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Do you trust politicians to redistribute money fairly and with accountability?
There is a reason we do have the second amendment if they don't. Like, it was literally written in the constitution for this purpose.
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Why is it not fair to force them? I don't think it's any more or less fair than forcing people to pay income tax.
There may be unintended consequences in forcing successful founders to over time sell down a controlling stake in their company.
I've seen people complaining that the article is disingenuous because it conflates income taxes with capital gains taxes. My response is 'so what'. When you make above a certain income level, you don't need anymore income and can play around with reinvesting capital gains to push taxes into the future while amassing wealth. Sure, you're not realizing the income, but what you're doing, I think, is gaining power and in…
1) The "so what" is that capital gains is a different thing than wage income from an economics standpoint. Capital gains taxes have different economic effects than income taxes. Most economists agree that capital gains should be taxed lower than income. Most countries tax capital gains far lower than wage income. For example, in Canada only half of someone's capital gains are included in income, and is then taxed at the ordinary income tax rates.
2) Worse, the article just looks at paper wealth and ignores whether there is even a capital gain. If Amazon's stock price goes up, and Bezos makes $10 billion on paper, the IRS doesn't tax him on it. Which is fine--to actually do anything with that paper wealth, he needs to sell the stock or engage in a similar realization event, in which case that gain will be taxed.
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Nothing interesting in them. Wage income, standard deductions, some realized cap losses from a few stock sales. Looks like any other tax return. What bit of information do you expect that tax return add to the conversation of "Are the rich evading taxes?"
We have a whole section of the government dedicated to figuring out whether people are evading taxes and then pursuing them for it. It could use some more funding, but that’s the appropriate way to do it. What are you going to add by having uninformed members of the public inspecting tax returns they don’t understand? Keep in mind there are people who turn down raises because they think being in a higher tax bracket…
Nobody's saying these people are illegaly evading taxes. The question is: "Should what they are doing be legal?". And that is absolutely a question for a layman. That's what representative democracy is all about. We get to collectively decide what is appropriate, and inappropriate in our society.
Enforcement of the rules is for an unelected executive and judiciary, with limited public input. Determining the rules is for an elected legislature, with significant public input.
There is no government department responsible for determining whether or not the current tax code is fair. We, the public, get to decide that.
Thomas Piketty proposes a progressive annual global wealth tax of up to 2%. I think it's a good idea.
I've seen people complaining that the article is disingenuous because it conflates income taxes with capital gains taxes. My response is 'so what'. When you make above a certain income level, you don't need anymore income and can play around with reinvesting capital gains to push taxes into the future while amassing wealth. Sure, you're not realizing the income, but what you're doing, I think, is gaining power and in…
Capital gains should be taxed as income when it's realized as income. You can't reinvest your capital gains without the tax penalty. However, it is completely unreasonable for long term capital gains to be taxed any differently than normal income. A dollar earned should be a dollar taxed.
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Once you have a certain amount of assets, there's no need to realize any personal income. It becomes completely voluntary. If you have a billion in stock, you could leverage that to pay personal expenses. You could use an unrealized loss over there to balance out the cash you're taking in from a gain over there. You can use companies and foundations to execute any vision you have outside of your household. If you pla…
Do you trust politicians to redistribute money fairly and with accountability?
The ideal way is that wealth is more equitably distributed before it is created. Instead of a system where business owners represent a tiny minority, who then grow very wealthy and are taxed, we could have a system where everyone owns a little piece of the economy. At its simplest this could be realized by a growth of worker cooperatives, though other schemes exist. [1]
So no, we don’t have to trust politicians to redistribute the wealth and we shouldn’t. But we can build a society where billions simply do not accrue to a tiny minority of the population.
[1] I prefer situations that do not rely on “the state” however I found this historical study of the German Democratic Republic to be very interesting: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhHMtkNa0BDl2oz-8z9cGR45Z...
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But borrowing is not equivalent to selling, tax wise or any otherwise. When you get a mortgage to buy a $750k house, do you want to be taxed as though you had $750k income that year? You’re just borrowing against the value of an asset after all.
Yes, but the difference is that borrowing against your unrealized investments is a way of dodging taxes. I think the tax code can handle that level of subtlety without paying attention to your flippant reductio ad absurdum.
What the government could do is stop loaning out money at 0% (i.e. printing free money which inflates assets, like stocks held by wealthy people). If the prime rate increased, the rate banks would charge on asset-backed loans would also increase, which would make it less attractive than just selling the asset and paying the capital gains tax.
I've seen people complaining that the article is disingenuous because it conflates income taxes with capital gains taxes. My response is 'so what'. When you make above a certain income level, you don't need anymore income and can play around with reinvesting capital gains to push taxes into the future while amassing wealth. Sure, you're not realizing the income, but what you're doing, I think, is gaining power and in…
Once you have a certain amount of assets, there's no need to realize any personal income. It becomes completely voluntary. If you have a billion in stock, you could leverage that to pay personal expenses. You could use an unrealized loss over there to balance out the cash you're taking in from a gain over there. You can use companies and foundations to execute any vision you have outside of your household. If you pla…
And how do you pay back that loan?
> You could use an unrealized loss over there to balance out the cash you're taking in from a gain over there.
So can everyone.
> If you play that game long enough, your descendants will get a cost basis step up.
That's a strong argument for reforming estate taxation.
But I really don’t see the fascination of people with “we need to tax the rich more”. For what? To give even more money to the already bloated and corrupt government? The government has plenty of money and yet it’s not used to achieve anything positive. Places like Chicago, Baltimore get crazy amounts of money for decades but the lives of Americans living there hasn’t improved and kids are worse off today education wise. San Fran and LA have crazy taxes and yet have the worst homelessness crisis and defecation on the streets. What we should be talking about is taxing people less and getting rid of the massive bloat and corruption in the government. Getting rid of the lobbying power corporations have over Washington. Getting rid of insider trading being legal for congress and senate. Making any big tech with over a million users in the US into public utilities. Looking into how to make the military spending more efficient, stopping forever wars and cutting down on private contractors. Forcing universities to co-sign the student loans and use a percentage of the salary of the said student after graduation to pay back.
Taxing the rich just for the sake of it while the government gets to eat it all without any improvement in lives is silly.
I would recommend watching the first 4 minutes of this Walmart vs Morons podcast: