Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 734 posts

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

#691

Post by 1123581321 »

giantrobot wrote: post #589
1123581321 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s so small as to not be meaningful, why collect it? How could it benefit the state to have so little money? If the state professes a genuine need for such a small marginal increase in its revenue, then shouldn’t the individuals being taxed be able to make a similar case? This is like the conversation over signing NDAs, where one party pressures the other by saying it doesn’t matter...

Taxes are not punishment. It's not meant to impoverish individual rich people. It's meant to get some money into the state coffers which pays for the infrastructure they use.

This thread is about the marginal utility of the money for the state vs. the taxpayer.

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

#692

Post by hansvm »

hansvm wrote: post #687
tsimionescu wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see two problems with your argument. One is that I don't think it's anywhere close to true that Bezos is completely irreplaceable while all of his workers are not. I have little experience on the differences between a good warehouse worker or manager and a bad one, but I know that at least for software, the difference between a good software engineer and a bad one; or between a good software manager and a bad one;…

Oh definitely, the argument could be fleshed out a lot more, and I'm not even certain I agree with the conclusion. The main thing I wanted to get across was that appealing to gigantic numbers is a terrible argument, so I demonstrated that the opposite conclusion was plausible without a more in depth analysis and explicitly called out the gigantic number fallacy. To your first point about Bezos' irreplaceability, that…

Sorry, missed the edit window. Shapley values don't care about whether Bezos is irreplaceable either. They look at the value of Amazon with or without him, not with him or a replacement. The broader point still stands, but the details might warrant further scrutiny.

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

#693

Post by atomi »

chaostheory wrote: post #690
atomi wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My qualms are more with the demographic changes these massive migrations brought. Just very greedy overly ambitious and pretentious people. To me they make terrible neighbors and have zero regard for the land, nature or the people here. Some I assume are good people but I haven't met any.

So you’re a Native American who’s lived in the times before these massive migrations?

Do you actually mean Californio?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californios

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

#694

Post by [deleted] »

fortran77 wrote: post #681
notacoward wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, actually. "Tax bads, not goods" as saying goes. However, as a practical matter I don't think a pure Pigovian approach could ever fly. Overhead and enforcement issues would sink it. A hybrid approach with most revenue from land-value and value-added taxes gets pretty close and is fairly straightforward to administer. Not saying we shouldn't tax those other things, but that wouldn't be a huge percentage of rev…

The most logical thing, then, would be to tax obesity. The obese cost us several trillion dollars because of COVID. (If it weren't for the obese, our hospitals would have had capacity, and there would have been no need for shutdown.) Get on the scale and pay your taxes! https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/06/01/david-kass-obesity-covid-19/

[deleted]

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

#695

Post by ericd »

sdenton4 wrote: post #688
ericd wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you familiar with the history of AMT? When it was enacted, it was meant to target an extremely small set of households, on the order of 1,000 iirc. But the thresholds weren’t indexed to inflation, and so now it triggers on a huge number of people every year. Maybe we are all temporarily embarrassed billionaires ;-).

Seems like you suggest one solution directly in the comment? Another: explicitly cap the percentage of people taxed by the law.

I do, but these things never seem to be indexed to inflation. Perhaps they don’t want to overtly politicize how we calculate inflation?

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

#696

Post by patcon »

CitrusFruits wrote: post #328
patcon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this also your perspective on something like unit testing when your first regression slips through? No, you fix it. Law is code, and needs tuning. When people as so inclined to give up on first failing, then I feel it says more about their underlying worldview than it does about what's possible in the world.

I'd say taxes are less comparable to something that would justify a unit test and more comparable to UX. There's a huge human element that you're just never going to be able to fully control. Entee is just outlining why this approach probably won't work, not saying we shouldn't adjust laws at all to serve all people. TBH, I think your comment says more about your worldview than his.

Sorry, "unit tests" prob made it sounds like I think more stochastically than I actually do. Was just trying to use jargon of this place. As a longtime community organizer, the messy human stuff is def where I prefer to operate :)

> Thing is we’ve done the experiment and it doesn’t work.

My main reaction was discomfort with one observation of a legislative failure being used to advocate discarding a hypothesis * shrug *

EDIT: But thanks for reply to my lazy and poorly framed comment!

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

#697

Post by chaostheory »

atomi wrote: post #693
chaostheory wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re a Native American who’s lived in the times before these massive migrations?

Do you actually mean Californio? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californios

Ok. Are you a Californio old enough to remember Silicon Valley when it was mostly farmland? You’d have to be around 70-80 years old right?

If we’re talking about the conquistadors, can’t we lump them in with “Just very greedy overly ambitious and pretentious people”? They weren’t kind to the indigenous people. Even slavery wasn’t out of the question.

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

#698

Post by herbst »

jhfdbkofdcho wrote: post #60
herbst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt the us taxing basically everyone even if they moved somewhere else years ago?

As a rough approximation, if you’re a US citizen, then You must file a US income tax return. The US taxes your worldwide income regardless of where it’s earned. BUT under most circumstances you would get a credit against what you owe the US for what you pay the country in which you earned the money and also wanted to tax you (no double taxation in theory) It’s kind of a pain for someone living in say Kenya which does…

It is absolutely absurd for me. I do not live in the country i was born at, it never contributed to me earning anything. I dont see why i would owe any tax to them

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

#699

Post by herbst »

GavinMcG wrote: post #218
robocat wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have the choice of giving up their U.S. citizenship. Sure, but if you have more than $2MM assets then you must pay an exit tax. From: https://1040abroad.com/faq/renouncing-u-s-citizenship/ “The Exit Tax that you, as a covered expatriate, would have to pay is calculated as if you have sold all of your assets at Fair Market Value on the day prior to your relinquishment, and the associated capital gains are sub…

Of course. Your capital gains would be taxed upon sale if you didn't leave; should fleeing the country allow you to avoid that? Letting people take advantage of all the US offers while paying no tax on their growing wealth, and then letting them retire elsewhere without having put in their fair share makes no sense. Of course, we could stop taxing capital gains so favorably, as an alternative.

Even if it doesnt make sense to you, this is literally how the rest of the world works.

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

#700

Post by herbst »

nradov wrote: post #127
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I benefit from a country while not being in it?

In theory if you get kidnapped by terrorists or something then the US government might try to rescue you.

If i moved away from the us because i misstrust them or whatever reason why would i care about their rescue?

I never thought about my born Country is going to help with anything as i moved away and pay taxes somewhere else. I rather be rescued to “home“

Post reply on HN