Media Endorsements of Presidential Candidates

[Tino]

Why shouldn't investment income be taxed as wages? Perhaps not across the board, but for people whose annual income is over a certain amount, I'm in favor of this.

I'm not a tax policy expert but here are a few reasons that come to mind:

1. Raising taxes on investments hurts retirees living off their investments.

2. Targeting high-investment-income people targets the most mobile group of people in the world. Many/most would want to live elsewhere to avoid the tax and they have the means to do so (and they're not tied down to a job). So you ultimately lose revenue rather than gaining it. If your purpose is to raise revenues, its counter-productive. If your purpose is to just punish people who have been financially successful, most will avoid it.

3. Taxing investments at the same rate as wages just incentivizes people to keep working longer, or retiring later, thus remaining in the labor pool and holding onto jobs that could be held by others. In other words, it raises unemployment.

4. You won't like this one, but a sense of fairness and proportionality. The top ten percent of income earners in the US already pay the highest share of taxes (45%) of any nation on earth. The next highest is Italy at 42% but most of the G8 nations are in the 20s and low 30s. See http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/wate...larger-sh/ for more on this.

In my view when someone earning $16+ million a year (without even having a job) is only paying 14% in taxes, that's needlessly hoarding money that could be used for far better purposes.

I think you get into very dangerous territory when you start having the government decide that someone else's assets or property could be used for far better purposes. It's not far from there to deciding that you have nice child-bearing hips and we need more babies.