I actually disagree with a straight wealth tax, I believe the approach of adequately taxing the wealthy needs a more two pronged approach, which I happen to have pitched already, so I’ll just copy paste that comment here to explain what I think will work instead:
I believe someone suggested loans collateralized on stock and other such speculative assets be taxed as realized gains, which should go a long way to stop the absolutely mindbogglingly obscene displays of mega wealth we’ve been seeing as of late.
As for income, there should be nominal brackets established at the 20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, 95th, and 99th percentiles of income for a given year, with 20th, 40th, and 60th percentile income taxed at the percent of national wealth each of those brackets owns, income in the 80th and 95th brackets being taxed at twice their respective shares of the national wealth, and income above the 99th income being taxed at three times their share of the national wealth. Then have a half a percent multiplier for every multiple of twenty times the median income of the 0-20 percentile bracket an income crosses.
Doesn’t just tax the rich, it directly makes it their class interest to spread the wealth to lighten the crunch on their top dollar. The rich literally can get their own tax cuts by sharing the wealth.
It actually even incentivizes the ultra rich to police each other since one of them building up the riches too much hits all of them, meaning the rich will be eating each other whenever one of them steps out of line!
While I definitely agree with the approach, would it not make sense to also run a wealth tax alongside this, to ensure that assets aren’t just stored outside of the US?
I’d be all for all of the below:
- Taxation on loans taken against collateral above x
- A cap on executive pay, especially in instances where an executive is paid more than the company takes in income. This would stop instances like Musk getting paid a fuck-ton when their company has very little income.
- A wealth tax to take a percentage of wealth, with yearly audits of accounts held by wealth management firms to ensure that no one is fiddling with the books.
The problem with some of the listed names is that they don’t own their companies. Bezos hasn’t owned Amazon for 3-4 years now, and he’s been dumping stock for years. If we only taxed against specific types of collateral, the rich would just move to something else.
Wouldn’t a wealth tax increase risk of assets being stored and hidden outside the US?
Americans are already taxed on worldwide income. If there’s a wealth tax and they tried to get around it by storing assets outside the US, wouldn’t hiding it be much the same as attempting to hide non-US income?
Any comments on whether a wealth tax is even constitutional, since the 16th amendment only authorizes an income tax and not a wealth tax?
Do they get a deduction when they repay the loan on the back end, if they had to pick up income for the loan when it was received?
Wouldn’t it be disruptive to cap executive pay during lean years, or startup years, or recession years etc? Wouldn’t that create even more incentive than there already is to aggressively pump up income in order to meet arbitrary quarterly/annual earnings goals to keep executive comp high? What if there was a lot of income last year, little income this year, and a lot of income next year, etc. Should everyone’s income seesaw up and down or could we maybe plan around cash flow a little bit?
“Yearly audits of accounts held by wealth management firms to ensure that no one is fiddling with the books” is such a loaded sentence full of ignorance and naivete I really can’t begin to respond to it besides telling you that it instantly identifies you as someone who doesn’t know wtf they’re talking about and shouldn’t be commenting on such things.
Finally, Bezos is still the executive chair of Amazon and still holds 990 million shares as of November 2023 so idk what you’re talking about with that last sentence. Link to the SEC Form 4 Proxy Statement, a primary source document despite the shady url: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/0978cda1-fd60-4d80-bdc4-e6911372e1a3.pdf or you can find it here dated November 1 2023: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/sec-filings/default.aspx
Can somebody please fix the bar scales? Nothing corresponds to anything else, and as such the difference between “millions” and “billions” is indicated by just 1 letter. Not to mention, there is no source for the data or indication why their rates are different (3.05% for Musk and Bezos, 0.309% for Gates).
Indeed! This chart is crap. How are these values even calculated? Is this a flat tax on their networth? Nobody gets taxed like this, at least that I’m aware of - people get taxed on their profits.
I’m completely for taxing billionaires (individuals and corps) heavily on their profits, but let’s use proper arguments, not intentionally misleading bullshit.
people get taxed on their profits.
yes but a wealth tax is a tax on what you own or what you could buy, aka your net worth
How is 4% “fair share” when I am paying 24%
I assume that you pay tax on your income, not your wealth/assets, so that is something different.
But these aholes take loans out on their wealth, thus effectively using this wealth as cash. Cash that is not taxed.
I don’t question that their income from what ever source should be (highly) taxed. However the wealth tax should be on top to fix the errors made in the past (and are currently made) leading to such accumulation of assets. The question is how should non-liquid wealth, such as estates, shares and bonds, be taxed.
Yeah and then they pay interest on that loan, which is income to the lender for them to pay tax on; then when the original loan comes due the billionaire either refinances and pays even more interest, or pays back the loan by selling their appreciated assets and then - yes - pays tax on the income. So either way the tax is getting paid, now or later, and you have no idea how frustrating it is to see people parroting this over and over and over, and downvoting you for pointing it out.
Maybe there’s a difference between wealth and income, but nobody around here would care about such things.
You think they have paid the tax when they acquired the wealth, i.e. when it was income?
This is a super basic apples and oranges concept, please try and keep up.
Your original comment was bitching about 4% not being a fair share when you are paying 24%. Wealth tax is not the same as income tax.
I think everyone is subject to income tax in the US when the income is taxable to them, yes. Eventually all of these big bad mean rich people will pay tax on their unrealized gains one way or another. No need to create a wealth tax because eventually the income tax will kick in, I promise you. There’s no need to fuck with the tax code even more, and by doing so totally breaking accounting and tax concepts in a way that only government can, just out of this populist notion that they aren’t paying their fair share, whatever that means.
I cannot see why anyone should ever have more than 10 million dollars. How much is the billionaire’s fair share? Enough to bring them down to 10 million.
We could quibble on 10 million. Maybe it should be 1 million. But that is a separate end less interesting question.
Agreed. It’s also a question of power: no one should have enough money to amass that much power. It’s barely an exaggeration to say that the Koch brothers bought themselves a political party and doomed the entire planet to climate catastrophe. No one should have that much money.
Isn’t that the point? If I wrote 2 or 3, people could talk about absurd land prices in San Francisco or medical emergencies for five of their children simultaneously. But when we are talking about 10, it’s pretty hard to come up with a plausible hypothetical situation where the money is actually necessary, ever. I’m not questioning your ability to do craft such a hypothetical, but I am questioning your ability to do so while keeping a straight face.
I personally really hate the term “pay their fair share” because if it’s implications. I would much rather hear something like “pay like the rest of us” because it’s about percentages, not actual dollars.
