Rich and super-rich

One day before Parliament was to vote on tax reform, Týden published its annual list of crown billionaires. When MP David Rath of ČSSD criticizes the coalition's reform plans as having the goal of sharply cutting taxes for the very richest, he surely must have these billionaires in mind! In fact, though, Rath is lumping these billionaires together with regular middle-class Czechs earning as little as Kč 80,000 per month. Whereas the tax reforms - esp. the caps on social and health taxes - are very import for these salarymen, the super-rich don't need to give a flip. They use sophisticated offshore structures to determine their own tax rate. Killing the reforms won't affect them directly, but it will hurt many of the thousands of people who work for them. It will reinforce Rath's perverted view that regular, hard- working Czechs moving up the corporate ladder are somehow undeserving of their success. [Czech Republic social-security healthcare]