Quote:
Originally posted by rowan
3% tax?!? In Australia, every dollar over $AUD60,000 (around $USD39,000) gets taxed 47%.
If you're a millionaire that $60k is relatively insignificant, so you are effectively being taxed almost half of your earnings.
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Right. How many millionaires are ACTUALLY taxed 47% on those earnings? Point is that actual tax rates matter very little because when you earn that much you can afford good tax planners to move your money around and exploit all the loopholes.
In the UK, you're in theory taxed 40% on everything above a certain level, but if you're rich enough you're likely to have most of your money in offshore trusts or offshore investment companies of various types, and arrange to be employed by an offshore company using employee benefit trusts or similar to pay you, in effect cutting your tax to 10-15% of what you SPEND (while you'd keep anything you don't spend invested offshore without paying tax on it at all).