I'm visiting an old friend, who is one of the smartest and best-educated people I know. She had an interesting comment about our tax policies. She said that the reason England won the Napoleonic wars was because they had a higher tax rate than France had, so they simply had more money to work with.
She also pointed out that the countries in Europe that have high taxes are all doing very well. The Scandinavian countries, France, and Germany, among others, are fine, while Italy and Greece are sucking wind.
If you want to build a great country, you have to spend some money to do it, and borrowing isn't the right way to go about it. Thus, we need to raise taxes.
Germany's capital gains taxes are 25%, plus a 5.5% "solidarity surcharge." (If your personal tax rate is lower than 25%, you can get a partial refund.)
We're told that nobody will do any investing if we increase the capital gains rate. For some reason, it isn't working that way in Germany. |
