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Problem is billionaires don't make "income" and it's quite difficult to even know what they own, let alone how to tax something like unrealized gains on stock holdings that they are using as leverage to get loans
At some point, somebody convinced people that unrealized gains were not actually income because you don't know for sure that you'd make that money, and I think that was a bad idea. Maybe unrealized gains aren't 1:1 the same thing as income, but the calculations of an income equivalent aren't going to be complicated.
Somehow property taxes are okay, though, even though we haven't realized the gains!
This exactly. At some threshold of worth, you should get taxed an amount based on your worth that will be big enough to force you to realize some gains in order to pay it.
The issue with realizing the gains is that you have to relinquish control of your company bit by bit. However, you could have the company (which you likely control) give out dividends, or you could use the stock as collateral for a loan. Or just pay yourself a bigger salary.
This is a good question: is it okay for you as a person to control a company that has grown that large? Maybe nudging people to give up control of entities that large is a good side effect.
Give up control to whom? Some megacorp with infinite money would just buy a majority stake (often referred to as a hostile takeover) and wind up owning everything to an even larger extent than today.
The employees who actually create the wealth. That’s to whom control should go
Sure, but that's not what's going to happen as a side effect of taxing unrealized gains, like what was discussed in this thread until now. A gradual transfer of ownership to the workers would have to be nudged in some other way.
In competitive industries (read: tech) this does happen to some extent in the form of stock being part of the compensation, but that's not going to happen organically for every employment situation.
Try being rich you fucking idiot
It's a joke y'all, damn. Just pull up on your boots or whatever it is these rich people did to turn on the money
Fucking peasant, has even tried buying some money?
Lol this guy gets it
If only there was an entire federal agency whose sole job would be to track them down and tax them.
You can have a person be full-time managing the billionaire's case, still a very strong net win.
And even if hypothetically the cost of tracking their wealth outpaced the income generated by the tax, it's still a societal positive by reducing inequality, which is the root of most problems.
you don't tax the income. you tax luxury expenditure.
if they commission a yacht, they pay 200% tax on that. if they charter a jet, they pay 500% tax on that spend. if they retain a jet, they pay 800% tax on all its expenses from hangar parking to servicing to everything else.
the tax on any car above a guideline value should increase 1% for every 1% increase in value of the car. say, you pay 1% tax for a 1000 dollar car, 50% for a 1500 dollar car, 100% for a 2000 dollar car, 300% for a 4000 dollar car and so on. and not just on the sticker price, but on every service attached to that vehicle (insurance, maintenance, etc.) for its life.
similarly for luxury hotels, clothing, jewellery, watches, golf and ski resorts, and marriages in venice.
Yeah, cuz people obviously don't store wealth in bank accounts or investment properties and/or shell corporations.... That's why the Caymans are famous for their shellfish and local hospitality, and Bezos' ex-wife didn't end up getting much cash in their divorce.
It's also fortunate that these idiots haven't figured out that they could probably have a (few) companies that hold things (excuse my rough terminology for this concept I just now came up with) maybe even purchase them too - like jets, cars, maybe yachts even - and not have to pay any of those taxes!
Man, i hope word doesn't get out about this!
My favorite tax policy hack for that last part is for the government to require a billionaire to formally declare the value of each of their assets (for purposes of calculating taxes).. with the stipulation that the government can choose to buy such an asset from the billionaire at the declared value at any time.
Gets to market rate real quick.