Assuming billionaires were going to get a special tax, how would you actually determine how much to tax them? Sure some would be straightforward like Musk where it’s entirely derived from a few companies with known ownership stakes, but what about all the others?
We don’t even know the names of most of the billionaires. With all the games they can play to hide money, now made even easier thanks to the changes Trump made in his first few months, how would you even figure out who and what amount to tax? They don’t have a normal salary or easily documented income like everyone else.
“Give us half your money or give us half your scalp”
Listen the IRS has routinely made clear that every time it’s forensic accountants get to sink their teeth into a billionaires financials, the return on that effort is enormous. Don’t ask “how are going to tax billionaires,” first demand that they actually BE taxed.
We’ll figure it out later, man. Realistically, just have a team of specialists that focuses solely on the ultra-wealthy, and then let “unrealized gains” be taxed if they were ever used as collateral for a loan.
let “unrealized gains” be taxed if they were ever used as collateral for a loan.
This simply makes no sense as a concept. Collateral is something that you tell the one you’re borrowing from “you can have this if I fail to pay my loan back”. If the loan is repaid, literally nothing happens to the collateral, and it plays zero part in the actual transaction. There is zero non-arbitrary reason to tax an asset just because it was used as collateral.
Also, all home equity loans would fall under this definition, as well.
The problem lies in the top 1% using their shares of a company as their personal bank account. They can use these shares as collateral for a loan, bypassing all income tax. If accountant can figure out how a billionaire can avoid paying taxes on the entirety of their massive yearly income, then others can figure out how to tax it properly. If you’re income is more than 70% this weird untaxable thing, then congrats, we gon’ tax it now.
The problem lies in the top 1% using their shares of a company as their personal bank account.
There is no problem in someone using their own assets for their own benefit.
They can use these shares as collateral for a loan, bypassing all income tax.
There’s no income tax to “bypass”, because a loan isn’t income. You have to pay it back. Do you consider it “bypassing all income tax” when a homeowner takes out a Home Equity Loan too?
you just really love the taste of boots, huh?
how dare you suggest we tax billionaires! Don’t you know they’re better than the rest of us? You can’t tax them because that’s not fair to the god-like status I have bestowed upon them! their money is special and shouldn’t be touched, they ripped off their workers and dodged taxes fair and square!
I dryly state of couple of plain facts, along with an analogy to clarify why using your own assets as collateral for a loan doesn’t make sense to be interpreted as ‘bypassing income tax’
You accuse me of being a bootlicker and put a ton of words in my mouth, assuming all sorts of nonsense about my values/positions because you apparently can’t handle the actual words you were presented with, and need a straw man to focus on instead
Why pretend you have any interest in genuine discourse when you act like this? It’s extremely obvious you have no desire to actually communicate. Go write a blog somewhere with the comments disabled if you can’t handle contradiction.
The biggest loophole they use is taking out loans and using stock as collateral. Stock is supposed to be unrealized so if it is used as part of ANY transaction it should instantly become taxable.
But collateral isn’t used as part of a transaction unless the loan is defaulted on.
Wealth caps
Worldwide wealth caps
Start at 100 million…after a decade, lower that to 10 million
Anything, income, gift, whatever, over that goes 100% to taxes
Nobody had the right or need to be worth over 10 million dollars
Wealth caps are also an extremely simple solution, a very simple rule to add to the current system to fix so maby issues.
Governments will get so much more Income that they can immediately do free healthcare, free education, etc.
Nobody will have a huge amount of money, and as such, a huge amount of power anymore which will lower the chance of wars. With that we can significantly lower expenses to killing materials and instead focus on life
We can solve poverty, which, in addition to free mental health care, will also solve most crimes (yeah, crimes of passion will remain)
We can finally spend a huge amount of resources on climate change and fixing the environment around us!
We can make government funded non profit investment foundations for infrastructure projects, for independent journalism, etc so that we have great independent news and great infrastructure
A simple rule with so many great consequences…
But it would would require the rich allowing us to implement that simple rule. World wide. So it won’t ever happen
Sounds good in theory. But it is inoperative in a capitalist society. Here’s a thought exercise:
Management might have a salary of $5 million but stock worth 1 billion. Maybe you expect they divest their stock? Okay, who buys? Who has control of the company? Does it become a societal asset? Can’t have a company run by a million-person committee.
Your wealth cap works where someone has liquidity over 100million. I suggest that few do as it’s not a tax-advantaged strategy.
Nah, just 10M wealth caps…
Management is free to give you a 100M bonus! If your current worth is 1M, 91M of that bonus will go to taxes and you receive 9M and after that, all goes to taxes.
If you have shares, and the value of those shares goes up? You’ll have to pay the taxes over that, sell some shares, and pay money to taxes. And yeah, companies would simply need boat loads of small shareholders.
And no, 100M is already way too much. If you need investment for bigger things, maybe think independent, government funded investment companies that could be a thing?
My friend, I think you simply misunderstand the value of companies. Microsoft has a market cap of 2.7trillion. a wealth cap of 10m means that 270,000 people will be maxed at that cap. For one company. Who of that 270,000 runs the company?
Then extrapolate out to all listed and private companies. Your theory is incompatible with how companies operate.
Attainder.