Tax Lawyer's Blog

Derek Thompson writing for the Atlantic thinks I am one of the “wrong” people:

I hope the wrong people don’t pick up on this story that some German millionaires and billionaires are offering to give up an additional 10 percent of their income for 10 years to fix the budget.

A group of 51 German millionaires and billionaires founded a Club of the Wealthy and wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel proposing to give up 10 percent of their income in the form of a “Rich Tax” for 10 years to consolidate the budget…

Catherine Rampell is exactly right. It’s very sweet of the Germans to offer, and the U.S. Treasury won’t send back your donations if you’re feeling similarly altruistic. But voluntary donations aren’t a solution for Germany or the U.S. (or any of the developed countries that ran huge deficits to catch the economic downturn).

I sincerely hope the Glenn Becks of the right won’t seize on this story and call on rich liberals to donate their wealth to the government if they’re so dang interested in higher taxes. We don’t need new charity. We need new laws.

Mr. Thompson, one of the right people¹, must have missed my blog post, Rich Deutschlanders Volunteer to Pay More Taxes. In it I called for rich liberals to follow their more principled German friends by putting their private moola where their public mouths by giving some of their crisp Benjamins to the federal government.

Here’s what I said about the honorable Teutons and their not so honorable American counterparts:

Now this is putting your principles where your wallet is.

Perhaps rich Americans like Sean Penn, George Clooney, George Soros (is he American?) and John Kerry who want to tax the rich back to the Paleolithic should follow the lead of their German counterparts and pony up some voluntary funds.

Yeah, right!

In typical left wing, anti-intellectual fashion Mr. Thompson, without providing a shred of evidence as to why the idea that pro-tax rich liberals should voluntarily pay more taxes is a bad one, mocks the notion by calling its proponents “wrong” and associating Glenn Beck, a highly polarizing figure, with them.

But regardless of Thompson’s childish trivialization of ideas he dislikes, the suggestion that the pro-tax rich should voluntarily pay more taxes is a good one for several reasons. Here are just a few of them:

1. The amount pro-tax liberals contribute voluntarily to the federal government will reduce the amount the federal government will have to forcibly take from other taxpayers. And although it won’t solve the budget problem entirely, it’s bound to help.
2. Pro-tax liberals shouldn’t voluntarily pay more taxes so that anti-tax conservatives don’t have to pay taxes, but rather to make themselves more credible when they stump for higher taxes.
3. The voluntary payment of additional taxes by rich liberals may actually change the minds² of some anti-tax conservatives.

Footnotes:

¹  “Right” of course means left in this context. Mr. Thompson, who looks barely old enough to play a blood-sucker in a Twilight sequel, was apparently taught well by his left-wing professors because he believes as they do that those who favor lower taxes and smaller government are not only wrong on the merits, but wrong as people. And they wonder how tea party movements get started.

²  I doubt this would happen, but if an increase in taxes and the resulting expansion of the federal bureaucracy are as good an idea as liberals believe it to be, what better way for them to show their faith in that idea than to voluntarily contribute some of their private wealth to the cause. In other words, lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.

Related Posts:

• Self Loathing Rich Liberals Want Higher Taxes
• IRS Voluntary Payment Check Off Box for the Benevolent Rich
• The Pro Tax Rich Should Voluntarily Pay More Taxes or Shut the #%&@ Up
• Tax on Rich is “No-Brainer,” Author of “Skinny Dip” Says

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