111–120 of 1001 posts
What we need is inheritance tax. If you've made money, you can keep it. But you can't live for free just because some guy 100 years ago made money and you won the genetic lottery.
12 states have an inheritance/estate tax. Definitely worth replicating in the others, too.
All things by the way any entrepreneur is happy to "take" or accept as given.
Forgive me, but watching extremely privileged people's viewpoint, that they are so genius is so much missing the point (of luck, and of course a society that nourishes and carries these individuals).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And there's also a "ceiling" above which the super-wealthy manage to hire lawyers, accountants, etc. to make the rate effectively "0".
This. What all of these taxes accomplish is preventing people from becoming wealthy. In this way it benefits the people that are already wealthy by making it that much harder to climb the wealth ladder. Many of the tax increases on the "rich" really just tax the upper middle class and do nothing to tax people that are actually wealthy. If you want to tax the wealthy, then simplify the tax code and remove loopholes an…
I see no reason to be alarmed. It’s highly unlikely the government would be taking from your stock directly. Requiring shareholders to pay cash equivalent to a percentage of their shares is reasonable, although with hyper-growth companies that don’t pay dividends, this could get tricky. Maybe it would incentivize more investment in dividend-paying companies? Also, FWIW, I think it would be better to impose a wealth t…
It makes no difference whatsoever whether they take the stock directly or force you to sell the stock in order to pay the tax in cash. The end result is the same—your stock is reduced by the amount of the tax.
Wealth should be taken into account when income tax is calculated. It's not fair that someone who earns 100k with no assets pays as much tax as someone who earns 100k but also inherited a 1mn house and has a whole load of cash reserves from not paying rent/mortgages for years. It's doubly not fair when the wealthier individual can divert most of their salary into a pension and not pay tax on it, because they can affo…
This has been downvoted, can someone add a counter-argument for this? I.e. why should someone with higher wealth be able to pay less tax (in absolute and relative figures) than someone with lower wealth?
Someone forgot to model growth in the value of the asset, and/or putting the wealth to use. A wealth tax is, to an approximation, the equivalent of the "management fee" that an ETF charges, but with the revenues going to the government. If you have a bucket of money that isn't doing anything, then what value does it actually bring to the economy? Penalizing static value seems almost reasonable.
> If you have a bucket of money that isn't doing anything, then what value does it actually bring to the economy? Penalizing static value seems almost reasonable. We already do that via inflation. Leave your money uninvested and we tax it 2% or more per year, every year.
I'm highly skeptical of the claim that such tax would discourage startup founders. Wealth tax proposals I've seen don't kick in until $50 million or $100 million. This means that there is a floor on how "poor" the government can make you via a wealth tax. This has two implications: 1. Most "successful" startup founders don't break that threshold of personal wealth. 2. For most startup founders, the startup is the onl…
> I'm highly skeptical of the claim that such tax would discourage startup founders. Discourage starting a company at all? Probably not, but the article does not suggest that. Do you think it might influence where they start it? Looks reasonable to me, at least qualitatively.
This has always been the argument, and I've never bought it.
Now, more than ever, is the time to start a company remotely, thanks to Mr./Mrs. Covid. Have we seen a massive move away from SV and other tech centers? Have we seen a massive wave of startups in 'flyover' country?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm highly skeptical of the claim that such tax would discourage startup founders. Discourage starting a company at all? Probably not, but the article does not suggest that. Do you think it might influence where they start it? Looks reasonable to me, at least qualitatively.
Yes, but other factors likely influence it more. Are you going to start it in Barcelona or SF, just because of the tax rate? Surely there is something to be said for startup experience, investor networks, founder communities, etc...
Equity returns are on average 6% above inflation, so with a wealth tax of below 6% your wealth can still grow year on year indefinitely. EDIT: Source: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2017-25.pdf . The precise number is real returns of 6.89% on equity, 7.05% on housing
Every proposal I have seen kicks in after $100m. That's a level of wealth where even paying a 5% tax is likely to result in an annual net increase in wealth, as when you have that amount of money to invest achieving 5%+ returns is not unusual. The net result is that wealth would still increase, just at a slower rate. Additionally, even amongst the general population, let alone startup founders, the number of people w…
By not giving 1% of your wealth to Africa you're disadvantaging a billion people to protect the wealth of one. It's not a disadvantage to someone that they're not getting a part of somebody else's wealth; we're not born with some divine right to other people's money.