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How to convert between wealth and income tax

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#221

> To convert between wealth and income tax rates, you have to divide by the rate of return on capital. The conversion rate of 20 comes from assuming that the risk-free rate of return is 5%. This seems to only be true for people whose income entirely comes from their wealth, rather than their labor. The math doesn't math for someone on the other extreme end of the spectrum who has zero savings or investments and obtai…

I'm retired. I hope to get a 3% per year income from my savings every year after inflation and taxes. If my state implemented a 1% wealth tax on savings each year, I would go bankrupt in 20 years. I am hoping that I will live 20 years.

[deleted]

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Productivity comes from labor AND assets though. You need the farmer and the tractor. Why would we create a tax system that encourages people to divorce themselves from having a stake in the means of production? This is exactly why economic models broadly show that taxing capital assets makes workers worse off in the long run. An abundance of capital means that workers will be more productive on the margin, so thei…

Oh good! I was worried that trickle down economics was self-serving nonsense pushed by think tank economists on behalf of their benefactors. Since it is economic fact rather than self-serving fiction, when I review its track record I will find that it caused an upward inflection in real wages, right? Right? https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ Oops!

>Since it is economic fact rather than self-serving fiction [...]

You deride the weak justification for trickle down economics, then proceed to link wtfhappenedin1971.com, a site that tries to argue for the reintroduction of the gold standard through a gish-gallop of random charts?

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#223

Here is a better algorithm to edify the masses: if someone is such a massive billionaire as to have the boldness to teach the public basic 5th-grade math, their wealth tax rate should be set at 10%. From that point on, the rate goes in proportion to their level of condescension.

That's so unambitious, I'd argue.

> In 1940, the federal tax rate on income over $200,000 started at 66 percent. By 1944, the top tax rate on all income over $200,000 — about $3.4 million in today’s dollars — had jumped to 94 percent.

https://inequality.org/article/tax-the-rich-we-did-that-once...

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#224

> To convert between wealth and income tax rates, you have to divide by the rate of return on capital. The conversion rate of 20 comes from assuming that the risk-free rate of return is 5%. This seems to only be true for people whose income entirely comes from their wealth, rather than their labor. The math doesn't math for someone on the other extreme end of the spectrum who has zero savings or investments and obtai…

On top of that it seems to imply that a 20% effective tax rate is outrageous even though that's totally normal for most. Maybe it's not what you're used to as really wealthy person who avoids realized income and has a 0 or 5 or 10 percent effective rate. But it's totally normal for most middle and median income folks who actually pay income taxes.

20% tax on wealth (aka the potentially liquidatable value of an asset) would absolutely destroy anyone using an asset. For a classic example, look at property taxes which are a classic wealth tax. Grandma’s, people on pensions, and even middle class folks who own a home but have relatively low rates of salary increases get destroyed (and have to sell and move out) in places like Texas where property taxes aren’t capped/controlled like California under prop 13 when property prices go up.

Having your house get ‘too expensive to live in’, in fact, is a classic issue with property taxes, and was happening in California - which is exactly why prop 13 happened. And most of those locations the maximum tax is around 1-3%!

‘Wealth’ is not the same as income, because wealth is potential money, if you can sell - and if you sell, you lose access to it.

A 20% wealth tax would mean any asset which doesn’t earning free cash flow returns of at least 20% a year, or which isn’t appreciating at least 20% a year in a risk free way would be impossible to hold for anyone except the most rich people. And even they couldn’t do it for long.

I can’t think of anything which that realistically describes.

A 20% income tax reduces actual cash in hand to 80% of what you’d otherwise have, which isn’t great. But you still get the actual 80% cash in hand right now, and can use it.

You can’t have ‘80% control/ownership for the year’ of a house in a meaningful way, and especially for people actually using/relying on the asset to live, they can’t find 20% (or in most cases even 5%!) of the value in cash for the asset every year. They’d go bankrupt.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#225
If you follow his logic and believe that the ultra-wealthy pay too little tax (as e.g. Warren Buffett does), then a balanced approach is to set the tax rate to: "37% of income or 1.85% of wealth, whichever is higher".

This would close the gap between Buffett's tax rate and that of his secretary, but would not be the "highest taxes in the world" that PG decries.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#226
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s a good point that these taxes don’t apply to most people. Another reason they don’t apply is that most people save for retirement using retirement accounts. But nothing in the article implies that these wealth taxes apply to most people. The argument is that a 1% wealth tax is equivalent to a 20% income tax because, under certain assumptions, the government gets the same amount of money.

Only in theory. In practice it’s not equivalent at all because once you reach a certain (very high) level of wealth, there’s the “buy, borrow, die” strategy that avoids realizing most of your capital gains. I’ve also heard of proposals to tax asset-backed loans above a certain threshold, which is aimed at the “borrow” part of the strategy. But the concern there is that the super wealthy may quickly find a different s…

> because once you reach a certain (very high) level of wealth, there’s the “buy, borrow, die” strategy that avoids realizing most of your capital gains

If that is what is being targeted, then why not actually target that. Apply some percent taxation on the current value of all assets transferred because of death. And, if they want, only apply it to estates over some X threshold in size.

Performing the taxation at time of probate makes the valuation easy (unlike a 'wealth tax') because the valuation could be one of "value at time of death" or "value at time of transfer". And, if the ultra wealthy are using this angle to avoid taxes, then this taxes some of that transferred value.

Of course, just like with subscriptions, to the politicians a yearly wealth tax is far more valuable than a one time tax on the total value of the estate.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#227

> To convert between wealth and income tax rates, you have to divide by the rate of return on capital. The conversion rate of 20 comes from assuming that the risk-free rate of return is 5%. This seems to only be true for people whose income entirely comes from their wealth, rather than their labor. The math doesn't math for someone on the other extreme end of the spectrum who has zero savings or investments and obtai…

Billionaires gonna billionaire, I guess.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#229
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that it seems to imply that a 20% effective tax rate is outrageous even though that's totally normal for most. Maybe it's not what you're used to as really wealthy person who avoids realized income and has a 0 or 5 or 10 percent effective rate. But it's totally normal for most middle and median income folks who actually pay income taxes.

20% tax on wealth (aka the potentially liquidatable value of an asset) would absolutely destroy anyone using an asset. For a classic example, look at property taxes which are a classic wealth tax. Grandma’s, people on pensions, and even middle class folks who own a home but have relatively low rates of salary increases get destroyed (and have to sell and move out) in places like Texas where property taxes aren’t capp…

You obviously didn't read the thing. 20% is not on wealth. The argument in the piece is that 1% on wealth is the same as 20% on income, and therefore 1% on wealth is obscene.

Please read before making replies that don't make sense in context. When I refer to 20% I'm referring the PG's characterization of a 1% wealth tax as an effective 20% income tax, not a 20% wealth tax.

Re: How to convert between wealth and income tax

#230
post #21

I don’t follow the debate and situation in the US that closely but isn’t (part of) the point of wealth tax to offset the fact that rich people are routinely avoiding paying income tax and taxes in general? Thus even if we assume the simplistic conversion here, it’s not that they’re moved from 40->60 bracket but more like <30 ?

The idea that rich people don't pay taxes is a myth. The top 5% richest people in America account for 60% of all of the federal income tax. The bottom 50% on the other hand only account for a total of 3%. When Elon sold a bunch of Tesla stock in 2021 he paid $11 Billion in capital gains tax on it... That's more than entire cities worth of people combined would ever pay for the rest of their lives.

5% richest includes hand to mouth workers earning $100k.
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