money you have, the more strategies you get--meaning they are formed in the ranks of industry leaders like Apple or Google, and eventually trickle down throughout private industry (though in the interim this only serves to widen the disparity & narrow the concentration of wealth).

This won't change unless the common psychology changes. If the tax system were more balanced and fair (a more moderate/halfway implementation of a "flat tax?") then less energy would be devoted into the legal arms race that is out-maneuvering the tax code.

... but obviously that's a pipe dream.

Significant numbers of rich people/corporations use methods that are legal to reduce their taxes. Most people consider this wrong despite its legality (probably they also mistakenly believe it to be illegal - because journalism).

There's certainly an argument that this is - in part - a of problem for the creator of a complex tax system, who should respond by reducing complexity (increasing enforcement tends not to go well - complexity also hinders that). It also seems likely that the people who consider it morally wrong would do likewise if their tax bill were 100x larger (in Switzerland, it is not a criminal offence to make an incorrect tax declaration. Many non-rich Swiss compete with the tax office to lower their bill).

It also seems that you are saying laws are by definition correct. Many laws are not uniformly enforced and many laws are changed as a result of disobedience. Perhaps such people are indeed paying proportionally way too little now but perhaps their actions also affect positive change in future (more efficient system overall, but resource allocation, fewer unintended loopholes). This may not even be their intention, but it doesn't matter.

Do you even understand the simple truth, that most of the times no law is broken in tax optimalizations? Only when it does, it gets highly publitized. Usually, tax systems are full of loopholes and accountants just need to be creative enough (and yes, they are...). Without breaking any specific law, by logic "what is not explicitly forbidden is allowed".

Personally, I do believe in minimal and fair taxation. If you have system where successful people have over 50% tax burden (quite common in progressive tax systems), you can expect many attempts to get away from it. Just human nature. Your textbook phrases won't help much, do they.

Just look at Switzerland itself - most democratic country in the world, one of the richest (and their wealth ain't based on banking secrecy - whole banking industry brings roughly 12% into GDP... tourism and high quality exports are primes here). Low personal and corporate taxation, and the country and system just works. Why cannot rest of europe work this way? How much tax evasion is within Switzerand? Almost none...

And don't get me started on Switzerland. I live there. I'm Swiss. We have massive tax evasion. We have special tax deals for foreign nationals living here.

Here in Zurich, where I live, the cantonal (state) finances are under huge strain because all the wealthy people live across the border in other cantons where the taxes are much lower, but commute into Zurich to work. So Zurich gets to pay for the infrastructure, for the poor who live here rather than across the border, etc.

So please don't talk about some imaginary Switzerland that supports your self-serving rhetoric.

Some usage taxes might work, but unless they specifically target out-of-canton persons, they will just drive more rich people out of Zurich, exacerbating the problem.

At the end of the day having every 20x30 miles plot of your country independently decide on taxation is not be the best idea.

Different tax regimes can only coexist when taxpayers' mobility is limited, otherwise the cheapest tax-land wins.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that standard sales tax is regressive by nature (poor people spend a much higher percent of their income than rich people).

A progressive sales tax not based on purchasers income, but the type of good. For example, luxury goods should be taxed higher and basic staples very low to none. This the wealthy could not avoid tax by simply shifting money around political jurisdictions. This system would encourage transparency, encourage wealth creation as well as thrift in lower and middle income earners.

Also, a side benefit (not that I entirely agree with it) is this is a way to enforce social policy like healthy eating. Tax unhealthy items like sugary food and tobacco highly (up to a point). This is done already in the United States successfully. And if you want more tube riders and less drivers in a city, have a very high toll and vehicle purchase tax. Singapore does this successfully.

Some countries that have no income tax already employ this to an extent by taxing certain sales and imports. I think this type of system is worth experimenting with at least on the city-state or state level (canton / province / state). If it does not work, you can always go back.

There's been talk of this type of system in the US but it's not likely to gain traction. The real reason for progressive income tax is not good policy, but divide and conquer class politics. Something all sides of the political probably spectrum agree with: governments need to be good stewards of tax revenue no matter the collection method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax (note the section on prebates for poor people - similar to basic income).

Effectively, a country engaging in such tax procedures would be throwing out rich people, and while I can hear the jeers of "good riddance", I'm afraid that it's not really a good thing for tax revenues.

Except land, which you cannot very easily move from one jurisdiction to another.

Edit: One recent example of the latter comes to my mind, of course. This is the case of properties in Crimea, now annexed by Russia. This is effectively a jurisdiction change. And it has some practical consequences, of course, although maybe not immediately related to tax; Crimean people need to register their properties into the Russian system, because Ukrainian property ownership is not recognized by the new powers-that-be. And registering is not free, and not even cheap, from what I hear.

* Easier tax evasion (first-party reporting, B2B untaxed)

* Discouraging of consumption (encouraging saving, DIY & black markets)

* Income-regressive nature of consumption

That said, some of the upsides are pretty good too. And if we were switching from FairTax to the current system, the latter would seem even more insane.

Savings and DYI are a good thing long term. Maybe not so much for the inflationary consumer based system that the banks and megacorporations benefit from.

The pre-bate, which is similar to a basic income should help offset the regressive nature. In fact, I think it could replace most welfare programs.

Now that you personally find the already uber-rich Zurich city somehow being on the wrong end of tax deal is your own personal issue.

Personal anecdote - my friend is living in Zurich, commuting daily to Zug for work. But that's another story :)

The reason why there is no tax evasion in Switzerland is multi-layered and very complicated, but in short they cut down on loopholes and tax actually rich people too with tax on wealth or or capital gains. In most places you have 50% or so of tax that is paid by medium-rich people, with actually rich getting away with lot less because of capital gain taxes being lower or controls being more lax or stuff like that. The "50% for rich" is mostly cannon fodder for voters, noone is really expecting anyone to pay that much.

That said, you can't explain the swiss system in simple words, without looking into their long and complicated history etc. I suggest you do more research and get your own conclusions :-)

But it's not true its quite common to pay over 50% taxes. For example, here we got 4 tax-discs, where you pay taxes in a disc until a certain amount of money earned(profits). Disc 1: until €19822,- : 36.50% Disc 2: until €33589,- : 42.00% Disc 3: until €57585,- : 42.00% Disc 4: more €57585,- : 52.00%

That means, you have to pay 52% taxes over the amount you've earned more than €57585.

So in order to pay 50% taxes, one has to make about €300.000,- a year, (either income or profit).

It is not really feasible to tax capital gains with a progressive system. You can make a small case for progressive taxes on capital gains by allowing a basic deduction, but the transaction cost of moving the capital gains somewhere else are generally quite small.

(Just for information, I live in a country from where people are leaving as tax refugees to Sweden).

I'd argue Japan is a good example of a larger well functioning country with fair taxation (up to 40% on income above 150k USD).

If you avoid taxes, you are following the law. No one should pay more than is required of him to pay. If you can structure certain transactions in different ways (e.g. 25% tax vs 50% tax), why would one choose the more expensive option?

If you evade taxes, yes, then you are stealing from everybody. That I do not condone. But, there is a clear difference.

People avoiding, not evading, taxes think they are obeying the laws. But sometimes they are using the laws in weird ways and the tax authorities might not agree. Those tax laws get tested in the courts which is a slow expensive process. Or the tax authorities will enter discussion with people using weird tax schemes to try to get some money before going to court.

Tax avoidance used to mean normal tax planning but it has gained a meaning of people using bizarre interpretations of the law.

The problem with taxation IMO is that it's caught in a vicious circle: companies / "the rich" are dodging taxes so the taxes need to be raised leading to more tax dodging and so on. Part of the problem is that tax fraud is often not punished in proportion to the actual value[0].

I don't think there's an easy solution, especially in a world that is as interconnected as ours is today.

Personally, I think income tax is a broken model because property is no longer a good indicator of wealth (it just encourages "investing" the money where it can't be taxed -- which comes with a threshold so high you end up hitting the middle and lower income households disproportionally).

Taxing the transfer of wealth more instead of its possession seems like a good idea, though. It might "slow the economy down", but with sub-millisecond stock trading being a thing I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It's not as if a huge income would be particularly useful if you aren't going to do anything with it anyway.

[0]: A recent case in Germany was Ulrich Hoeneß, the former president of the football club Bayern Munich, who was found guilty to have withheld nearly 30 million euros in taxes (after repeatedly admitting to much lower sums throughout the trial -- which to me sounds like obstruction, but what do I know). He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, BUT an early release is extremely likely (so it's doubtful he will spend anywhere close to the full sentence behind bars) and after a mere six months he was already granted day release (meaning he can walk freely outside prison as long as he returns in the evening).

EDIT: Frankly, I'd be happy if income tax was replaced entirely by some form of transaction tax. It's far easier to reason about and far less likely to bite founders in the ass. In Germany most newly founded business go bankrupt in their third year because that's often the first time they not only have to pay tax on the previous years but also make advance payments for the current year, which can be deadly if you didn't make sure to put aside enough of your income to cover taxes (and accountants are expensive).