Attila Lendvai schreef op ma 04-04-2022 om 08:00 [+0000]:
> the vast majority of the taxes are not taken from the wealthy,
> but from the masses. the well-connected easily pays for the
> marginal cost of the tax consultants, lawyers, judges, offshore
> entities, and whatnot... and ultimately buy/corrupt the entire
> political system.

If these wealthy evade taxes, wouln't they, after a transition from
public funding to private funding, just keep hoarding the money for
theirselves and not fund anything?  I don't see how eliminating taxes
here would make these corrupt wealthy more likely to pay taxes/fund
things.

If it's all private, no mechanism remains to extract money from these
wealthy.  If it's public, then even if it's partially corrupt, at least
a portion of their wealth would be extracted.

Additionally, there are efforts underway to at least in-part eliminate
off-shore constructions and other tax evasion schemes.  E.g., I forgot
the name, but there was some proposal for a world-wide lower bound on a
certain kind of tax.  And in e.g. Belgium there's a ‘Dienst Bijzondere
Belastingsinspectie’ dedicated to ‘structured combat against fraud’,
and the ‘Federale Overheidsdiensten Financiën’ apparently has recovered
€110,69 * 10^9 in 2020 [0] (or maybe 2019-2020, these reports appear to
be made every two years).

Greetings,
Maxime.

[0] https://www.2020.jaarverslag.financien.belgium.be/index-nl.html