Tag: Hauser’s Law

Soaking the Rich and Big Corporations

George Noga

As blue states hemorrhage tax base, they raise taxes and cut services.

Soaking the Rich and Big Corporations

By: George Noga – July 17, 2022

I begin with new IRS data that show the fiscal effects of the ongoing blue state to red state migration. This is followed by the paradox of the massive Trump tax cuts that actually produced (just as we predicted) a veritable gusher of new tax revenue.

Starting next week, I lighten up my posts for the remainder of July with blogs of a personal nature. Some long-time readers have suggested I try this; please stay tuned.

Tax Base Migration from Blue to Red States is Accelerating

The massive human and financial migration from blue to red states is surging, fueled in part by working from home. Just released IRS adjusted gross income (AGI) for 2020 shows NY lost $20B, CA $18B and IL $9B; other big losers were MA, NJ, and MD, all deep blue. The big winners were FL $24B, TX $6B, AZ $5B, SC $4B, NC $4B, NV $3B and TN $3B. Other winners were CO, ID, UT, WY and MT – mostly deep red.

Blue states are trapped in a vicious circle; they lose tax base, then to make up the lost revenue they raise taxes, cut services and neglect infrastructure. They lose even more tax base, and the cycle repeats. When will they learn?

The annual loss of tax revenue is $1.6B for NY, $1.4B for CA and $700M for IL. The loss of AGI has a compounding effect, as the lost income from the current year is added to prior losses. For red states, AGI gains also are compounded. As blue states hemorrhage tax base, liberals respond by raising taxes, cutting services and neglecting infrastructure, which causes even more people to flee, which further erodes the tax base and culminates in a vicious circle. Meanwhile, red states are in virtuous circle and use the tax revenue gained from blue states to further cut taxes, improve services and rebuild infrastructure. Will the last person leaving New York please turn off the lights?

Trump Tax Cuts are Soaking the Rich and Large Corporations

I have blogged repeatedly that the only way to soak the rich is by cutting – that’s right cutting – taxes. The 2003 Bush tax cuts resulted in the biggest tax increase on the rich in US history as their share of taxes doubled. The same thing is happening with the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Moreover, it also is occurring with respect to corporate taxes.

Hauser’s Law: Tax revenue is a constant share (around 18%) of GDP whether the tax rate is 90% or 28% – for reasons explained below.

Individual income tax revenue is up 68% while corporate tax revenue is up 21%. Overall revenue is up an astounding 39%. Just as we predicted, lower rates resulted in more revenue; yet, progressives want to jack up rates for class warfare purposes. Progressives really don’t want to soak the rich; they want only to appear to be soaking the rich. If they really wanted to soak the rich, they would cut taxes.

Lower tax rates work due to Hauser’s Law, i.e. when tax rates are low, the rich are disincentivized to take measures to reduce their taxes. When rates are high, the wealthy work, save and invest less; they barter, retire earlier, hide, defer and underreport income, convert income to capital gains and defer gains without offsetting losses.

With high rates, high-income taxpayers use tax shelters; seek tax-free income; change the amount, location and composition of taxable income; exploit ambiguities and loopholes; shift income to corporations and/or to lower-bracket family members. They lobby aggressively for tax breaks, move to low tax venues, transition into the occult economy, employ top tax lawyers and accountants and much, much more.

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Next week we lighten things up with: Travels with George 1968 to 1972.

More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

Hauser’s Law: Why You Can’t Soak the Rich

George Noga
Taxpayers are not sheep docilely waiting to be shorn.
Hauser’s Law: Why You Can’t Soak the Rich
By: George Noga – March 3, 2019

        There are 7 reasons it is impossible to soak the rich by raising income tax rates; there is only one way it can be done – revealed herein. Full disclosure: I have firsthand knowledge of this by virtue of being a CPA tax professional and, during the 1970s and 1980s, the founder and CEO of one of the largest tax shelter firms in America.

Why You Can’t Soak the Rich With Higher Tax Rates 

1.  Hauser’s Law: Tax revenue remains constant at 18% of GDP (20% in good times, 16% in bad times) regardless if the top rate is 28% or 92%. This has been true for the 75 years since WWII. Later in this post we explain why Hauser’s Law works.

2. Elasticity of Taxable Income: ETI is a variant of Hauser’s Law and is measured by comparing tax returns before and after tax increases. For incomes above $500,000 the ETI is -1.2, which means the higher rate collected less money than before. For capital gains and dividends, the ETI shows that virtually no added tax is collected.

3. The rich are not the same people: The highest bracket taxpayers are not the same people each year. Someone who runs a family business with modest income suddenly becomes rich for one year when the business is sold. It is precisely such ordinary people (rich for one year only) who get caught in the crosshairs of high tax rates.

4. There is no way to identify the rich: Government (thankfully) has no data on wealth, only on certain types of income – which is a poor surrogate for wealth. It is impossible to soak the rich if there is no way to know who they are. Also see #3 supra.

5. Corporate taxes are not paid by owners: Businesses and corporations collect taxes but the money they pass along to government is not their money. Nearly all business taxes are passed along to consumers as higher prices – extremely regressive.

6. There aren’t enough rich: Not only are they different people from year to year, there just are too few of them to make soaking them worthwhile. The only way to raise significantly more revenue within the current tax code is to tax the middle class.

7. The income of the truly rich is not taxed as ordinary income; it is capital gains.

Why Hauser’s Law Works and ETI is Negative

        Hauser’s Law appears counterintuitive; why would government collect the same percentage of taxes when the top rate is 92% as it collects when it is 28%? The answer lies in human behavior; people are not sheep docilely waiting to be shorn. Higher rates incentivize people to go to great lengths to reduce taxes. They will work, save and invest less; barter, retire earlier; hide, defer and underreport income, convert ordinary income to capital gains and not realize capital gains without offsetting losses.

        They employ tax shelters; shift income to lower bracket family members; seek out tax-free income; change the amount, location and composition of taxable income; exploit ambiguities and loopholes; shift income to corporations; lobby aggressively for tax breaks, move from one place to another – even outside the US; move into the occult economy; employ top tax lawyers and accountants and much more – mostly legal.

How to  Soak the Rich – Using the Tax Code

       There is only one way to soak the rich and that is with lower tax rates. It works for the same reasons that Hauser’s Law works; the rich become disincentivized to take measures to reduce their tax bill. Whenever rates drop, the rich pay a much higher share of taxes than before. The 2003 Bush tax cuts resulted in the largest tax increase on the rich in American history; they paid over double what they paid when Carter was president. It works every time, but you won’t hear it from AOC and her compadres.

Our next post debunks another liberal shibboleth, the $15 minimum wage.  

Texting – Sears – Tyler – Hauser – Laffer

George Noga
A 70% top income tax rate loses the government $65 billion over 10 years.
Texting – Sears – Tyler – Hauser – Laffer
By: George Noga – January 24, 2019

       This is a special mid-week posting of micro topics, many of which are timely, especially the segments about the progressive plan to raise marginal tax rates.

Micro Topics: CO2 emissions of electric vehicles often exceed those of gas vehicles, depending on the fuel used to generate the electricity and how long a charge lasts. The $7,500 tax credit is a wealth transfer from the middle class to the wealthy; nonetheless, it remains a darling of the left. . . . . . . Canada increased fines for texting while driving to $1,000 and loss of license. MLLG opposes distracted driving, but there are always unintended consequences of government actions. Where texting is illegal, drivers often relocate texting to their laps – out of sight of police but infinitely more dangerous.

Socialism & Sears: In the USSR, a man goes into a store and asks, “You don’t have any meat?” The clerk responds, “No, we don’t have any fish; it’s the store next door that doesn’t have any meat.” I have a stable of commie jokes; a favorite is where the USSR conquered the entire world but spared New Zealand just to know prices in the real world. These stories are so funny because they are true; commies had no way to know what things cost. We just learned Soviet economists (oxymoron) resorted to Sears catalogs to set prices for consumer goods – as did the Chicoms. Progressives are ignorant of the lessons of the USSR and the truth behind all the commie jokes.

John Tyler: Our national history spans but a few lifetimes and there are some amazing stories. My favorite is John Tyler (Tippecanoe and Tyler too), our 10th president (1841-45) born in 1790 during George Washington’s first term. Two of Tyler’s grandchildren are alive today.  The entirety of US history took place in the lifetimes of Tyler, his children and grandchildren, spanning 229 years and still going. Therefore, you should not be overly shocked to learn that the United States government in 2019 still is paying pensions to widows and children of Civil War veterans.

Hauser’s Law: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and progressive know-nothings (oxymoron) proposed a top income tax rate of 70%. They obviously know nothing about Hauser’s Law, which states that, regardless of tax rates, the individual income tax collects 18% of GDP – 20% in a strong economy, 16% in a weak one. In the 75 years since WWII, the top rate has varied from a low of 28% to a high of 92%, but the revenue it produced was constant at 18%. The Tax Foundation, when adjusting for the effects of behavioral changes, found that a 70% rate lost $65 billion in tax revenue over 10 years.

The Laffer Curve: Progressives also know nothing about the Laffer Curve. Economists know that as rates rise (starting from zero) tax revenues increase, but at a decreasing rate. Eventually a point is reached at which tax revenue is maximized. Beyond that point, tax revenues decrease at an increasing rate, i.e. the Laffer Curve. Higher marginal income tax rates actually result in less tax revenue. Economists have determined that tax revenue is maximized at a rate of 35% to 40%; once rates rise above 40%, total tax collections begin to fall and at an ever increasing rate.

The reason Hauser’s Law and the Laffer Curve work should be apparent; people (especially the wealthy) modify their behavior based on tax rates. If progressives want more tax revenue (within the existing tax code) they must do a Willy Sutton and go to where the money is, i.e. the middle class; there never are enough rich people. MLLG has written extensively about Hauser and Laffer and may soon need to devote a full posting to them amidst all the progressive jibber-jabber about hiking tax rates.

Our next post January 27 is a climate change update; don’t miss it.

Inequality in America II – Income, Taxation and Spending

George Noga

Part II of our series, Inequality in America, focuses of inequality of income.

By: George Noga – May 8, 2016

  There are numerous and mind-numbing statistical methods for calculating income inequality. The Census Bureau alone reports the Gini coefficient, Theil index and MLD (mean logarithmic deviation). Many of these statistics do indeed show more inequality now than in past decades; however, peeking inside the numbers is revealing. Note: Most data herein are from US Census Bureau and BLS reports published in 2013-2014.

   By every measure extant, inequality rose more under Clinton than Reagan – Theil at double and MLD at triple the rate. The same is true with Obama’s first six years vs Bush 43. The Gini coefficient rose triple the rate under Obama; MLD rose 37% more; and Theil is up sharply while it fell under Bush 43. It is not a giant leap to deduce that most of the putative increase in income inequality results from progressive policies.

   Despite all the esoteric statistics, we really know very little about income inequality because all the data are – to use a highly technical term – crapola! Every study is fatally flawed by inconsistencies and limitations affecting source data; the major flaws are:

  1. Statistics are based on AGI (adjusted gross income) and not on all income. Much income is not included in AGI, such as contributions to IRA and 401(k) plans. AGI excludes the non-taxable portion of Social Security, EITC, Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP. Every one of these, if included in AGI, would significantly reduce inequality.
  2. Data use household instead of individual income. This renders all comparisons between time periods and income quintiles meaningless because the number of people per household changes over time and also changes between quintiles. For example, the number of one-person households has sharply increased in recent years (mostly in the bottom income quintile) making it appear there is more inequality among households even though, in reality, there is much, much less inequality among individuals.
  3. Quintiles are inconsistent. The top quintile has 3.2 people per household whereas the bottom quintile has 1.7; the income in the top quintile must be spread among twice as many people as the bottom quintile. It also means there are 25 million more people in the top quintile versus the bottom. Use of household data paints a deeply flawed picture of increased inequality between income cohorts – inequality that doesn’t exist.  
  4. Aggregate statistics don’t compare the same groups. Statistics showing inequality increasing over time don’t track the same people. New people (most poor immigrants) keep entering the back of the line, skewing all data downward. If they tracked the exact same people (and excluded new people), the data would show decreasing inequality.

   Does our tax system result in inequality? In one word, no. The US has one of the most progressive tax regimens in the world. Even Social Security and Medicare are somewhat progressive when taking (as should be done) the benefits into account. Moreover, increasing marginal tax rates on the wealthy would not result in their paying more in taxes – a principle well documented and even codified in Hauser’s Law.

   No discussion of income inequality would be complete without genuflecting to the so-called gender gap. However, economic analysis shows that the gap between incomes of men and women completely disappears when properly adjusting for level of education, type of degree, experience, hours worked and level of danger.

   The Census Bureau also reports data on spending by income quintile. The lowest quintile spends $2 for every $1 of reported income. Some of this comes from the underground economy – which logically is the province mostly of that cohort. If we were to gauge inequality based on actual spending rather than on fatally flawed measures of income, the effect would be a signal decrease in inequality in America.    

The next post in this series on May 15th addresses the $15 minimum wage.

When Debt Becomes Equal to GDP

George Noga

By: George Noga – June 10, 2013

     Having blogged extensively about the crisis of spending, debt and deficits, I am constantly alert for new perspectives to present the crisis in terms easier to understand. I have discovered one compelling new way to do this and it is presented herein.

       First however, the media have widely reported the  decline in the projected federal deficit which normally would be welcome news. Please note I referred to the projected deficit; the actual deficit continues its inexorable march to oblivion. The decline is due to two factors: (1) higher tax collections in late 2012 in advance of the Obama tax increases; and (2) payments from Fannie Mae. Both are one-time phenomena. So you may wonder, won’t the tax increases permanently shrink the deficit? If you believe thusly, you have forgotten Hauser’s Law which teaches tax rates may rise or fall, but the overall percent of revenue to GDP remains unchanged.

The Special Mathematics of a 100% Debt/GDP Ratio

    Now for the fresh perspective. As the Debt/GDP ratio approaches 100%, some simple but gripping mathematics come into play. First, a few numbers. GDP now is $16 trillion and the public debt is $12 trillion (75% ratio). At the end of Obama’s term GDP will be $17 trillion, assuming a perhaps optimistic 2.0% compound growth rate. The public debt also will be right at $17 trillion based on continued annual structural deficits of just under $1 trillion combined with the frightening demographics and high annual compound growth of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and ObamaCare. Please note I use public debt and not total debt; this is because we must pay interest only on the public portion – a key distinction to bear in mind as you read on.

    When the interest-bearing public debt equals GDP, the math gets interesting. Historically, the average maturity of US government debt is 5 years, while the average interest rate is 6%. When public debt equals GDP in 2016-2017, we can make the following observations.

“When debt and GDP are the same, the economy must grow at a rate  equal to the composite rate on the debt to prevent a death spiral.”

    First, the economy must grow at the same rate as the overall interest rate on government debt to keep from exploding interest costs and the deficit. If interest rates revert to the historic average of 6% while GDP grows at 2%, this will, ceteris paribus, result in a 4% larger deficit. At $17 trillion, the annual debt service (interest) will be over $1 trillion with 4%, or $680 billion, resulting from the gap between GDP growth and interest rates. Note: Interest now consumes less than 1% of GDP because of historically low interest rates – which will not last.

    Second, if (miracle of miracles) the interest rate becomes equal to GDP growth, the entire benefits of the expansion of the US economy are offset by and consumed by higher debt service. To put it straight: the US economy never can grow net of interest. One can only imagine the impact of this on unemployment and every other measure of economic well being.

“If both GDP growth and interest rates were at their historic averages, there would be a differential of -2.7% , adding $400 billion a year to the deficit.”

    Third, again using historic data, if the US economy grew at its average post WWII rate of 3.3%  (phat chance) and also experienced its average interest rate of 6%, that would result in a  differential of -2.7%, i.e. debt service would explode by nearly $400 billion more each year compounded. Even if economic growth was high at say 3+%, interest rates would be higher given the concomitant strong economy. Thus, even under such sanguine conditions, debt service would grow much faster than the economy resulting in a debt death spiral.

    I hope the above perspective helps readers better understand why countries whose Debt/GDP ratios blow past 90% of their economies rarely, if ever, recover. These United States of America are headed toward a 100% Debt/GDP ratio by the end of the current presidential term. The only alternatives are: (1) massive spending cuts on the order of 30% which will wreck the social contract; (2) Draconian tax increases which will tank the economy further; (3) runaway inflation; (4) repudiation of the debt; and (5) a lost generation much like Greece is experiencing today. In fact, we are likely to experience several of the aforementioned perils. Avoiding widespread civil unrest and maintaining the rule of law will be no small feat.