Ask Lemmy

As a past tax accountant.

I don't believe a straight tax will get the job done. Taxation is too unpopular to be realistically effective, and will just have corners cut in very easy and direct ways. Mainly because the masses are too stupid to understand how taxes work. I have had countless times people ask me a tax question after knowing I work in tax, I'll answer their question, and the answer is the same thing every fucking time no matter if its a friend, coworker, family, etc. "No that is wrong, what I think is correct actually". It is infuriating.

I think there are three effective ways to tackle wealth inequality.

1. Give workers ownership along with their wage. The 'owners' will of course have a bigger cut than the workers, but the current hoarding of ownership is what I think the key issue is. Our idea of ownership is the root cause.

2. Lobbying/bribes. We all know why this is bad, but it happens. Until this is fixed wealth inequality will never be fixed.

3. Loans. It is so easy for the wealthy to receive a good deal on a loan. Only because they already have money and the loan is not necessary. We need to limit loans on people who already have one successful business. Why are we allowing people who have prospered receive more money without more scrutiny? That is the definition of greed. As long as their BS and IS look okay to a bank, they will get approved with little to no follow up.

4. Distributions. In the US, when filing as a S-corp, they will receive no income tax. This is because they are then required to have the owners be paid a 'fair' wage to themselves. Why? Because payroll taxes are more compared to income taxes in this scenario. Problems arise when owners will obviously abuse what is a 'fair' wage. Lets say an owner gives himself a 30k wage because that is what is 'fair'. There is nothing stopping him from withdrawing 100,000 in contributions a year, and distributions are tax free with literally no oversight. The only checks and balances for this is they might have a basis issue later in life, but honestly that is a pretty small fine for essentially having all the tax free income they want as long as their biz is doing good.

*This is based off my experience as tax accountant/consultant for small businesses with less than 20 employees 2 years ago. Tax laws have changed since then.

A progressive wealth tax where at some amount of money your are taxed down to that amount. Billionaires shouldn't exist.

Practically that is impossible unless the rest of the world agrees, otherwise they will just hide their wealth overseas.

Order them to pay. Incarcerate them if they don't.

It works for poor people.

Hold a silent reverse auction. Whichever billionaires agree to the highest tax rate don't get eaten. The new billionaire tax rate is whatever the uneaten billionaires agreed to.

Edit: Also, roll 4d10+50 and add it as a secret bid. If it happens to be the highest bid, eat all of the billionaires. This roll is the "public option" to prevent the billionaires from colluding to cheat the system.

I think anyone should only be allowed to own, say, $10 million in assets. Not just money in the bank, but items too. Need to prevent them from keeping $10 mil in pocket and buying art and jewelry and real estate worth a total of $6 billion.

Mostly remove tax cuts of the last several decades. They mostly cut taxes on the highest owners: let’s not. Imagine if wealthy people had to pay at least the same tax rates as everyone else!

Another discussion point that always comes up is "Jeff Bezos can't pay that tax rate, it's all tied up in shares of Amazon. He would have to sell huge portions of Amazon to keep up with the taxes."

And yes. That is the intent.

But I'm not upset if folks would rather just eat him than deal with the logistics of it.

My personal thoughts are:

• Close carried interest loop holes
• Tax loans against unrealized gains on securities and physical property (excluding ones primary residence). You should not be able to take a billion dollar loan out to avoid capital gains taxes. I'm fine that this raises the basis for when the asset is sold. Well, someone do the math if there's a loophole this creates? But hopefully my intent is clear.
• Social security and Medicare tax applies to all income. Shares granted as part of compensation should also have social taxes payable on grant.
• Increase the tax brackets above the current max of 37% for income above $609k... Every 250kish above should increase by 2% until you reach 50% (about 2.5m)

That money should then be used for:

• Increasing social security payouts
• Expanding medicare access
• Increasing the limits for the tax brackets on the progressive scale for incomes below 250k

To boost the bottom:

• Stock buybacks are illegal except for the purposes of distributing stock to employees. This counts for executives but cannot exceed some multiple of their cash salary
• 20% of money flagged as dividend payments to shareholders should be distributed to employees as profit sharing into their retirement account. There needs to be rules around the max differential between the highest and lowest disbursement.

I think severe rent control would go a long way to solving the problem here in the UK.

Make it unprofitable to exploit the fundamental need for shelter. It would allow people to build up savings and have more disposable income, so they can compete properly in the market.

It would lift up the people at the bottom at the same time as curtailing those at the top = less inequality.

It's not like millionaires can take all the houses with them if decide to leave the country.

Wealth Inequality on it's own, is a problem almost nobody but the middle, lower-middle and the poor will address. It has to start here. Nobody should amass the amount of money we see individuals possess. If someone understands how far a single million could stretch for someone (provided they're responsible that is), they would understand how pointless it'd be for someone to have even 10 million or 100 million or even a single billion.

And if anyone gave two shits about the seven deadly sins, the idea of accumulating more money should be a more frowned-upon thing. But instead, gaining more money equals to you being more powerful than most. That's not how things should ever be. There should be a cap of how much money you should realistically earn up to. We've already seen the damage and continuing to see the damage afflicted, by incredibly rich people. They're too dangerous to be wielding that much.

by giving the workplaces back to the workers. tax the rich by eliminating their profit and redistributing the fruits of labor where it belongs.

the Argentinian example is extremely inspiring for workplace self-management:

if you prefer podcasts, here's an episode on Fabricas Ocupadas (occupied factories).

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarcho-argentina-one-year-on

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jose-antonio-gutierrez-d-workers-without-bosses#fn10

Tax unrealized capital gains on a generous progressive scale instead of maintaining a realized gains tax.

Firstly, I think your focus on housing is too narrow to solve wealth inequality.

Second, if landlords are handed a $100 monthly tax bill they tend to increase their tenants rent by $100 a month.

Third, you ignore the effects this will have on new home construction, which will be SEVERE.

Fourth, and this is a minor thing, I think when discussing housing policy we should always be trying to disincentivize suburban sprawl snd incentivize density. Having more people own single family homes is not necessarily a great thing, maybe better than having corporations rent them out but not as good as having more dense walkable transit filled urban cores. I'd even go so far as to say that while having people own condos is best, having people rent apartments is still better (on a large scale) than having people own single family houses.

See how they did it in the 1950s. There's your blueprint.

Read Thomas Piketty

nothing will work, The wealthy will just raise prices of their products and services to cover any expenses, tax and etc. it is the consumers that will pay indirectly.

Unless there is a cap on how much wealth, property, income or salary anyone can have. People will probably find loopholes.

I'd like to preface my comment by stating that I'm not American and have never lived in the US, so my knowledge of how stuff works (IDs and whatnot) is null.

That being said, surely there's records for these things. I really don't think that there needs to be a check for IDs at any point, on a personal level, because this information should be available either in the deed, and everyone's IDs are in the electronic systems at the state and federal level. So it's not that what you said about IDs is wrong, more so likely unnecessary, in a practical sense.

However, I do think there are a few problematic things here.

1. Your definition of "live in the state," which you didn't provide.

Say I work in NYC, NY State, but I'm originally from Vermont. I own a home in NYC and a home in Vermont. Where do I live? Mostly in NY, but I spend my summers in Vermont. What if my husband is from Maine, so I also own a home in Maine that we go to every couple of years to meet his family? What if my son lives in South Carolina, so I own a home there to go visit him? What if I own the home, never go there, but my son does live there?

These questions

and other questions in a similar vein that I couldn't even think of

need to have a clear answer, if you want this sort of legislation to be applicable.

2. Living in the state and owning several homes as an individual.

If I live and work in Vermont, but own a whole neighborhood, what then? I'm a citizen of the state, I live in the state, I do it as an individual and not through a company. I don't see anything in what you wrote that indicates this would be a problem, but I think it is a problem and should be encompassed by legislation of the sort you suggest.

These two points, I believe, highlight the fact that living in a state is a really bad indicator of whether home ownership is beneficial. I think the primary indicators should be legal status

company vs individual

and maybe something like the percentage of available homes. As in, a certain percentage of available homes is allowed to be owned by companies or individuals for non-living purposes. That could work as a sort of cap on how the market can be manipulated by speculative real-estate investment.

3. Not everyone's a buyer.

Not everyone wants or needs to buy a home. You want your children to be able to buy a home, great, but what if they simply don't want to? What if they want to rent? If they move to a different state but don't think of it as a long-term or life-long place for them, they might not want to buy. They need to be able to rent from somewhere, then. Of course, if more people can buy, more people will own, and more people will be open to renting it out. However, this is a difficult proposition, I'd imagine. Renting isn't a bad thing, it's about how controlled it is, how regulated it is, and who ultimately benefits from the system.

If you're gonna force large rental companies to sell their properties, you need to have a clear plan as to how the tenants can find other places to rent from. Again, there are a lot of people that rent not because they can't afford to buy, but because they find that to be the best option for their particular situation. I think some kind of state or local buyback program could be good, and would allow the state to offer low-cost housing for many people, effectively flipping the rampant market speculation into a social service. Another thing could be to cap rent, I believe rent-control is a measure that already exists in some places. For example, if companies don't want to pay the extra taxes, they would need to fulfill a certain quota of rent-controlled tenants. Something like that.

I'm just spitballing here, but I hope my input could be of some use to you!

By adjusting the social security threshold.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

Obviously limit inheritence and gifts to family. Nobody should be inheriting a billion dollars.

Income tax, capital gains tax, wealth tax, VAT on purchases over the median value increasing with price, property tax, inheritance tax, corporate taxes, etc

Tax the practices, not the existence.