There probably isn’t a single billionaire out there with a billion dollar income in any given year unless they’re doing some massive sell off like when Musk sold shares to buy twitter.
What actually happens, is the more wealth you have, the less income you’re actually likely to have at least in proportion to the wealth, because you start doing things like taking loans out against your shares in a company, and potentially never pay it back until you die at which point the estate will pay it off, but I think there’s even some weird estate transfer things that make that favorable to them as well.
There is a (relatively) simple solution to this; Make the act of taking out a loan against the value of your assets (which the wealthy tend to do, for liquid cashflow) a Capital Gains taxable event.
I think the wealth tax would be hard to get satisfactorily right. Either too little to feel like ‘justice’ or too much and you have people losing controlling interest in a company despite never really wanting it to get valued that much and never wanting to sell it.
Also, I think if you are head of a private company, you have a lot more ‘invisible wealth’ than the head of a public company, so there’s opportunity for a tax dodge through making your company private.
I like the idea of treating leveraging assets to actually have something spendable as income.
In Switzerland there is wealth tax that scales with your wealth and already starts at 100k, but then it’s something like 0.001%. I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. I do agree though that the idea of treating leveraging assets as income is quite interesting and makes sense.
This has actually been my preference vs a straight up wealth tax.
I wouldn’t really call it simple though as these types of things can easily be done off books. You’d have to be able to do audits like how did you pay for this with that cash kinda thing still.
You also need to deal with repayment and prevent double taxation, which is doable to sort out but not easy.
Upvoting for recognizing the double taxation but saying that is addressable.
Sure, you can get a credit later for repayment, suggesting that you paid the tax on other income. In the mean time, it’s effectively a 0% loan to the government between borrowing against the wealth and getting a credit for loan payment.
I meant relatively simple in the sense that it shouldn’t require a full re-write of existing laws - just an addition to, knowing full well that enforcement would be the biggest challenge.
Hefty fines (over and above the value of the assets used as collateral) on the lenders if caught not reporting could help ensure compliance.
Another way to tackle it might also be to treat the end of every financial year as a Capital Gains Event for assets over a certain threshold? That way, it just becomes part of people’s annual tax returns and taking out loans wouldn’t necessarily help avoid it.
eg. If FY26 saw Elon Musk’s wealth increase by $10bn, he would owe ~$2bn in Capital Gains to the IRS.
Also, to head off possible arguments: Given that the US taxes its citizens even if they live/work abroad - there would also be negligible risk of capital flight.
Nothing is ever enough for people is it? Ya’ll could have had Cuomo again and gotten 0% taxes on the rich. Hell, Cuomo would’ve given tax breaks to his wealthy buddies like he did the first time. 2% isn’t the end goal, it’s the start. Ya’ll need to change your perspective, nothing in politics is going to be instant or perfect. I’ll take 2%, it’s a start.
It is easy for them to have 0 income, and we should fix that. The means by which they can access ‘value’ of their wealth to pay for stuff without actually incurring a taxable event need to get closed. Primarily this seems to be about borrowing against wealth, which should be a taxable event, with an option to eventually get credit for loan repayment to assuage the ‘but but double taxation!’ crowd.
Indeed we need to do what the right wingers have been doing to us since the 70s. Slowly turn up the taxes and lock up more and more white collar criminals/pedophiles. Hopefully this starts happening after Trump and Republicans face backlash from all the shit they’ve done over this year.
Meh. 2% on millionaires.
Now do 90% on billionaires.
This isn’t a tax on wealth, it’s a tax on income.
There probably isn’t a single billionaire out there with a billion dollar income in any given year unless they’re doing some massive sell off like when Musk sold shares to buy twitter.
What actually happens, is the more wealth you have, the less income you’re actually likely to have at least in proportion to the wealth, because you start doing things like taking loans out against your shares in a company, and potentially never pay it back until you die at which point the estate will pay it off, but I think there’s even some weird estate transfer things that make that favorable to them as well.
There is a (relatively) simple solution to this; Make the act of taking out a loan against the value of your assets (which the wealthy tend to do, for liquid cashflow) a Capital Gains taxable event.
How would that be better than a simple wealth tax?
I think the wealth tax would be hard to get satisfactorily right. Either too little to feel like ‘justice’ or too much and you have people losing controlling interest in a company despite never really wanting it to get valued that much and never wanting to sell it.
Also, I think if you are head of a private company, you have a lot more ‘invisible wealth’ than the head of a public company, so there’s opportunity for a tax dodge through making your company private.
I like the idea of treating leveraging assets to actually have something spendable as income.
In Switzerland there is wealth tax that scales with your wealth and already starts at 100k, but then it’s something like 0.001%. I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. I do agree though that the idea of treating leveraging assets as income is quite interesting and makes sense.
This has actually been my preference vs a straight up wealth tax.
I wouldn’t really call it simple though as these types of things can easily be done off books. You’d have to be able to do audits like how did you pay for this with that cash kinda thing still.
You also need to deal with repayment and prevent double taxation, which is doable to sort out but not easy.
Upvoting for recognizing the double taxation but saying that is addressable.
Sure, you can get a credit later for repayment, suggesting that you paid the tax on other income. In the mean time, it’s effectively a 0% loan to the government between borrowing against the wealth and getting a credit for loan payment.
I meant relatively simple in the sense that it shouldn’t require a full re-write of existing laws - just an addition to, knowing full well that enforcement would be the biggest challenge.
Hefty fines (over and above the value of the assets used as collateral) on the lenders if caught not reporting could help ensure compliance.
Another way to tackle it might also be to treat the end of every financial year as a Capital Gains Event for assets over a certain threshold? That way, it just becomes part of people’s annual tax returns and taking out loans wouldn’t necessarily help avoid it.
eg. If FY26 saw Elon Musk’s wealth increase by $10bn, he would owe ~$2bn in Capital Gains to the IRS.
Also, to head off possible arguments: Given that the US taxes its citizens even if they live/work abroad - there would also be negligible risk of capital flight.
Yeah. We need wealth tax.
Nothing is ever enough for people is it? Ya’ll could have had Cuomo again and gotten 0% taxes on the rich. Hell, Cuomo would’ve given tax breaks to his wealthy buddies like he did the first time. 2% isn’t the end goal, it’s the start. Ya’ll need to change your perspective, nothing in politics is going to be instant or perfect. I’ll take 2%, it’s a start.
If it were 2% wealth tax, I’d agree with you. Like this it’s worth nothing. It’s incredibly easy for rich people to have an income of essentially 0.
It is easy for them to have 0 income, and we should fix that. The means by which they can access ‘value’ of their wealth to pay for stuff without actually incurring a taxable event need to get closed. Primarily this seems to be about borrowing against wealth, which should be a taxable event, with an option to eventually get credit for loan repayment to assuage the ‘but but double taxation!’ crowd.
I’m happy with this, but we still need to be doing more.
Gotta boil the frog properly, exactly
Indeed we need to do what the right wingers have been doing to us since the 70s. Slowly turn up the taxes and lock up more and more white collar criminals/pedophiles. Hopefully this starts happening after Trump and Republicans face backlash from all the shit they’ve done over this year.