I mean you could even take the bottom number and leave them with the top number and they could still live in unimaginable luxury forever. Or just take the lot because fuck em lol.
I couldn’t imagine spending $1 billion in my entire life, let alone 3-4.
Most of their billions is ownership in companies they grew into what they are today. It’s not like they have billions to spend, it’s that their ownership is worth billions according to the market.
True, but that ownership gives them access to very low interest loans that they then use as spending money and don’t have to pay taxes on it
So what? We should take away that ownership because they can leverage it? Also the same people suggesting we tax wealth like this want to also close those “loopholes” of low interest loans on shares.
Yes.
Yes to taking away wealth or the way to leverage it?
Taking away (extreme) wealth. There’s no reason one person should have that much. There’s countless better ways to use that money/wealth than for one persons extravagant lifestyle. And even if they don’t have an extravagant lifestyle, what are they gonna do with it? Doubt they will build infrastructure out of good will with it.
No, they can keep them, but those loopholes need to be closed. Maybe don’t allow using ownership of a company as collateral for a loan? If you want to use your massive stored wealth as money you need to sell it. You want to get it back buy it. I’m not a finance or policy person, but there has to be a way to make these people pay the propert tax on their wealth.
So they can keep their ownership, but we are going to remove their way to loan money against it, and still expect them to pay billions in taxes without giving away any ownership? How do you expect them to pay billions in taxes when the only billions they have in value is company ownership? You are forcing them to sell company ownership to pay this ridiculous tax.
To be fair, if billionaires could no longer use their stocks as collateral to borrow insane amounts, maybe they’d have to give themselves taxable salaries.
If they are self-made millionaires/billionaires as they claim, take everything they have/own and tell them to start the quest again, no glitches, DLC, or saved progress.
You all realize they don’t have that money laying around to pay the IRS right? They own companies, those companies are worth that much. To pay that you would have to liquidate those companies. So no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc…
Don’t be a bootlicker or bot or idiot.
When they sell their shares to buy twitter or pay the tax man, those companies still exist. It just means that other people get to buy those shares and that’s a good thing, because that way those companies get owned by the public.
Tesla and SpaceX still exist even after Elon overpaid by some $30B for his Twitter adventure.
no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc…
Oh no! Anyway, so how can we make this happen, like, yesterday?
I highly recommend you to read the paper billionare argument. The market can stand the liquidation of most of those companies without making them go bankrupt, we don’t want them to stop existing, just to make them smaller and not a threat to democracy.
For the whole scale of wealth I also recommend going through wealth shown to scale
Can billionaires liquidate their assets? Yes, it is theoretically possible
The real question is, who is going to buy the assets?
Let’s say we have a billionaire that owns a billion dollar company.
Could that billionaire sell all their shares, get a billion dollars in cash, and then give it away. Yes, it is possible.
But that billion dollars in cash has to come from somewhere. Either the citizens have to come with a billion dollars in cash or the government.
If the citizens spend a billion to buy the shares, then the government takes the billion in cash from the billionaire, then the government gives a billion back to the citizens. You just basically printed an extra billion dollars for the economy, which causes inflation. Because the citizens now have two billion in stocks and cash, compared to just one billion in cash.
Our fiat money system has flaws, one day it is going to crash.
But Besos’ 100+ billion in Amazon stock is money tied up outside of the economy until he sells.
Forcing him to sell and introduce that money into the economy has repercussions.
You don’t need to make him dump all of his money all at once. Make an investment plan so that sum of money doesn’t disturb the market, extend the dump for two-three years and you can put 100 million without destroying the system
I didn’t say you needed to make them dump it all at once, but no matter how you do it, you’re introducing more money into the economy.
Make an investment plan so that sum of money doesn’t disturb the market
Again, great the market isn’t disturbed and stocks are still worth a billion total. You’re still going to introduce another billion into the economy in “two-three” years by giving it to the poor.
The whole point of taking money from billionaires is to affect the economy. There’s no point in doing it if it’s not going to affect anything.
The money is already in the economy, it is just not moving hands. When talking about disturbing the economy I was alluding to inflation, lots of poor families will gladly welcome that money. Also if we allowed us to take a little bit more, the social services will be allowed to improve substantially
Say I invented the cure for cancer today and started the business Cancer Cure Inc. tomorrow.
I own 100% of the shares of the company. Say there are 100 shares.
Each share of Cancer Cure Inc. would be valued at X/100 amount of money because Cancer Cure Inc. would be valued at X.
If Cancer Cure Inc. company was valued at a billion dollars. Each share would be worth 10 million dollars.
I would be seen as a billionaire because I own the 100 shares. Yet I haven’t sold a single share. No money has exchanged hands for the shares.
A billion dollars doesn’t just magically enter the economy because Cancer Cure Inc. exists. It would take an existing billion dollars to buy my shares.
Now, if people wanted to give me a billion dollars in cash for my 100 shares, and I sold them. I’d have a billion dollars in cash, and the people would have a billion dollars in Cancer Cure Inc. stock.
Now, if the government takes my billion dollars in cash and hand that to the people, they now have a billion dollars in stock and a billion dollars in cash.
It doesn’t matter if I own 100 stocks of Cancer Cure Inc. or if 100 different wealthy people own 1 stock each. What changed is that there is now 1 billion more cash floating in the economy.
That’s what causes inflation
I’m not saying it’s right. Capitalism has winners and losers, rich and poor. It’s just how the capitalism system has to work.
All they’d need to liquidate is part of their ownership in said companies. Companies themselves will be ok, don’t you worry your bleeding heart.
That’s not true at all. Loss of controlling ownership makes a company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. The new owners will pick it apart like the vultures they are.
RIP grannies pension plan
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No, they’d just need to liquidate their share in those companies. Those shares would then get bought up by other people or by pension funds.
Or picked apart by private equity vultures at the expense of pension funds.
Well they are public companies bar space x so. Just redistribute those shares.
That’s the thing people don’t get. The ultra wealthy are wealthy on paper.
On an average years. All of us make more than Elon in wages.
What does that matter? He doesn’t take wages intentionally. He has a large stock portfolio that he can borrow against and thereby pay no taxes on that “income”.
What did Elon get paid, excluding stock options at companies he works for?
I bet he still makes more than me.
Most years under 30k. Often a dollar or free.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/20/investing/elon-musk-pay/index.html
That actually almost seems worse. He is not paying into Social Security or his local community. He is being generously compensated on stock, which is taxed differently.
Edit: I do want to thank you for providing that link. I was only finding a Forbes article about him being the highest compensated CEO of that year.
He’s paying in the local community through property taxes.
He’s highly compensated through stock and when he bought twitter. We got some huge amount of money in Taxes.
You’re correct. He rarely pays into social but that’s a problem for Congress to solve.
There are many ways to solve this bullshit and one is not allow them to borrow against their stock. That’s how they live for so cheap. I’m not opposed to stopping that at all.
Borrowing against stock needs to stop yesterday, especially if it’s not specifically for the interests of the company whose stock is being used.
Tax billionaires until there are no more billionaires
It’s really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.
Everything is legally just “property”.
No, fuck that.
The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver. (and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don’t is due to inequality. )
Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it’s fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.
Above that it should be taxed heavily.
And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.
you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a while lifetime of work
I actively try to cheat at every single-player game that I play. I still don’t think I’ve accumulated a billion anything other than self-criticisms. Even that’s questionable.
It’s actually taxes less if it’s earned from investments
At a billion you get a small plaque that says ‘yay you won capitalism’, they name a park bench after you and you replay from scratch.
The problem is that this wealth is ownership in companies they made. If you start a company and it becomes too successful, Is it right that we really just forcefully take that ownership away from you? Who wants to start or keep a company in a country that takes away your company from you if it’s too successful?
“I won’t start a company because it may be worth over a billion one day and that would only leave me with hundreds of millions of dollars. That doesn’t seem worthwhile,” thought no one ever in your hypothetical.
No, it’s more like
" why start a company when if it becomes too successful it will literally be taken away from me for being too successful". I don’t believe we should be taking away businesses from business owners, do you?
Or maybe you’re the successful owner and you reward the people that made you successful with a larger portion of that success?
Sure, give the owner that option, just don’t steal ownership from them.
I do. Fuck 'em. They already have 100 million dollars. They can go cry into that.
So your argument is “Fuck them because they have more than me”. Is that about right? We can steal from them because they have more to steal?
They stole it from “me” first.
If you’ve gone public with the company yes, you’ve set up the situation where paying your due means giving up some control of the company. That was a you decision. But congratulations you’re worth hundreds of millions. If you find yourself thinking that’s not enough you’re deeply broken and one of the most selfish people in human history, a true 0.01%er.
And again, this is a billion dollar baseline people are talking about. This is the same as people upset about the possibility of inheritance taxes because then they’d only get $10,000,000 tax free. No one is not starting a business because of that, which was your original argument.
It’s one thing to willfully sell some company shares to investors, it’s another to be forced to give up more shares just to pay taxes on wealth because of those shares.
This brings up an interesting point though, let’s say it’s a private company worth billions, where one person owns 100% of the shares, do you force them to sell also?
People may not start a business with the intent to be a billionaire, but if we say that if you make it that far we will just tax you so much you will be forced to sell away your ownership, who would keep their company here when they get close to that? I think it’s telling that many of the most successful worldwide companies are US companies.
At some point you just have to give them a gold sticker, a “Congratulations! You won capitalism!” plaque, and leave something for the rest of humanity.
Yes, I’m sure if Jeff Bezos were worth 10 billion dollars less he would have just said forget it I’ll flip burgers instead. I don’t think you need to rip their company from them, you just need to tax them.
You are literally suggesting to rip the company away from them though. They are only worth billions because of that value, if you rant to tax them billions where do you think they are going to get that money? They only have one option, to sell their ownership in their own company. If that’s not ripping their company away from them I don’t know what is.
Are other people paying taxes described as “ripping” away their ownership in “x”? What a bizarre framing. Also, Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon, so he’s already given away ownership of the company. He has assets, and they should be taxed
How does Amazon exist? How do they continue to operate? They run on the Internet created by the US government, they deliver packages by flying through US airspace, and driving on roads paved by several levels of government. Their factories don’t burn down because of municipal fire departments, and aren’t burglarized because of municipal police departments. Why shouldn’t they pay for those things, which they make much more use of than you or I?
Others aren’t using taxes on wealth though. Should the middle class be taxed on the amount in their retirement funds also? Or the amount in their bank accounts?
10% of Amazon is still a lot, it’s still a lot of power.
You think Amazon doesn’t pay for any of that? They pay for their use of such things like we all do. They do get some discounts thanks to scale, but they are paying way more than you or me.
The problem is that they are all employing tax avoidance schemes. Corporations like Amazon will spin off their IP to a separate off-shore corporation. Then they’ll pay that corporation for the use of their IP. That reduces Amazon’s profit to near zero, meaning they’re not paying taxes. The off shore corporation doesn’t pay taxes either.
People like Bezos won’t take salaries, because they’re taxed. Instead they’ll take stock. Then they’ll take loans against that stock, so they don’t pay taxes. They just roll that loan into another loan and continue to live off of it, never paying taxes because they have no “income”.
So yes, their wealth should be taxed. Otherwise the richest among us pay next to nothing and yet benefit the most from what our taxes buy. If we weren’t adequately capturing taxes from the middle class, then sure, but that’s not the case.
True. But generally I think giant companies cause more systemic problems than they solve. So maybe we don’t really need them.
After we die back to a manageable level from climate change we should try to remember that and prohibit it happening again.
We don’t really need giant companies? Ok, sure… personally I like my high tech options these large companies offer, and their ability to offer lower prices thanks to the economics of scale. If you want to pay more for everything then feel free to go to small companies, personally I prefer to pay less for the same stuff from large companies.
Meanwhile the downsides are invasion of privacy, destruction of the environment, poor treatment of workers and on and on.
If employees are treated so poorly they would leave, it’s not like we force people to keep their job. If you prefer to pay more, it’s your choice to buy from smaller companies.
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If the company becomes too successful, maybe there’s not just my effort that went into achieving that.
Somehow “you got paid, fuck off” is acceptable, but “you reaped the benefits, fuck off” is not.
What do employees get for their efforts? Oh yeah, that’s right, they get a salary and maybe even bonuses. What are you suggesting we do the owners? Oh, punish them by removing their company from them? Yeah, they will surely keep the company in the US if that is their reward.
Why do like sucking capitalist dick so much? The only way owners get so rich is because they are exploiting labor.
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I don’t suck any dick, I just think the alternative you are suggesting is so much dumber than what we have
lmao ok, bootlicker
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How can you talk about improving society and in the same sentence day we should punish them for trying to leave? Is that what we should do, punish people for moving their business elsewhere? Maybe ban their business from the country so nobody benefits?
You are promoting a more hostile and authoritarian country under the guise of “better for everyone”, it’s insane.
All these people already sell the stock of their own companies to diversify their holdings or to buy a yacht, island or Twitter.
Selling stock on the market to pay the tax man is no different.
They still keep a billion dollars worth of stock, so its not like they end up poor.
And the government can “forcefully” take a third of a working mans income, which is way worse than taxing wealth. Go cry me a river.
They don’t actually sell stock in a lot of cases, they keep it and take out loans against it. That can only go so far though, if you are like the rest of the crazy people here and suggest we just tax billionaires until they are no longer billionaires, then that won’t work.
Why not take the income of these business owners? Just like we take the income of everyone else? Why special rules for taxing this specific group of people you don’t like?
If they can take out loans to buys islands, Yachts and overpriced tweet companies, then let them take out loans to pay tax.
They only have five figure incomes thanks to the loopholes, so that isn’t a fair level of taxation compared to their actual capital gains that they artificially keep as “unrealized” on paper. A trick unavailable to us mere mortals.
You’re a tool.
Or, crazy thought, make it so they can’t take out loans against their stock; especially if it’s not for private use! Maybe that way, people like Musk will be forced to give themselves salaries that can be taxed by the government.
It’s clear you don’t know how things work at all. You can’t expect to tax someone billions every year and not have to sell the thing causing such a huge tax burden. This isn’t an infinite money glitch, the loan thing can only go so far.
Also, unrealized gains are a real thing, stocks go up and down, and the change in value is unrealized until it’s sold. If a stock goes up $100 that isn’t $100 in my pocket, because tomorrow it could go down $200. If you want to tax these unrealized gains, then you should be paying out the unrealized losses as well. You would also be screwing up the middle class retirement funds, so thanks for that.
You have a big mouth for someone who has zero clue.
Obviously, taxes are levied on a yearly basis and not every day, so daily fluctuations in value are irrelevant.
And retirement funds are tax exempt, so they will not be screwed.
And yes, people who can’t afford to pay property taxes have to sell property. That is a reality we all have to deal with, so why not let the super rich also deal with it.
Dude, get some education.
There are loopholes that can be closed, but won’t because the majority of American politicians are also rich assholes. I do think most of the ideas that get bandied out are dumb as sin, however.
Sad day when “billionaires should pay taxes” is considered a far left position.
Billionaires should pay a wealth tax is considered a far left position. Billionaires should pay an income tax is a position supported by all except maybe some tea party folk.
That!.. That’s literally what I meant!!
The problem is that stocks aren’t income. Stocks don’t have a value until you sell them. How do you tax that? One day someone can be worth billions and the next nothing if the stocks they own drop in value or the company goes bankrupt. I don’t know the solution but it’s not as easy as most people make it out to be.
Do billionaires actually have billions in real money sitting around? I’ve always thought the billions were in stocks and couldn’t be taxed until they cashed it out and they could technically lose everything if the stock price falls. That’s really fucked up if true
Nobody keeps that amount of cash. Even below a million, most people have most of their wealth in either real estate (their own house) or financial securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds).
Yet, we all gotta pay property tax and capital gains.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds. <
Isnt that then bigger problem than generally tax the rich?
Is there a difference?
Closing loopholes = taxing the rich
If the tax code lost all the loopholes, there probably would be no billionaires.
I meant that we should close the loopholes instead of just increasing tax rate for rich.
Closing the loopholes is the same thing as increasing the taxes on the rich.
Just try it and they will find a sad story of some business owner losing the family business because the loophole “serves a vital purpose” and then congress will rush to hell save those family farms.
That’s the reason no loopholes ever get closed.
This movie has been on repeat for decades.
The only way to really solve it is a smarter divide and conquer approach. Separate, stricter rules for the billionaire class that only apply to them.
That way the small business owners stay out of range and have no incentive to help change the narrative.
Wealth taxes are stupid. That said, nobody needs multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.
The solution is to have regulations and laws in place that prevent them getting this large in the first place. The fact that Amazon and Google own 90% of the internet is absolutely fucked.
I agree, no one should be able to hold such an obscene amount of wealth. Right now they do, though. How do you propose this be remedied?
Tbh you would have to create a really good anti trust taskforce full of people that lost everything to these humongous companies, people whose stores got undercut and etc.
I say this because the only way Colombia fought against Escobar’s control of the police was by having a task force full of people whose family or friends had died to the cartel.
This said, yhe defenetly, not one entity that has that much power should be there without being voted in. How would you feel if the gov owned the internet, cuz that doesn’t sound good to me. Soo yhe between voting for whomever controls most of the internet or having better anti trust laws and regulating forces idk
Not with a wealth tax. I’d say just break up the companies and share prices will adjust to reflect.
Right, let’s go back in time and fix it.
Wealth taxes are a concrete solution. Your proposal is instead some vague notion of regulations and laws. By the way, a wealth tax would help prevent the rich from having so much money which allows them to set those regulations and laws in the first place.
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With or without PACs, the money will find its way into politicians’ pockets.
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It’s to point out that banning PACs, while a good move, wouldn’t solve the problem. A wealth tax would be much more effective.
60% of middle class wealth is held in their property. Guess what get’s taxed? Their property. Right now we have a wealth tax on the middle class who are carrying a very disproportionate tax load compared with the rich.
And, even if they don’t own it, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google probably still help run it with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
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Because a ton of wealth is caught up in assets that were already taxed in some way, or is not directly usable. Yeah I might have a few million dollars in assets, but if those are all caught up in shares of a company I’d have to sell a ton just for the mere fact of me owning them.
I’m personally not at all a fan of double-dipping on taxes. I was taxed to make money and taxed to buy stocks, that should be it until I’ve sold them or realized any gain from them. Property tax makes sense on some level, since you’re taking up physical space and helping to pay for the utilities you use in your area. But I don’t agree on a tax for just owning something otherwise, it feels incredibly scummy.
There are other solutions to the problem that don’t involve losing shares in a company you’ve built yourself and still taxes in a way that’s less shitty. The rich pay less in taxes by taking out loans against their assets, which is fine, but those loans aren’t counted as income for good reason (otherwise buying a house would mean tens of thousands in taxes just for getting the loan), but they need an income to pay back those loans and that income would be taxed, so I’m not certain there’s a lot that could be rightly done there, either. It would also fuck with a lot of business financials if you start progressively taxing larger loans as income, but it’s something to consider I guess.
I’m not sure what the solution is. Personally I see little difference in someone having 200 million in assets and 70 billion purely from the standpoint of “how much could a person reasonably spend in a year,” but I digress.
In my opinion, the more egregious issue is that the mere fact of having that much money could be easily used to manipulate markets and should be considered anti-competitive from its mere existence. Good on you for making that much money, I applaud you, but capitalism requires healthy competition and if you have literal trillions to outcompete competition by hemorrhaging money through losses for hundreds of years then that’s fundamentally anti-competitive because nobody’s going to challenge you. It’s a losing game and breaks the capitalistic contract necessary for a healthy economy.
Companies should not have any means of becoming so unfathomably large, and that alone would resolve the issue of “paying their fair share.”
Yeah and maybe also cutting down on their non-profit organisations scheme to avoid taxes would be nice…
Wealth taxes actually work, that’s why the rich attack them so vehemently.
I think you’re wrong on both points. I’ve heard plenty of rich people say they believe their tax rate should be higher including some of the ones on that list. You’re also wrong when you say it works. It works for who? If you don’t attack the spending problem it’s just more money to be wasted. Let’s face it the political system is outstanding and finding some need to spend every cent they can possibly get their hands on. It won’t matter if they spend it on your priorities or someone else’s they will always find the need to spend it. In our current inflation based economy they don’t even need to spend what they take in it’s easier to just print more and that’s exactly what they’re doing.
rich person talk: it’s not a tax problem, it’s a spending problem.
No it’s not, money spent in the economy is money going around. rather than hoarded offshore.
it’s even basic Keynesian economics. the money just needs to be in the economy in a fairer way.
The rich saying their tax rate should be higher only advocate for higher income tax rates, which they are already avoiding for the most part. It’s just another PR stunt.
The phrase “the rich” is quite broad. I really don’t know what the rich believe or want.
Billionaires. Does that narrow it down enough for you? By far they advocate for policies that let them keep billions in wealth and get even more on top of that.
As a group I suspect you’re right but I really question why we have a tax system that is so accommodating to their requests. It’s money in politics. I’m pretty clear about that one.
Wealth tax should absolutely be a priority. In my state, MA, we voted in a “millionaires tax”. One thing it will cover is state wide free school lunch.
Okay but why did you call it “millionaires tax” instead of like “1% earners tax” or something? Headlines are all scaring lazy people who don’t read the article to think that their lifetime retirement savings is at risk. When it’s really for people making over a million per year!
It’s commonly labeled “millionaires tax”. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Haha yeah I didn’t mean you. I meant you guys as in the entire state or whoever named it.
Gotcha
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Alternatively some of us have taken economics classes and history classes and know how poorly wealth taxes have worked.
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Please provide a source that substantiates the idea that wealth taxes have ever worked.
Remember how good the economy was in the 50’s and 60’s? Wanna guess what the tax rate on the wealthy was? It was 91%. This was the “golden age of American capitalism”, and that tax revenue kicked off a slew of public works projects that boosted the economy.
I asked fir a source that demonstrates that wealth taxes work not that higher tiers of income tax work which is what you are talking about.
Considering that you do not know the difference between these things you should be less certain as to how any of this works.
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What semantics game? I asked for a source supporting the claim regarding wealth taxes. You have not provided one and a different account, not you, demonstrated they don’t know the difference between wealth and income taxes. They were confused whereas you haven’t backed your claim.
So do you have a source?
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That’s not a source nor does it establish what you claim.
I swear corporations hire these people to come in here and defend billionaires. Billionaire who will never even spend any of that in a hundred life times.
The tax should be even higher. No one needs $100 billion.
How do you handle a CEO owning stock worth that amount in the marketplace, then?
They don’t. No one can explain how a wealth tax work because it doesn’t work.
My issue wasn’t with a wealth tax (even though I’m against it), but pulling some arbitrary wealth cap out of thin air opens a lot of questions that many people don’t consider the implications of.
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Counterpoint: But they don’t wanna pay taxes! They don’t wannaaaaaaaaaaa… why are you being so mean to the precious billionaires?
So there are irreconcilable issues on this issue and Congress is currently too busy trying to impeach Biden because his son had dick pics on his laptop.
Other counterpoint, say you’re in a position of power and are thinking about implementing a wealth tax. When along comes one of these people with a bri- I mean donation to just not do that. Can we really expect you to turn down the money? /s
I think its more than just his own dick pics.
Who cares
Your mom
I’d be willing to be taxed into oblivion if I knew it’d mean everyone else could lead full lives. And I make nothing.
Now imagine the good their excess wealth could do.
Fuck it, I’m willing to die if it came down to it to ensure the safety and prosperity of my countrymen. And I actually hate most of my countrymen.
If we ask and freely give such sacrifices from the working class, then asking the elite to stop hoarding gold like a dragon really shouldn’t be a big deal.
I do respect Warren Buffet for being honest about it. It’s up to us (the public) and the politicians who work for us to change the system to make it more fair.
There was also another billionaire who gave his money away and is no longer a billionaire. Mad respect for the guy, but he is a rare breed. We have to fix the system, not depend on charity.
Here’s the basic idea of what I’d think is fair
You have a basic rate for income below the 20th percentile of all incomes
Multiply that by 1.5 for income between that and the 40th percentile
Multiply that by 1.25 for income between that and the 60th percentile
Multiply that by 1.125 for income between that and the 80th percentile
Multiply that by 1.0625 for income between that and the 95th percentile
Multiply that by 1.03125 for income between that and the 99th percentile
Multiply that by 1.015625 for all income above the 99th percentile, with the additional caveat that people who top this bracket even once cannot hold public office, donate to political campaigns, or hire lobbyists and lobbying firms for ten years following them topping out.
Imagine something similar for taxes on units of housing owned, dividends earned, and so on and so forth.
The idea being that the highest rate can’t be adjusted without significantly reducing the tax burden of the poorest, basically erasing the only way conservatives have been able to balance the books whenever they try that shit.
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Not more complicated than current US income tax system. Maybe a few more tax brackets…
I think I also made it a bit more flexible to, by only making one number changeable and fixing the brackets to percentiles, the system functions more or less independently year to year, with the single dial being all that can be turned when revenue needs to be raised from across society or when a break can be handed out due to a miraculous surplus or occasion for national reward.
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Fuck the billionaires, tax them all by 100% of their income beyond 1 billion.
None of these guys has income anywhere near a billion in yearly income. They have stock and other assets that are worth billions but it is not income per se. If anything they go to extreme lengths to minimize their income.
See? that’s another thing. Why is some income not considered income?
People who actually have to work ALWAYS have to pay taxes, but the parasites that gamble in the stock market get to keep all that money they won, and if they lose they get a bailout from the taxpayers.
There are billionaires out there that have become so narcissistic that they just say it outright. “I’m going to privatize the profits and socialize the losses”
Make that illegal too. It goes against everything that humans have learned about living in a community. They’re like monkeys with some sort of brain malfunction that makes them horde bananas and starving out the rest of the group… if they did that in the wild they’d get torn apart by other monkeys
Monkeys will also eat the selfish ones.
Maybe that’s where the phrase “eat the rich” comes from.
is there anyway to classify new/gained assets and tax that?
Ate they not taxed when they are bought and sold?
Why does it have to be so complicated? A dollar gained in any way should be considered income on everyone’s taxes.
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There are so many ways to avoid paying income taxes in a country. Perhaps the easiest is taking a loan with security in stock. Wealth tax and taxing stock in general is practiced in my country with great success (should be much higher still) and is in fact great for the economy: it forces people to invest or see their fortunes diminish. Your statement shows lack of knowledge and imagination that other systems than the one you preside in could exist.
How do they pay those taxes though? I imagine by forcing the companies they’ve invested in to give them a higher dividend? Or do they actually sell stocks in order to pay the tax?
They can do either depending on what is most profitable. Usually they will try to do some scummy tax evasion maneuvers or cry on national television, but ultimately paying these taxes is of no issue to them in reality. The reason they do not want to part with stock, hence their crying, is because holding on to it is so damn profitable to them. They may even go to lengths of taking loans instead to pay taxes before selling ownership of stock.
They also get tax write offs whenever a stock decreases in value, so this is just sharing a small part of their spoils when times are good and business is booming. In exchange they get well functioning public services, a highly educated work force, stipends for starting companies and so on. In reality the top 0,1 % percentile pay less taxes than the bottom 10 % per capita as percentage of their income.
You don’t know how any of this works, but you’ve been fed a lie about how it supposedly works and now you think you know how it works and try to lord your false knowledge over others. A wealth tax that includes stocks would simply be another calculation to make as to whether they’re worth holding.
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