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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

#441

Post by remote_phone »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #211
GhostVII wrote: post #96

Personally I disagree with the whole idea of wealth taxes, you should be taxed when you do things, not taxed just because you own something worth money. I should be able to go live in the woods alone and not have the government take some percent of my net worth just because I exist. I mean I don't have a tonne of sympathy for people with tens of millions of net worth, but it just seems wrong in principle. If I start…

I've got several concerns with wealth taxes in general too: 1) They are difficult to enforce. How to measure the value of a famous painting? What if the value does down? Is there a refund of wealth taxes? 2) They are an entirely new class of taxes that will give politicians the ability to increase the overall tax burden over time. At first, they will only impact the very wealthy, but it is much easier to adjust the t…

Even worse is AMT. it was supposed to be a way to prevent rich people from hiding from taxes but now it just gets regular middle class people, and rich people avoid taxes other ways.

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

#442

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #157
adjkant wrote: post #68

Well I guess I'll take the apparently bold stance here that this isn't the end of Silicon Valley or California and yes this is fair and further, good. When people are getting 5-6% returns on investments (minimum), 0.4% is still not even stopping the rich get richer effect. Not to mention that it's almost certain no one here will ever be touched by this tax. If you're going to move where you live or significantly alte…

because of 0.4% If California was well run, clean, and had otherwise lower tax, then .4% might be easy to ignore. But if you’re already on the fence, and not happy with things, and have been talking to real estate agents in Seattle, Austin, Miami, or Singapore, then this just the kick in the butt you might need to go through with leaving.

0.4% is comparable to the wealth tax in Switzerland.

I believe one of the differences is that in California, this would be on top of federal and state capital gains taxes, whereas in Switzerland, there is no tax on investment gains (from stock gaining value - dividends do count as income, and once ETFs with dividend-paying stocks get involved, it gets messy but TLDR you still pay the income tax on dividends).

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

#443

Post by chipotle_coyote »

wincy wrote: post #310
daveFNbuck wrote: post #302

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.

While I'm dubious about both the legality and wisdom of this proposed tax, I confess I'm having trouble seeing "paying a 0.4% tax on wealth over $30M" as being "slave to a state." Yes, metaphor, but it's a metaphor of "reducing my $50M estate to $49.92M might as well be forced servitude," and, uh, no. C'mon. Put that $50M somewhere that averages even a modest 4% annual return and you could pay the tax, draw out $600K a year (I mean, you can live on that, right? Not a hardship?), and still have another $600K left over.

The people who would actually be subject to kind of tax would not, in an actual monetary sense, be adversely affected by this kind of tax, and we're really falling back on to crying BUT IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING. And, fine, but also ironic -- after all, that's also the rationale for imposing the tax.

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

#444

Post by ahnick »

mgolawala wrote: post #280
annexrichmond wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the infrastructure is in place to assess this kind of tax, it'll be a matter of time before it starts applying to those with >10M wealth, then >1M, etc

Yup. It's called boiling the frog. I am not totally against wealth taxes, however I disagree with the approach. What I do not understand is why not just implement a more aggressive estate tax on people and close the "trust" and "foundation" loopholes for avoiding the estate tax. Let's take Jeff Bezos as an extreme example (who isn't even a California Resident). At least until we figure out immortality, Jeff Bezos wil…

If such legislation were implemented, it will just incentivize people even more to gift their wealth away before they die. All that's been achieved is simply shifting a boundary condition. My general view is that negative incentive structures are not particularly effective in what they set out to achieve. Better to try and craft positive incentive structures for people to donate money over time before they pass on.

There are essentially 4 ways to spend money:

  1) You can spend your own money on yourself. 
  2) You can spend your own money on someone else.
  3) You can spend somebody else’s money on yourself.
  4) You can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else.
People are are most careful with (1) and least careful with (4). Taxes fall into bucket 4 and donations/gifts fall into bucket 2. I'd much rather see charitable foundations and organizations self-directing the appropriation of money at the local level rather than state/federal government doing the appropriation.

All this is not to say that inheritance and wealth taxes should not be collected. I think they should and should be done to help fund the essential functions of government, but I think dialing that percentage up to a 100% of someone's wealth when they die would be a mistake.

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

#445

Post by jelliclesfarm »

woah wrote: post #271
AsyncAwait wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do something about the housing and homeless crisis and we’ll talk You do realize a wealth tax is one way to bring in income to try to fix these problems right? You guys don't even have universal healthcare in the middle of a global pandemic. Laughably sad.

It’s not possible to build any new housing in California. The vast majority of projects are blocked by the powerful landowner lobby. Throwing money at the homeless problem doesn’t help the homeless much and just pushes property values higher. The government and tax system of California is a perfectly designed instrument to transfer wealth from newcomers to homeowners.

you can build new housing in california. its just difficult to build affordable housing apartment complexes in the bay area and other affluent zipcodes.

california is huge. if they fixed transport problem(HST failed), we have plenty of space to build homes. its not like we are the australian bush or something..these are perfectly buildable areas..its just not san francisco or the bay area or wherever there is high density and everyone want to flock to the nicest place to live as cheaply as possible.

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

#446

Post by AnimalMuppet »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #338
ip26 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

But if you drive a large fraction of those people out, they don't all go to Austin. Austin therefore winds up with a lower concentration of those people than Silicon Valley had. By doing this, you can kill SV without creating a new one.

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

#447

Post by AnthonyMouse »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #446
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #338

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.

But if you drive a large fraction of those people out, they don't all go to Austin. Austin therefore winds up with a lower concentration of those people than Silicon Valley had. By doing this, you can kill SV without creating a new one.

That depends on how much concentration you actually need.

You could kill SV and create five more.

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

#448

Post by cbozeman »

meowster wrote: post #362
defterGoose wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you like the plebs getting arrested for spitting on the sidewalk or executed for shooting up, Singapore is the place for you!

40% of the people that live in Singapore are immigrants from different countries. They apparently value the trade-off.

I wonder if they'd like the trade-off if it didn't take 21 years to become an American citizen.

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

#449

Post by throwaway316943 »

nec4b wrote: post #388
mattmanser wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, as that doesn't sound like a a fair experiment. Couldn't they just limit the amount you can emigrate from the country with. So if you emigrate, you can only take a maximum of, say, €10 mill. i.e. earn it in France, using French laws, a French education and French infrastructure, it stays in France. Obviously it clashes with EU free movement, but basically the problem seems to be we can't tax the ric…

You mean something like a Berlin wall to stop the people leaving the paradise or a new kind of serfdom, where one should be tied to the land in which he was born?

Nailed it, serfdom was implemented exactly for the purpose of preventing tax evasion. Something something... doomed to repeat it.

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

#450

Post by jelliclesfarm »

api wrote: post #268
cltby wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty of tax revenue to fund nearly all such priorities. It’s sadly squandered, in large part because voters have ideological commitments to confiscation, and no such commitments to effective government.

The problem isn’t even an ideological commitment to confiscation. The problem is one of simple corruption and incompetence. Nobody is willing to confront bad urban planning, out of control NIMBYism, corruption in government contracting, etc. More money won’t fix a broken government any more than more revenue fixes dying companies. IMHO one of the roots of all evil was proposition 13, which created a kind of property…

disagree. visible homelessness flows from drug addiction and mental illness. everyone else is unhappy not living in someone else's nice house that they think they deserve instead. its not because of NIMBYism. i support NIMBYs. if you dont care about your backyard, who will..its nuts to hand over your backyard to those who dont even live there. entirely irrational and illogical. do you expect some random stranger to run your house and manage your budget and take instructions from them? same thing.
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