Right… to get at that wealth through taxes you would need a wealth tax or a tax on corporate profits along with outlawing stock buy backs.

No, you just need to prohibit forming 1-man holding companies. Want to have shares? Write them to your own name, not to a shell company's name. That's a first step to get this income at least tied to individual. Or get a hedge fund license, which ultra-rich will do, but they will find a way in any system other than full commie madness.

That’s not how a progressive taxes work.

I know perfectly well how progressive taxes work. In majority of cases bonus from employer will be taxed at source at higher tax rate regardless what you plan to spend it to. Even if your plans for these money would be fully deductible, you will still need to have spare cash to cover planned expenses until you get a refund. In case of wealthy person, there's a privilege to optimize your spending first and report/pay taxes later simply because there's no taxation at source involved.

Well, yes which is why I said I support sovereign wealth funds. That is the state owns portions of companies directly in the same way other shareholders do. This cuts out the wealthy people entirely.

No, it doesn't unless you propose nationalization. Even if shares in publicly-listed companies will be bought in some way said fund it's still possible to have billions in privately-held company. You can't get something that is not for sale unless you decide to rob.

So you support lowering incoming taxes and raising taxes on dividends, capital gains, royalties?

What I'm proposing is irrelevant, the topic was who is paying for European social security. And my point is that it's paid by poor and middle class, since they have no freedom in optimizing and planning their income. You can have tax brackets up to 99%, it's absolutely irrelevant before a discussion what is subject to this tax. However, works well for populism reasons.

Uhh… yeah we should close that loopholes, right? Even if we didn’t close that loophole I still think its a much better system for healthcare than in the US

It's not a loophole, it's perfectly normal to have a paying job along with your other income sources. If these other income sources would've been subject for same tax brackets as job income, there wouldn't be a problem.
US healthcare is a scam which siphons insane amount of money simultaneously from government and people, I don't think there's any valid argument in favor of it.

Not all that familiar with these kinds of tax dodging schemes within in the EU. But US corporations do similar things with the Cayman Islands.

Corporations could be established everywhere, corporate tax rate is another topic. In EU it's possible to dodge taxes on your personal income, not corporate, which is not the case for US citizens.

Perhaps that is how things are but how should things be?

Again, how things should be is another topic, my original point is that high income taxes and tax brackets with what currently considered as income is cheap populism to shaft middle class. When applied to wealthy people this will catch a few exceptional individual performers like sports players which have no case in declaring their individual ability as company activity (ironically, only on "salary" part of their income - brand deals and royalties will be optimized into oblivion).

As of what would be fair... Removing VAT, eliminating 1-man holding companies to get assets to individual's name then doing same tax rate and get any income to be subject for same tax brackets and social security contributions as everyday man's salary. Regarding taxation at source and deductions for individuals... well, that would be also fair, but it is operational nightmare.