Debt and raising the Debt limit.

[Chard]

Interesting. Your tax system is VERY similar to ours, the major differences primarilly being differences in rate schedules. Our rate schedule has a lower minimum taxable income and a much higher bracket cap (min is under $8k, highest bracket is $400k+). You also tax at a much higher percentage than we do.

Honestly, I like your rate schedule better. Seems fair enough to me that those who derive the most benefit from society should shoulder more responsibility for maintaining that society.

Also, who doesn't claim accountant's fees as a deduction? Communists, that's who.

[mantra]

Out of curiosity, does your government define income as wages earned or do they also include things like annuities and dividends from investments?

Over here we have a completely different set of rules governing profits from investments (stocks and bonds, IRA accounts, ect) then they do for income taxes (which are based only on wages paid by an employer, people who work for themselves have yet another set of rules for taxes). The reason I ask is that the differences in what is earned vs taxes paid for Capital Gains taxes can be wildly different than those used for income tax, and the loopholes involved provide an effective means for people to avoid paying full taxes on their total income .

Yes they do include dividends, but if you have a clever accountant, you can deduct your entire cost of living including any alleged losses on your investment properties. We also have many loopholes and when the last government tried to close a couple of them - the recipients of this largesse went beserk.

(i.e very wealthy people pay less taxes as a percentage of their income because we can afford better accountants)

Yes and they have more to claim. You may have heard of one of Australia's billionaires James Packer. One of his successful casinos made him a mint. He paid no tax because of his deductions and because of various subsidies on offer - the tax office gave him a cheque for $3 million. This is why multinationals can pay their shareholders healthy dividends simply because so many of them can run their corporations tax free.

Many mining corporations take advantage of our subsidies and regardless of whether some people believe they pay a fortune in tax - few of them do. They're more likely to be given a bonus than a tax bill.