World’s Wealthy Tapped for Cash as Governments Tax High Incomes

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-27/world-s-wealthy-tapped-for-cash-as-governments-tax-high-incomes.html

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- From Athens to Olympia, Washington, governments made poorer by the recession are looking to higher taxes on the rich for cash.

Spain’s wealthiest should be tapped to help close the euro region’s third-largest budget deficit, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said yesterday. The U.K. has boosted taxes on high earners and French and Swedish politicians are calling for the same. The top U.S. tax rate is set to rise in 2011, while at least 14 states have lifted rates or are considering increases.

“There’s a real move to get at whatever revenue you can get at without being so broad as to get the populace all up in arms,” said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers in Washington. “You go where the money is.”

The longest recession since the Great Depression has deprived governments of revenue, opening gaps between what they take in and what they must spend to sustain their economies. Budget deficits in advanced economies have swollen more than eight-fold since 2007 to about 9 percent of gross domestic product, the International Monetary Fund said.

MORE at the link above ---

*Shrug* :shrug:

I never knew Atlas was a smiley.

Perhaps his Mother can take in laundry.

The wealthy got their wealth at the expense of everybody else on the planet, goddamn time they gave a bunch of it back.

Anything to avoid helping anyone else!

:rofl:

:nopity:

...that the rich will all "migrate away" as a result of their higher tax burden will ring hollower than ever before.

I was thinking the same thing! Where oh where will the go if "all" the world is going to tax the hell out of them? :evilgrin: