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California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

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Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#431
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is we’ve done the experiment and it doesn’t work. France had a wealth tax (called the ISF, impôt sur la fortune) and it never actually garnered the expected revenues. This is because wealthy French people moved to Brussels, where you still have a pretty nice city and you can still speak French. Macron got rid of it and there was a mini-crash in Brussels real estate as people move back. There’s nothing stopping…

I think that's why they put in the provision that you have to keep paying the tax for 10 years after you move.

Ha, my cold dead hands

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#432
post #298
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying counterargument was that it was never completely "your stuff" to begin with.

And we should leave the allocation of who is allowed to own how much stuff to who exactly? Politicians? Your average person on the street? Who are those economic geniuses who will distribute everything with objective correctness? That is the alternative that it sounds like you are promoting.

I share your concerns about centralized management, which is why the money should be redistributed in the form of a UBI to enable decentralized decision-making.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, threatening to murder people you're jealous of. This is the content I come to Hacker News for!

I can't say I have much time to engage today, but since this seems to have some support and a fundamental misunderstanding, I want to address this one. Hatred towards the ultra-rich is not based in jealousy but in a moral stance. The argument is not "I want your 30M" it is that "people having this much wealth is bad for all of society". See: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/opinion/abolish-billionai... There's much…

Hatred towards the rich when our quality of life has never been higher IS jealousy and petty envy. The fact that slogans like “eat the rich” have been normalized by Millennials and Gen-Z on Tik Tok is clear evidence of it. Imagine the irony of an entire society having leisure time to burn on Tik Tok (or other social media) via a handheld space age device that we couldn’t even imagine 15 years ago, and yet whining about how life is tough and the system is broken. The greed isn’t in those creating value and accumulating wealth - it’s with everyone else, who are enjoying an amazing life in an amazing time and yet are greedy enough to complain about not having more for free.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#434
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the proposal is based on where time is spent, not what you're a citizen of.

Why does a wealthy citizen of another country have to physically spend 60 days in California? You're suggesting that the wording of the law is not trivial to circumvent, especially for people with large amounts of wealth.

it's not like SF or NYC are tourists paradise. you cant walk down mission st without some random homeless person trying to attack you. Gavin Newsom and London Breed should just convert Moscone center into a homeless shelter. problem solved.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#435
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's why they put in the provision that you have to keep paying the tax for 10 years after you move.

That’s why if the tax gets implemented they’re gonna move away before the tax is implemented. Imagine being a slave to a state you don’t even live in for ten years. What a load of garbage, I’ll bet any other state will refuse to enforce it.

Slaves work for no pay and cannot leave. You are suggesting a tax on (massive) wealth you already have is the same?

> Bill No. 2088 would have created a new annual tax of 0.4% on individuals with worldwide annual wealth over $30 million;

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#436

>Taxing someone who spends only 60 days in the state in any single year—and extending that tax over an ensuing decade—would be something new under the sun. Wow. That's nuts.

The tax is proportional to the number of days in California, and is only on wealth above $30M (married) or $15M (single).

How many people do you think have $30M and spend >= 60 days a year in California, that do not benefit from business/property/services/educated employees in California? Very, very few.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that has a related cause and effect. The reason these things have happened in California isn't the geography. If you drive a large fraction of the same people out and into places like Austin through excessive housing costs and high taxes, then the next Elon Musk can build it there instead. Because it's the people, not the place.

Don’t be surprised if Texas (in particular Austin) adopts similar tax measures. I bet there is just as much public support for it—if not even more—then in California.

If Austin adopted it, people would just move two miles outside the city limits. And the state of Texas as a whole is not going to do that.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has had his house smashed into an all of his stuff stolen, none of which was recovered and no meaningful attempt to do so was made, I don't particularly buy the argument that government enforces property rights. In certain cases, maybe. But mostly property rights exist because we all kind of agree they exist, and we generally don't go burglarizing each other.

The point being made above about property rights is much bigger than “does my local police do a good job finding burglars?”. The point is that the government maintains an entire system for tracking, resolving disputes, and enforcing ownership. Think about who has the final say in a dispute over whether you own your car or your house or your company. The government adjudicates ownership disputes and then enforces that…

Exactly - owning land within a country is different from discovering an island and needing to hire people to defend it once you find oil or gold or have anything of value.

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#439
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the stupidest part of it, because then you convince all the people who imagine they're going to be Elon Musk in ten years that they should leave California immediately.

The interesting part is the next question you have to ask yourself- could Elon have built what he did somewhere else?

You only need a state with an Austin adopt a ban on noncompetes, or a state that currently bans noncompetes that miraculously develops an Austin. Once either happens then it’s game over for CA.

The end of Silicon Valley’s dominance could have come much sooner had China continued its trend of opening up pre-Winnie the Poo’s reign, but that threat is gone for now. China is crippled under a dictator again

Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state

#440
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is we’ve done the experiment and it doesn’t work. France had a wealth tax (called the ISF, impôt sur la fortune) and it never actually garnered the expected revenues. This is because wealthy French people moved to Brussels, where you still have a pretty nice city and you can still speak French. Macron got rid of it and there was a mini-crash in Brussels real estate as people move back. There’s nothing stopping…

I think that's why they put in the provision that you have to keep paying the tax for 10 years after you move.

So if one year I spend 60 days in California, I owe the tax for the next 10 years? That seems indefensible. In fact, if they implement this, I'm pretty sure there's going to be a Supreme Court case, and IANAL, but I suspect California will lose.
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