Think Kim Should Pay More Taxes? You're Wrong

Kim Kardashian has crossed a line—not by divorcing after just 72 days, but by not paying enough in state taxes. Oh, she pays what she owes to California, William McGurn clarifies—she just doesn’t pay what the Courage Campaign thinks she should. Specifically, this “self-appointed advocacy group” is upset that Kardashian made more than $12 million last year but paid only 10.3% in taxes, compared to the 9.3% that middle-class Californians paid. The Courage Campaign implies that imposing a new “millionaires tax” on Kardashian won’t change her life one bit, but could help others. Except the truth is that "taxes affect behavior all the time," McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal.

From the mom who buys online in order to avoid local sales tax to the basketball star who earns more by playing in a state with no income tax, we all make decisions based on taxes quite often. Should this “millionaires tax” become reality, Kardashian could simply decide to leave California—thus depriving the state of all the taxes she pays. And this attitude toward taxes belongs not just to “a bunch of California crazies,” but to many in the Democratic Party, McGurn writes. “It says much about the progressive Puritanism of our age that what these folks really find most sleazy about Ms. Kardashian is not her sex tape or her marriage, but that she's unembarrassed about making money.” Click for the full column. (More taxes stories.)