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I mean you could even take the bottom number and leave them with the top number and they could still live in unimaginable luxury forever. Or just take the lot because fuck em lol.
I couldn’t imagine spending $1 billion in my entire life, let alone 3-4.
Most of their billions is ownership in companies they grew into what they are today. It’s not like they have billions to spend, it’s that their ownership is worth billions according to the market.
True, but that ownership gives them access to very low interest loans that they then use as spending money and don’t have to pay taxes on it
So what? We should take away that ownership because they can leverage it? Also the same people suggesting we tax wealth like this want to also close those “loopholes” of low interest loans on shares.
Yes.
Yes to taking away wealth or the way to leverage it?
Taking away (extreme) wealth. There’s no reason one person should have that much. There’s countless better ways to use that money/wealth than for one persons extravagant lifestyle. And even if they don’t have an extravagant lifestyle, what are they gonna do with it? Doubt they will build infrastructure out of good will with it.
No, they can keep them, but those loopholes need to be closed. Maybe don’t allow using ownership of a company as collateral for a loan? If you want to use your massive stored wealth as money you need to sell it. You want to get it back buy it. I’m not a finance or policy person, but there has to be a way to make these people pay the propert tax on their wealth.
So they can keep their ownership, but we are going to remove their way to loan money against it, and still expect them to pay billions in taxes without giving away any ownership? How do you expect them to pay billions in taxes when the only billions they have in value is company ownership? You are forcing them to sell company ownership to pay this ridiculous tax.
To be fair, if billionaires could no longer use their stocks as collateral to borrow insane amounts, maybe they’d have to give themselves taxable salaries.
If they are self-made millionaires/billionaires as they claim, take everything they have/own and tell them to start the quest again, no glitches, DLC, or saved progress.
You all realize they don’t have that money laying around to pay the IRS right? They own companies, those companies are worth that much. To pay that you would have to liquidate those companies. So no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc…
Don’t be a bootlicker or bot or idiot.
When they sell their shares to buy twitter or pay the tax man, those companies still exist. It just means that other people get to buy those shares and that’s a good thing, because that way those companies get owned by the public.
Tesla and SpaceX still exist even after Elon overpaid by some $30B for his Twitter adventure.
no more Amazon, Tesla, Space X, etc…
Oh no! Anyway, so how can we make this happen, like, yesterday?
I highly recommend you to read the paper billionare argument. The market can stand the liquidation of most of those companies without making them go bankrupt, we don’t want them to stop existing, just to make them smaller and not a threat to democracy.
For the whole scale of wealth I also recommend going through wealth shown to scale
Can billionaires liquidate their assets? Yes, it is theoretically possible
The real question is, who is going to buy the assets?
Let’s say we have a billionaire that owns a billion dollar company.
Could that billionaire sell all their shares, get a billion dollars in cash, and then give it away. Yes, it is possible.
But that billion dollars in cash has to come from somewhere. Either the citizens have to come with a billion dollars in cash or the government.
If the citizens spend a billion to buy the shares, then the government takes the billion in cash from the billionaire, then the government gives a billion back to the citizens. You just basically printed an extra billion dollars for the economy, which causes inflation. Because the citizens now have two billion in stocks and cash, compared to just one billion in cash.
Our fiat money system has flaws, one day it is going to crash.
But Besos’ 100+ billion in Amazon stock is money tied up outside of the economy until he sells.
Forcing him to sell and introduce that money into the economy has repercussions.
You don’t need to make him dump all of his money all at once. Make an investment plan so that sum of money doesn’t disturb the market, extend the dump for two-three years and you can put 100 million without destroying the system
I didn’t say you needed to make them dump it all at once, but no matter how you do it, you’re introducing more money into the economy.
Make an investment plan so that sum of money doesn’t disturb the market
Again, great the market isn’t disturbed and stocks are still worth a billion total. You’re still going to introduce another billion into the economy in “two-three” years by giving it to the poor.
The whole point of taking money from billionaires is to affect the economy. There’s no point in doing it if it’s not going to affect anything.
The money is already in the economy, it is just not moving hands. When talking about disturbing the economy I was alluding to inflation, lots of poor families will gladly welcome that money. Also if we allowed us to take a little bit more, the social services will be allowed to improve substantially
Say I invented the cure for cancer today and started the business Cancer Cure Inc. tomorrow.
I own 100% of the shares of the company. Say there are 100 shares.
Each share of Cancer Cure Inc. would be valued at X/100 amount of money because Cancer Cure Inc. would be valued at X.
If Cancer Cure Inc. company was valued at a billion dollars. Each share would be worth 10 million dollars.
I would be seen as a billionaire because I own the 100 shares. Yet I haven’t sold a single share. No money has exchanged hands for the shares.
A billion dollars doesn’t just magically enter the economy because Cancer Cure Inc. exists. It would take an existing billion dollars to buy my shares.
Now, if people wanted to give me a billion dollars in cash for my 100 shares, and I sold them. I’d have a billion dollars in cash, and the people would have a billion dollars in Cancer Cure Inc. stock.
Now, if the government takes my billion dollars in cash and hand that to the people, they now have a billion dollars in stock and a billion dollars in cash.
It doesn’t matter if I own 100 stocks of Cancer Cure Inc. or if 100 different wealthy people own 1 stock each. What changed is that there is now 1 billion more cash floating in the economy.
That’s what causes inflation
I’m not saying it’s right. Capitalism has winners and losers, rich and poor. It’s just how the capitalism system has to work.
All they’d need to liquidate is part of their ownership in said companies. Companies themselves will be ok, don’t you worry your bleeding heart.
That’s not true at all. Loss of controlling ownership makes a company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. The new owners will pick it apart like the vultures they are.
RIP grannies pension plan
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No, they’d just need to liquidate their share in those companies. Those shares would then get bought up by other people or by pension funds.
Or picked apart by private equity vultures at the expense of pension funds.
Well they are public companies bar space x so. Just redistribute those shares.
That’s the thing people don’t get. The ultra wealthy are wealthy on paper.
On an average years. All of us make more than Elon in wages.
You’re making it sound like the wealthy are rich in technicality only. Maybe the majority of their assets aren’t liquid but they’re still damn wealthy more than “on paper.”
And singling out wages as the only source of income to prove Elon isn’t “actually” wealthy is disingenuous at best.
He’s wealthy but he doesn’t have a high income.
We tax income in America. That’s why Elon pays little and same with bezos. They just don’t have much income.
It personally doesn’t bother me they have billions. They pay their fair share of their taxes just like I pay mine.
You’re not poor because they’re rich. Once you stop focusing on others and focus on yourself; life becomes much easier.
It’s interesting you assume I’m poor just because I’m not licking those boots.
You are. It’s easy to figure out. When people confuse wealth with income, it’s easy to figure out.
People here think there is some finite wealth pie, and if you cut a big piece somehow that leaves more for everyone else
What does that matter? He doesn’t take wages intentionally. He has a large stock portfolio that he can borrow against and thereby pay no taxes on that “income”.
What did Elon get paid, excluding stock options at companies he works for?
I bet he still makes more than me.
Most years under 30k. Often a dollar or free.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/02/20/investing/elon-musk-pay/index.html
That actually almost seems worse. He is not paying into Social Security or his local community. He is being generously compensated on stock, which is taxed differently.
Edit: I do want to thank you for providing that link. I was only finding a Forbes article about him being the highest compensated CEO of that year.
He’s paying in the local community through property taxes.
He’s highly compensated through stock and when he bought twitter. We got some huge amount of money in Taxes.
You’re correct. He rarely pays into social but that’s a problem for Congress to solve.
There are many ways to solve this bullshit and one is not allow them to borrow against their stock. That’s how they live for so cheap. I’m not opposed to stopping that at all.
Borrowing against stock needs to stop yesterday, especially if it’s not specifically for the interests of the company whose stock is being used.
Tax billionaires until there are no more billionaires
It’s really insane that we legally treat the tenth billion dollars at the same level as a working persons house or car.
Everything is legally just “property”.
No, fuck that.
The law should protect the first million of every citizen with ferver. (and when we tackle wealth inequality, most people will have this level of wealth at the end of their working life. The fact that most currently don’t is due to inequality. )
Up until 100 million, it should be taxed at a reasonable level. Because at some level, it’s fair that people prefer watching Taylor Swift instead of me sing on a stage.
Above that it should be taxed heavily.
And above a billion, it should be just confiscated. As in, oopsie, our system malfunctioned, you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a whole lifetime of work, so we are taking it back.
you weren’t supposed to end up with more wealth than what a thousand normal people would save up after a while lifetime of work
I actively try to cheat at every single-player game that I play. I still don’t think I’ve accumulated a billion anything other than self-criticisms. Even that’s questionable.
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I’m cool with numbers past a billion being asymptotically possible. Let the money-addicts keep chasing N+1 dollars, if each +1 puts ten times more money into public funding.
It’s actually taxes less if it’s earned from investments
At a billion you get a small plaque that says ‘yay you won capitalism’, they name a park bench after you and you replay from scratch.
The problem is that this wealth is ownership in companies they made. If you start a company and it becomes too successful, Is it right that we really just forcefully take that ownership away from you? Who wants to start or keep a company in a country that takes away your company from you if it’s too successful?
“I won’t start a company because it may be worth over a billion one day and that would only leave me with hundreds of millions of dollars. That doesn’t seem worthwhile,” thought no one ever in your hypothetical.
No, it’s more like
" why start a company when if it becomes too successful it will literally be taken away from me for being too successful". I don’t believe we should be taking away businesses from business owners, do you?
Or maybe you’re the successful owner and you reward the people that made you successful with a larger portion of that success?
Sure, give the owner that option, just don’t steal ownership from them.
I do. Fuck 'em. They already have 100 million dollars. They can go cry into that.
So your argument is “Fuck them because they have more than me”. Is that about right? We can steal from them because they have more to steal?
They stole it from “me” first.
If you’ve gone public with the company yes, you’ve set up the situation where paying your due means giving up some control of the company. That was a you decision. But congratulations you’re worth hundreds of millions. If you find yourself thinking that’s not enough you’re deeply broken and one of the most selfish people in human history, a true 0.01%er.
And again, this is a billion dollar baseline people are talking about. This is the same as people upset about the possibility of inheritance taxes because then they’d only get $10,000,000 tax free. No one is not starting a business because of that, which was your original argument.
It’s one thing to willfully sell some company shares to investors, it’s another to be forced to give up more shares just to pay taxes on wealth because of those shares.
This brings up an interesting point though, let’s say it’s a private company worth billions, where one person owns 100% of the shares, do you force them to sell also?
People may not start a business with the intent to be a billionaire, but if we say that if you make it that far we will just tax you so much you will be forced to sell away your ownership, who would keep their company here when they get close to that? I think it’s telling that many of the most successful worldwide companies are US companies.
At some point you just have to give them a gold sticker, a “Congratulations! You won capitalism!” plaque, and leave something for the rest of humanity.
Yes, I’m sure if Jeff Bezos were worth 10 billion dollars less he would have just said forget it I’ll flip burgers instead. I don’t think you need to rip their company from them, you just need to tax them.
You are literally suggesting to rip the company away from them though. They are only worth billions because of that value, if you rant to tax them billions where do you think they are going to get that money? They only have one option, to sell their ownership in their own company. If that’s not ripping their company away from them I don’t know what is.
Are other people paying taxes described as “ripping” away their ownership in “x”? What a bizarre framing. Also, Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon, so he’s already given away ownership of the company. He has assets, and they should be taxed
How does Amazon exist? How do they continue to operate? They run on the Internet created by the US government, they deliver packages by flying through US airspace, and driving on roads paved by several levels of government. Their factories don’t burn down because of municipal fire departments, and aren’t burglarized because of municipal police departments. Why shouldn’t they pay for those things, which they make much more use of than you or I?
Others aren’t using taxes on wealth though. Should the middle class be taxed on the amount in their retirement funds also? Or the amount in their bank accounts?
10% of Amazon is still a lot, it’s still a lot of power.
You think Amazon doesn’t pay for any of that? They pay for their use of such things like we all do. They do get some discounts thanks to scale, but they are paying way more than you or me.
The problem is that they are all employing tax avoidance schemes. Corporations like Amazon will spin off their IP to a separate off-shore corporation. Then they’ll pay that corporation for the use of their IP. That reduces Amazon’s profit to near zero, meaning they’re not paying taxes. The off shore corporation doesn’t pay taxes either.
People like Bezos won’t take salaries, because they’re taxed. Instead they’ll take stock. Then they’ll take loans against that stock, so they don’t pay taxes. They just roll that loan into another loan and continue to live off of it, never paying taxes because they have no “income”.
So yes, their wealth should be taxed. Otherwise the richest among us pay next to nothing and yet benefit the most from what our taxes buy. If we weren’t adequately capturing taxes from the middle class, then sure, but that’s not the case.
True. But generally I think giant companies cause more systemic problems than they solve. So maybe we don’t really need them.
After we die back to a manageable level from climate change we should try to remember that and prohibit it happening again.
We don’t really need giant companies? Ok, sure… personally I like my high tech options these large companies offer, and their ability to offer lower prices thanks to the economics of scale. If you want to pay more for everything then feel free to go to small companies, personally I prefer to pay less for the same stuff from large companies.
Meanwhile the downsides are invasion of privacy, destruction of the environment, poor treatment of workers and on and on.
If employees are treated so poorly they would leave, it’s not like we force people to keep their job. If you prefer to pay more, it’s your choice to buy from smaller companies.
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If the company becomes too successful, maybe there’s not just my effort that went into achieving that.
Somehow “you got paid, fuck off” is acceptable, but “you reaped the benefits, fuck off” is not.
What do employees get for their efforts? Oh yeah, that’s right, they get a salary and maybe even bonuses. What are you suggesting we do the owners? Oh, punish them by removing their company from them? Yeah, they will surely keep the company in the US if that is their reward.
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How can you talk about improving society and in the same sentence day we should punish them for trying to leave? Is that what we should do, punish people for moving their business elsewhere? Maybe ban their business from the country so nobody benefits?
You are promoting a more hostile and authoritarian country under the guise of “better for everyone”, it’s insane.
Why do like sucking capitalist dick so much? The only way owners get so rich is because they are exploiting labor.
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I don’t suck any dick, I just think the alternative you are suggesting is so much dumber than what we have
lmao ok, bootlicker
All these people already sell the stock of their own companies to diversify their holdings or to buy a yacht, island or Twitter.
Selling stock on the market to pay the tax man is no different.
They still keep a billion dollars worth of stock, so its not like they end up poor.
And the government can “forcefully” take a third of a working mans income, which is way worse than taxing wealth. Go cry me a river.
They don’t actually sell stock in a lot of cases, they keep it and take out loans against it. That can only go so far though, if you are like the rest of the crazy people here and suggest we just tax billionaires until they are no longer billionaires, then that won’t work.
Why not take the income of these business owners? Just like we take the income of everyone else? Why special rules for taxing this specific group of people you don’t like?
If they can take out loans to buys islands, Yachts and overpriced tweet companies, then let them take out loans to pay tax.
They only have five figure incomes thanks to the loopholes, so that isn’t a fair level of taxation compared to their actual capital gains that they artificially keep as “unrealized” on paper. A trick unavailable to us mere mortals.
You’re a tool.
Or, crazy thought, make it so they can’t take out loans against their stock; especially if it’s not for private use! Maybe that way, people like Musk will be forced to give themselves salaries that can be taxed by the government.
It’s clear you don’t know how things work at all. You can’t expect to tax someone billions every year and not have to sell the thing causing such a huge tax burden. This isn’t an infinite money glitch, the loan thing can only go so far.
Also, unrealized gains are a real thing, stocks go up and down, and the change in value is unrealized until it’s sold. If a stock goes up $100 that isn’t $100 in my pocket, because tomorrow it could go down $200. If you want to tax these unrealized gains, then you should be paying out the unrealized losses as well. You would also be screwing up the middle class retirement funds, so thanks for that.
You have a big mouth for someone who has zero clue.
Obviously, taxes are levied on a yearly basis and not every day, so daily fluctuations in value are irrelevant.
And retirement funds are tax exempt, so they will not be screwed.
And yes, people who can’t afford to pay property taxes have to sell property. That is a reality we all have to deal with, so why not let the super rich also deal with it.
Dude, get some education.
There are loopholes that can be closed, but won’t because the majority of American politicians are also rich assholes. I do think most of the ideas that get bandied out are dumb as sin, however.
Do billionaires actually have billions in real money sitting around? I’ve always thought the billions were in stocks and couldn’t be taxed until they cashed it out and they could technically lose everything if the stock price falls. That’s really fucked up if true
Nobody keeps that amount of cash. Even below a million, most people have most of their wealth in either real estate (their own house) or financial securities (stocks, ETFs, bonds).
Yet, we all gotta pay property tax and capital gains.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds.
The billionaires just have loopholes that they use to never realize gains with loan schemes and trust funds. <
Isnt that then bigger problem than generally tax the rich?
Is there a difference?
Closing loopholes = taxing the rich
If the tax code lost all the loopholes, there probably would be no billionaires.
I meant that we should close the loopholes instead of just increasing tax rate for rich.
Closing the loopholes is the same thing as increasing the taxes on the rich.
Just try it and they will find a sad story of some business owner losing the family business because the loophole “serves a vital purpose” and then congress will rush to hell save those family farms.
That’s the reason no loopholes ever get closed.
This movie has been on repeat for decades.
The only way to really solve it is a smarter divide and conquer approach. Separate, stricter rules for the billionaire class that only apply to them.
That way the small business owners stay out of range and have no incentive to help change the narrative.
That is actually the case. Billionaires aren’t swimming in a room full of cash and they don’t some some secret mega vault that holds $100 billion. Most of these guys are founders of very successful corporations, and so they naturally have a larger than average share. Bezos has most of his wealth in Amazon stocks, Zuckerberg in Meta, Musk in Tesla and SpaceX, Gates in Microsoft, and so on. Their wealth goes up and down depending on how well the company they’re most tied to is doing. In the US and most other places, stocks aren’t taxed until they’re sold. Once a transaction happens, there will be a tax. Usually tax rates go up with profits and income, and there are deductions for losses (to a degree). It’s an okay system, the issue is that it isn’t being enforced. Our system is full of loopholes that these billionaires exploit to pay way less than they should. But billionaires not paying taxes are nothing compared to corporations not paying ANY taxes on billions in annual profits. That’s what we should go after.
Just spitballing here.
As you said, right now, you only pay taxes on profits at the time stocks are sold. Which means I could gather billions in “wealth” and never cash in, thus never pay a single dollar in taxes.
Suppose we would change how taxes are paid on stock profits. What if you had to pay taxes on yearly profits every year? This way, you can cash out at any time, because the tax is already paid. It would work just like regular income tax. Deductions and losses on the market would still apply.
The issue with this idea is that it doesn’t reflect how stocks work. Think about it like this: Owning a stock is like owning a block of gold. The value of the gold can go up or down. One year the value of your gold block could double and another year it could half. However, the actual value of your gold won’t be determined until you actually sell it. The tax your proposing isn’t a tax on wealth, but rather a tax on exchange rates. Besides if the stocks aren’t cashed then no harm is done. That money is being used and invested by the business.
I don’t think the issue is with the things we tax. We have good tax policy on that. The issue is that the system is flawed because corporations keep lobbying for new loopholes. If you want to see billionaires and corporations pay their faire share then we have to go after these loopholes. There should absolutely zero reason why individuals like you and me pay more in taxes than corporations like Salesforce, Nike, and FedEx. I’m not even talking about percentages here, we literally pay a larger monetary amount than they do. Actually some of these corporations get rebates for their profits. These are the type of things we should go after. We have to dig through the tax code, find every loophole, and hound our politicians to close them… And oh, not open new ones.
Something doesn’t add up for me, maybe I’m missing it.
The stock market (as I understand it) works on the premise that you buy some shares of the company. That money goes to the company, and they use it to improve their tools/processes/etc, in order to better compete with the rest of the market and turn a higher profit. This in turn makes your shares worth more, because the company is worth more.
You’re saying people can get taxed yearly on the growth of the shares - okay, understood. But here’s my question:
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If the market dips this year (or the company has a bad year) and the stock owner doesn’t sell the shares, they are now worth less. Will the government reimburse the tax at the end of the year?
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If yes - then we fix nothing, right? We even make it worse, because now we have to track everyone’s stock. That’ll generate a lot of meaningless work.
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If no, then we’re taxing every yearly gain no matter how small, but still asking stock owners to take a risk and continue to own that stock. Who would ever want to invest anymore, when potential gains are taxed before you even have a chance to withdraw them (not to mention where do you come up with the money to pay taxes if you don’t sell the stocks) but losses are not compensated, and you still hold all the risk? Every stock exchange would crash and burn, with nobody investing anymore, but even worse - selling all stock before that first year runs out and they’re taxed for it. All companies that are publicly traded would basically be worthless overnight. It’d lead to another great depression, no?
I’m really not very understanding of this field, but I can’t find another option here that would actually end well. Am I missing something?
So maybe a few examples, because I won’t pretend to know every little aspect of the stock market myself:
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You buy 1 share of company X at $1000. Unless this company X is currently offering new shares, you buy this single share directly from someone else. The person on the other end of this trade would then have to pay e.g. 25% of their gains over the year so far (that’s the capital gains tax in Germany).
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Company X’s business is going great, and the stock price goes up to $1050 over the next year, and up to $1100 over the second year. You decide to sell your one share again, at this price, so you get $100 in profit. Right now, you would then pay $25 to the government. That’s $25 over 2 years. With the change, you would owe the government ($1050 - $1000) * 25% = $12.50 after the first year of holding your one share. It would be treated as if you would have sold your share after one year, paid your tax, and then re-bought the same share right away. Where does this money come from and how do you pay your owed taxes? The price of this stock would be set to $1000 + ($1050 - $1000) * 75% = $1037.50, and the $12.50 in profits of every share in circulation would be paid directly to the government (your government, wherever you pay your taxes). This way you already paid your taxes. So the stock gets to “keep” 75% of the profits it has made over the year. The stock is now at $1037.50, and again goes up by $50 over the second year. Same as above, price is reset to accommodate for profit taxes. After two years, the stock would have paid a total of $25 for every share, and would be set at ($1037.50 + $50 * 75%) = ($1037.50 + $37.50) = $1075.
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If you decide to sell your share after 1.5 years, because you want to avoid the second year’s reset, you pay no taxes after the first year (because the stock would just be valued for 75% of profits), and you just pay 25% of whatever profits the stock made in the last six months. Maybe the price at that point in time is at $1060, so you “pay” ($1060.00 - $1037.50) * 25% = $5.625 in taxes for this trade, and get to keep $16.875 in profits for the six months. I wrote “pay taxes”, because the government would not see a single cent from that because of the other side of that trade:
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Maybe you are the other person, who buys that one share at some point during the year for $1060. However, what you are really paying is only $1600 - $5.625 = $1054.375, because that’s what this stock would be worth right now after taxes. By the end of the year the stock has climbed to $1087.50, but is reset to $1075. You sell it again at $1075. $1075 - $1075 = $0, so you pay no more taxes to sell it. Your profit over these six months is ($1075 - $1054.375) = $20.625. To compare: Right now, you would have paid $1060 for the share, the price would have gone up to $1087.50, and you would have paid ($1087.50 - $1060) * 25% = $6.875 in taxes, and thus would have made ($1087.50 - $1060) * 75% = $20.625 in profits, exactly the same.
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If people value company X less after a year, and the stock goes down, nothing would change in comparison to what happens right now.
To sum it all up: Every year, each stock would be forced to realize profits and pay taxes that way.
Does this solve the problem of risk though?
Let’s say I buy a share for $1000. It grows in the first year to 1100. In the second to 1200. And so on, and so forth.
Let’s say the stock does really well over the next 10 years, and it doubles in value, 100 at a time - at some point I (as an investor) will have paid 25% of that, so I’m virtually paying 1250 for that $2000. Cool, that’s what would’ve happened if I had sold.
But if the stock tanks in year 11, I’m out 1250 instead of 1000. So… Where is the incentive for me to not sell?
And this is an example for a longer time, just so the loss is visible. But I should actually sell instantly whenever I have a small profit before the yearly tax gets taken, otherwise I am risking not only losing my initial investment, but also the tax I already paid. Whereas with the current system, I only pay tax for the gains, and I can justify the risk of continuing to hold that stock for the higher gains in the future.
With your system, I have no incentive. My risk is higher the more the stock is worth. It could go down at any point, and I’m not only out the initial investment, but also the tax that the government took for doing nothing.
And now let’s apply this to someone who is investing in the stock market to save money long-term (10-20 years). They will have a pretty diversified portfolio. Some companies will do well, some will stagnate, some will go under. Overall, they will statistically be turning a profit.
But that’s with the old system. Because with the one you propose, the losses will be even higher. All the companies that eventually go under and don’t turn a profit for your stocks will be not only costing you the initial investment, but also the subsequent profitable years. So people holding on to the stock can end up costing immeasurably more.
And an even worse scenario: stock “fads”. Look at gamestop, or better:nvidia’s recent rise. If I’m an Nvidia stockholder, I’m selling instantly. Otherwise I’m stuck paying the tax at the end of the year, and then am left holding worthless stock, once the price normalizes. Which is something that might happen anyway, but at least I have the choice of when to pull out, instead of it being forced onto me by the government.
And now let’s extend that example to the company itself. With everyone causing the price to rise, selling will be forced on everyone as well. In today’s system, some investors will ignore the price jumps and stick with the company. In your proposed system, those investors won’t be able to afford that, because the tax they would pay at the end of the year will be unreasonable. So they will ALL sell. The company stock will be worthless. Nobody will even buy it for a while, until it normalizes - you can’t risk the spikes and the tax that comes with them.
And let’s look at those billionaires now, and how this would affect them. In the first instance, they’d need to pay billions in taxes. How will they do that? They’ll probably sell stock. So the prices will drop for that stock, since the market will be overflowing with it. And this will hurt every single other small-time investor who bought stock in that company some years ago, paid tax for the increases, only to now have that stock worth a lot less. Except those guys aren’t billionaires and won’t have a few billion dollars remaining, they’ll get shafted by the state and be left with a lot less.
And none of those things even approaches the probably biggest problem of all: we’re taxing virtual gains, not actual gains. If I’m a person on the stock market and need to pay taxes for all my stock, okay, the state gets a bunch of money. And now let’s consider the stock market crashes and all my stock is worth less than before. All the money I paid to the state is actual cash, but it’s based on a value that doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s not real. We literally introduce money into the economy. Forget the risk to the end-user, we’re actually causing inflation here. If I spend $1000 on shares, the company improves its practices and this results in it turning a profit therefore making it worth $2000, I pay $250 on tax, and the company then goes back to its original practices, they sustain losses and the price drops back to $1000, for all intents and purposes everything about the situation has stayed the same, but the economy now has $250 more, for no reason. Forget about my personal loss, but this is the type of shit that can bury a country within the year. We devalue the currency because we added to it without having any actual change to attribute to the increase. There’s more money in circulation out of nowhere. Prices rise and salaries rise and inflation wreaks havoc. Today this type of action is already existing, but it’s in a controlled environment. A bank will provide x% interest on a deposit, but they will use that money to make more than what they give you on different markets. The government will tax you x%, but will tax your actual salary, not pretend money in the sky. Assuming these entities follow the law, inflation should be low enough to be manageable in those scenarios. But this? This is a net gain of currency. This is pure inflation, with no rhyme or reason.
I see very many downsides, with the only upside being that the state can get its money a bit faster, and even get money when the consumer loses (stock prices fall after tax is paid). But that just means consumers won’t participate in the stock market anymore, or that they will and it will backfire into inflation eating the country up.
I will honor all of this with by reading it.
Just for a first response to your second paragraph
Let’s say the stock does really well over the next 10 years, and it doubles in value, 100 at a time - at some point I (as an investor) will have paid 25% of that, so I’m virtually paying 1250 for that $2000. Cool, that’s what would’ve happened if I had sold.
You will have “paid” $250 after the ten years, not $1250. So if the stock tanks, as it can with the current system, nothing would change. The point though is, that you have not actually paid that $250 out of your pocket, the stock has just gone up by a total of 1000-250 instead of the whole 1000.
So in my eyes, the risk for you is exactly the same as it is now. You still gain $750 over 10 years, and the government still gets its $250 in taxes.
– I will read the rest of your reply now, that’s just my first thought. Thanks for taking your time to think this all through :)
Second thought: Yes, I think I get what you are trying to say.
- If the stock price rises in year 1, after the yearly tax cutoff it will have paid taxes. 1000 + 50 * 75% = 1037.50 [1050 with the current system]
- The stock tanks in year 2, losing 50% of its value, and ends at 518.75. There would be no taxes owed, because losses > profit. [525 with the current system]
- In year 3, the stock rises again, by 100% this time. Would end at 1037.50, but after the tax cutoff ends at 907.8125 [1050 with the current system]
- You decide to sell. With the new system, you get exactly 907.8125, as you already “paid” your tax. With the current system you get 1050-(1050-1000)*25% = 1037.50
– this means the new system would have to do something during loss-years. yes, I see that now
Third thought: This makes me feel like there should be a loss-counter that could be carried over the years. This counter would have to be held for every single share, so that you would start “paying taxes” or lowering the stock price again only after you were at ± 0 again.
Yeah, sorry for the disorganized answer, I was trying to convey an idea that wasn’t clear to me either. But you got it in the end.
What you are proposing would fundamentally break price discovery on the open market as everyone’s tax burden would need to be continually calculated. That just isn’t feasible.
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If we’re just talking fantasies that we wish America would make reality, I would like to see it be way harder for the filthy rich to manipulate the stock market instead of rewarding them with day trading exemptions and tax breaks make them pay more to day trade as their trades are more volatile to the markets, make it way easier for the poor to enter into stock ownership of real street name stocks without having to have in depth knowledge of trading, and cherry-on-top ban short selling outright and require locates for all trades.
How do they have cash on hand to do stuff then?
There are loopholes to help them out. For example, they could take out loans against their wealth, and do whatever they need that way. The money isn’t taxed, and the terms of these loans are usually very favorable towards the billionaires since their connections go deep.
What I’ve seen is that they’re essentially taking loans against their stocks - The banks know you’re good for it, so they’re willing to lend you a ton at super low rates. Then you just pay interest forever and it’ll never catch up to the principal within your lifetime.
They do, just not that much of it when compared to their real wealth.
Sad day when “billionaires should pay taxes” is considered a far left position.
Well, when even the “moderate” right thinks everyone left of the Strasserites is a commie, this is what you get.
Billionaires should pay a wealth tax is considered a far left position. Billionaires should pay an income tax is a position supported by all except maybe some tea party folk.
That!.. That’s literally what I meant!!
The problem is that stocks aren’t income. Stocks don’t have a value until you sell them. How do you tax that? One day someone can be worth billions and the next nothing if the stocks they own drop in value or the company goes bankrupt. I don’t know the solution but it’s not as easy as most people make it out to be.
Wealth taxes are stupid. That said, nobody needs multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.
The solution is to have regulations and laws in place that prevent them getting this large in the first place. The fact that Amazon and Google own 90% of the internet is absolutely fucked.
I agree, no one should be able to hold such an obscene amount of wealth. Right now they do, though. How do you propose this be remedied?
Tbh you would have to create a really good anti trust taskforce full of people that lost everything to these humongous companies, people whose stores got undercut and etc.
I say this because the only way Colombia fought against Escobar’s control of the police was by having a task force full of people whose family or friends had died to the cartel.
This said, yhe defenetly, not one entity that has that much power should be there without being voted in. How would you feel if the gov owned the internet, cuz that doesn’t sound good to me. Soo yhe between voting for whomever controls most of the internet or having better anti trust laws and regulating forces idk
Not with a wealth tax. I’d say just break up the companies and share prices will adjust to reflect.
Right, let’s go back in time and fix it.
Wealth taxes are a concrete solution. Your proposal is instead some vague notion of regulations and laws. By the way, a wealth tax would help prevent the rich from having so much money which allows them to set those regulations and laws in the first place.
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With or without PACs, the money will find its way into politicians’ pockets.
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It’s to point out that banning PACs, while a good move, wouldn’t solve the problem. A wealth tax would be much more effective.
60% of middle class wealth is held in their property. Guess what get’s taxed? Their property. Right now we have a wealth tax on the middle class who are carrying a very disproportionate tax load compared with the rich.
And, even if they don’t own it, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google probably still help run it with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
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Because a ton of wealth is caught up in assets that were already taxed in some way, or is not directly usable. Yeah I might have a few million dollars in assets, but if those are all caught up in shares of a company I’d have to sell a ton just for the mere fact of me owning them.
I’m personally not at all a fan of double-dipping on taxes. I was taxed to make money and taxed to buy stocks, that should be it until I’ve sold them or realized any gain from them. Property tax makes sense on some level, since you’re taking up physical space and helping to pay for the utilities you use in your area. But I don’t agree on a tax for just owning something otherwise, it feels incredibly scummy.
There are other solutions to the problem that don’t involve losing shares in a company you’ve built yourself and still taxes in a way that’s less shitty. The rich pay less in taxes by taking out loans against their assets, which is fine, but those loans aren’t counted as income for good reason (otherwise buying a house would mean tens of thousands in taxes just for getting the loan), but they need an income to pay back those loans and that income would be taxed, so I’m not certain there’s a lot that could be rightly done there, either. It would also fuck with a lot of business financials if you start progressively taxing larger loans as income, but it’s something to consider I guess.
I’m not sure what the solution is. Personally I see little difference in someone having 200 million in assets and 70 billion purely from the standpoint of “how much could a person reasonably spend in a year,” but I digress.
In my opinion, the more egregious issue is that the mere fact of having that much money could be easily used to manipulate markets and should be considered anti-competitive from its mere existence. Good on you for making that much money, I applaud you, but capitalism requires healthy competition and if you have literal trillions to outcompete competition by hemorrhaging money through losses for hundreds of years then that’s fundamentally anti-competitive because nobody’s going to challenge you. It’s a losing game and breaks the capitalistic contract necessary for a healthy economy.
Companies should not have any means of becoming so unfathomably large, and that alone would resolve the issue of “paying their fair share.”
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Um, tax those too.
We don’t need to be perfect with just one proposal. We can have at least 2 proposals.
Yeah and maybe also cutting down on their non-profit organisations scheme to avoid taxes would be nice…
Wealth taxes actually work, that’s why the rich attack them so vehemently.
I think you’re wrong on both points. I’ve heard plenty of rich people say they believe their tax rate should be higher including some of the ones on that list. You’re also wrong when you say it works. It works for who? If you don’t attack the spending problem it’s just more money to be wasted. Let’s face it the political system is outstanding and finding some need to spend every cent they can possibly get their hands on. It won’t matter if they spend it on your priorities or someone else’s they will always find the need to spend it. In our current inflation based economy they don’t even need to spend what they take in it’s easier to just print more and that’s exactly what they’re doing.
rich person talk: it’s not a tax problem, it’s a spending problem.
No it’s not, money spent in the economy is money going around. rather than hoarded offshore.
it’s even basic Keynesian economics. the money just needs to be in the economy in a fairer way.
The rich saying their tax rate should be higher only advocate for higher income tax rates, which they are already avoiding for the most part. It’s just another PR stunt.
The phrase “the rich” is quite broad. I really don’t know what the rich believe or want.
Billionaires. Does that narrow it down enough for you? By far they advocate for policies that let them keep billions in wealth and get even more on top of that.
As a group I suspect you’re right but I really question why we have a tax system that is so accommodating to their requests. It’s money in politics. I’m pretty clear about that one.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist. Their fair share is more like 95%.
And if 95% still leaves them with more than you have you will feel that that rate needs to go higher.
I don’t agree with that. I’m personally completely fine with millionaires or perhaps even 100 millions. Like there should be a social safety net at the bottom there should be a social safety limit at the top even if it is very high and more wealth than anyone could reasonably need. Because beyond that point it’s not they are just getting more wealthy. Everyone else is getting poorer for it.
Well, I’m not so sure about that. If you take that wealth and let the government decide how to spend it, you are assuming it will reach those who need it. I’m not so sure that is the case.
In the current US it would probably go to an even more bloated military budget or other ridiculous projects to line the pockets of people with government connections.
I think the idea is more a long the lines of paying workers more. Instead of shareholders and executives holding 99% of the value of a corporation the workers would take home a much larger portion. Who knows how well that would actually work in practice. Either way I’d prefer multi-billionares forfeit all their wealth exceeding a billion and give it to the government than doing nothing at all. Maybe at least “some” of that could be spent on social programs such as healthcare.
Well I suspect we are looking at this problem through a very simple lens. The billionaires are not necessarily using that money. It is out there being invested and also being loaned out to start new businesses startups etc. if you just handed it to the government assuming it will be better spent or invested is a big leap.
Wealth tax should absolutely be a priority. In my state, MA, we voted in a “millionaires tax”. One thing it will cover is state wide free school lunch.
Okay but why did you call it “millionaires tax” instead of like “1% earners tax” or something? Headlines are all scaring lazy people who don’t read the article to think that their lifetime retirement savings is at risk. When it’s really for people making over a million per year!
It’s commonly labeled “millionaires tax”. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Haha yeah I didn’t mean you. I meant you guys as in the entire state or whoever named it.
Gotcha
Being a millionaire isn’t really that much of an accomplishment anymore, unless you’re talking about hundreds of millions. For most people just owning a house, having a good retirement fund, and a couple of other assets/investments (cars, a small business, some stocks, etc) puts them over $1 million. A lot of middle class grandparents are in that tier, especially in Massachusetts.
It’s for people with annual incomes over $1 million. An article I saw says there’s about 16,000 such people in Massachusetts raising $1.3 billion in 2023.
Okay, that makes more sense. With inflation over the past few years, a million dollar networth isn’t a lot, but a million dollar income definitely is.
Counterpoint: But they don’t wanna pay taxes! They don’t wannaaaaaaaaaaa… why are you being so mean to the precious billionaires?
So there are irreconcilable issues on this issue and Congress is currently too busy trying to impeach Biden because his son had dick pics on his laptop.
Other counterpoint, say you’re in a position of power and are thinking about implementing a wealth tax. When along comes one of these people with a bri- I mean donation to just not do that. Can we really expect you to turn down the money? /s
I think its more than just his own dick pics.
Who cares
Your mom
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Alternatively some of us have taken economics classes and history classes and know how poorly wealth taxes have worked.
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Please provide a source that substantiates the idea that wealth taxes have ever worked.
Remember how good the economy was in the 50’s and 60’s? Wanna guess what the tax rate on the wealthy was? It was 91%. This was the “golden age of American capitalism”, and that tax revenue kicked off a slew of public works projects that boosted the economy.
I swear corporations hire these people to come in here and defend billionaires. Billionaire who will never even spend any of that in a hundred life times.
The tax should be even higher. No one needs $100 billion.
How do you handle a CEO owning stock worth that amount in the marketplace, then?
They don’t. No one can explain how a wealth tax work because it doesn’t work.
My issue wasn’t with a wealth tax (even though I’m against it), but pulling some arbitrary wealth cap out of thin air opens a lot of questions that many people don’t consider the implications of.
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I’d be willing to be taxed into oblivion if I knew it’d mean everyone else could lead full lives. And I make nothing.
Now imagine the good their excess wealth could do.
Fuck it, I’m willing to die if it came down to it to ensure the safety and prosperity of my countrymen. And I actually hate most of my countrymen.
If we ask and freely give such sacrifices from the working class, then asking the elite to stop hoarding gold like a dragon really shouldn’t be a big deal.
I do respect Warren Buffet for being honest about it. It’s up to us (the public) and the politicians who work for us to change the system to make it more fair.
There was also another billionaire who gave his money away and is no longer a billionaire. Mad respect for the guy, but he is a rare breed. We have to fix the system, not depend on charity.
Here’s the basic idea of what I’d think is fair
You have a basic rate for income below the 20th percentile of all incomes
Multiply that by 1.5 for income between that and the 40th percentile
Multiply that by 1.25 for income between that and the 60th percentile
Multiply that by 1.125 for income between that and the 80th percentile
Multiply that by 1.0625 for income between that and the 95th percentile
Multiply that by 1.03125 for income between that and the 99th percentile
Multiply that by 1.015625 for all income above the 99th percentile, with the additional caveat that people who top this bracket even once cannot hold public office, donate to political campaigns, or hire lobbyists and lobbying firms for ten years following them topping out.
Imagine something similar for taxes on units of housing owned, dividends earned, and so on and so forth.
The idea being that the highest rate can’t be adjusted without significantly reducing the tax burden of the poorest, basically erasing the only way conservatives have been able to balance the books whenever they try that shit.
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Not more complicated than current US income tax system. Maybe a few more tax brackets…
I think I also made it a bit more flexible to, by only making one number changeable and fixing the brackets to percentiles, the system functions more or less independently year to year, with the single dial being all that can be turned when revenue needs to be raised from across society or when a break can be handed out due to a miraculous surplus or occasion for national reward.
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