What sort of startups/work have you been doing? When I'm talking about disincentivizing, I just mean that making the conscious decision of working more seems like a no-brainer. Your personal reasoning behind this may be different, but overall, fewer people will do this if they only get paid for 70-80% of the extra hours than if they get paid for all of them.
Really? You think there is a linear relationship between tax rates and hours worked? It's never worked that way in my experience, either as an employee or as a founder.
As an owner, you don't get paid for hours, full-stop. You get paid for outcomes. I don't know about you, but if the government raised the corporate tax rate by 5%, that would have no bearing on my desire to have my company succeed.
The same holds true, ceteris paribus, for my years as an employee. I worked hard (and a lot of hours) because I enjoyed what I was doing, and wanted the company to succeed, even if my income was divorced from the hours worked--as it was, most of the time, as a salaried employee. In other words, I got paid zero percent of the "extra hours", and yet still worked them, gladly, for other reasons.
Really? I've never had problem with this. Nor have I felt the tax system has disincentivized my income (which is well into the top bracket.)