this is just an uninformed take. the reason why “taxing billionaires doesn’t work” is said by some people, is because there’s free trade and billionaires could just move their stuff abroad where it isn’t taxed. we need an end to free trade first before taxing wealth becomes feasible.
it has nothing to do with “taxing my feelings of becoming a billionaire” or such
then let them leave and let them take their money with them. they don’t contribute to the society anyway.
you are mistaking money for real resources. houses are built with cement, bricks, gravel, plaster, and labour. you cannot build a house with money. billionaire cannot take real resources with them. in fact if they leave they will stop hoarding resources and that will make our lives better, not worse.
If billionaires will relocate to reduce their taxes, why are all the tech CEOs still US citizens and not, say, Bermuda, with 0% income tax & 0% corporate tax?
The US doesn’t have a wealth tax… Yet
I don’t know if China does. But property tax is a thing. And property tax is a wealth tax on a specific form of wealth.
The point is, not taxing people who live outside the country, or aren’t even citizens, isn’t a fixed law of the universe like the speed of light. It’s a policy choice. Different choices can be made. There’s no reason tax law can’t be written to account for it.
This tax may be imposed on real estate or personal property. The tax is nearly always computed as the fair market value of the property, multiplied by an assessment ratio, multiplied by a tax rate.
ok i’m currently reading up on property tax in the US. it’s actually much more interesting topic than i thought. here’s an interesting infographic:
i’m still interpreting what this means. so the US does have a wealth tax but it mostly affects non-movable property (as i said in my original comment) and that is why billionaires don’t actually pay x% of their total wealth under it.
to explain the colors in the diagram: yellow + orange + light blue are the taxes that are paid on the state level, i assume? meanwhile dark blue + pink + dark red are the taxes paid on the federal level. green is the stuff you keep.
most of these taxes seem to be income-based (payroll taxes means wage-based taxes i assume, then state income tax, then payroll taxes again, then federal income taxes). income-based taxes seem to make about 2/3 of the total taxes. meanwhile property taxes (wealth taxes) make 1/4 and sales taxes makes the small remainder. (rough estimate from looking at the diagram).
so to introduce a “wealth tax” would mean to create a new category (“Federal Wealth Tax”) that taxes all net wealth except real estate (which is already taxed on the state level), am i seeing this correctly?
also:
Local officials determine values [of houses] and may be disputed by property owners.
The question is, how do you assess the total wealth of a person, once they have moved their stuff abroad? How do you even begin to measure it? If there’s no local cooperation from the local government to actually check and estimate the total wealth, is there any way to even find out about it?
so to introduce a “wealth tax” would mean to create a new category (“Federal Wealth Tax”) that taxes all net wealth except real estate (which is already taxed on the state level), am i seeing this correctly?
The details haven’t been worked out. It may or not include locally taxed properties. California’s one time billionaire tax I don’t think cares if it’s been taxed or not already.
how do you assess the total wealth of a person, once they have moved their stuff abroad?
They can’t move a lot of it. It’s mostly shares in companies, bonds, commodities, all traded on public markets. Some is in private markets. But that’s still all managed by banks. Banks all around the world started sharing data in 2016. So governments now have access to people’s international holdings.
Things like cars, boats, paintings, various high value sundries, they have insurance values that could be used.
In short, very carefully. Some things may be missed, but the vast majority of their wealth can be found and calculated.
They can’t move a lot of it. It’s mostly shares in companies, bonds, commodities, all traded on public markets. Some is in private markets. But that’s still all managed by banks. Banks all around the world started sharing data in 2016. So governments now have access to people’s international holdings.
oh that’s interesting. i would like to know whether somebody has actually written a detailed step-by-step guide to assess people’s net worth, because i haven’t seen any so far. so i’m interested in seeing it practically done.
Correct, which is why we need a reformation of the wealth tax. Billionaires have gotten away with not being taxed according to their actual wealth for far too long.
Honestly, to me this is a bad take because only a handful of nations in the world consider to tax their nationals when living outside of their borders.
I think taxes should be meant as a contribution to the services to are getting (pension, roads, schools). If you are not living in a country, you shouldn’t pay taxes there. In the other hand, a company that ID physically on US soil should pay taxes there
If you make a fortune from your connections to an economy, people, and society; wherever you may live personally, it makes sense for you to contribute back to that society. You may not directly benefit from its roads, but you make money from the people who do. Money you wouldn’t be able to have without those roads.
That becomes very faint as a connection. If you live abroad and have no economic connection to my country of origin. Why should you pay? And how can you legally determine or versus the other?
If I were born and raised abroad, held no assets in your country, was never paid by anyone in your country, I wouldn’t have anything for them to tax. I’d just be some random foreigner. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
You can still have US nationality while living abroad (maybe being born on US soil or maybe not). Why should you then still pay taxes in US? You are not using “US services”
In an ideal scenario, other countries would see our prosperous age after taxing our billionaires, and they’d want some of that sweet stuff so they’d do the same.
All the billionaires would have to fairly pay back for the value people provided to make them so rich, or retreat to some uninhabited island somewhere.
Either way we’d totally win lol.
Then again, as an aside, did you know if you’re a U.S citizen and leave the U.S you’re still subject to income tax abroad? Isn’t that interesting? (Edit: other people mentioned this a lot haha)
I seriously wonder if all these asshats would actually revoke their citizenship en masse to avoid taxes.
…and then even if they did, we’d still be rid of them so society would start to balance out again…
I think the one example of this actually happening was in London, and the billionaires who did leave did not actually contribute anything to the local economy: as many of the workers they employed as possible were migrants brought in or outsourced and they kept skimming profits off the top to hoard. The businesses they ran continued operating as normal even if some got sold off.
EDIT: and they’ve been movng back because the place they fled to was Dubai lmfao
this is just an uninformed take. the reason why “taxing billionaires doesn’t work” is said by some people, is because there’s free trade and billionaires could just move their stuff abroad where it isn’t taxed. we need an end to free trade first before taxing wealth becomes feasible.
it has nothing to do with “taxing my feelings of becoming a billionaire” or such
then let them leave and let them take their money with them. they don’t contribute to the society anyway.
you are mistaking money for real resources. houses are built with cement, bricks, gravel, plaster, and labour. you cannot build a house with money. billionaire cannot take real resources with them. in fact if they leave they will stop hoarding resources and that will make our lives better, not worse.
If billionaires will relocate to reduce their taxes, why are all the tech CEOs still US citizens and not, say, Bermuda, with 0% income tax & 0% corporate tax?
US citizens pay US income tax, no matter where in the world they live.
China makes foreign nationals pay taxes on any revenue that comes from China.
You don’t need to end free trade.
yeah this is income tax. what about wealth tax?
The US doesn’t have a wealth tax… Yet
I don’t know if China does. But property tax is a thing. And property tax is a wealth tax on a specific form of wealth.
The point is, not taxing people who live outside the country, or aren’t even citizens, isn’t a fixed law of the universe like the speed of light. It’s a policy choice. Different choices can be made. There’s no reason tax law can’t be written to account for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_States
ok i’m currently reading up on property tax in the US. it’s actually much more interesting topic than i thought. here’s an interesting infographic:
i’m still interpreting what this means. so the US does have a wealth tax but it mostly affects non-movable property (as i said in my original comment) and that is why billionaires don’t actually pay x% of their total wealth under it.
to explain the colors in the diagram: yellow + orange + light blue are the taxes that are paid on the state level, i assume? meanwhile dark blue + pink + dark red are the taxes paid on the federal level. green is the stuff you keep.
most of these taxes seem to be income-based (payroll taxes means wage-based taxes i assume, then state income tax, then payroll taxes again, then federal income taxes). income-based taxes seem to make about 2/3 of the total taxes. meanwhile property taxes (wealth taxes) make 1/4 and sales taxes makes the small remainder. (rough estimate from looking at the diagram).
so to introduce a “wealth tax” would mean to create a new category (“Federal Wealth Tax”) that taxes all net wealth except real estate (which is already taxed on the state level), am i seeing this correctly?
also:
The question is, how do you assess the total wealth of a person, once they have moved their stuff abroad? How do you even begin to measure it? If there’s no local cooperation from the local government to actually check and estimate the total wealth, is there any way to even find out about it?
The details haven’t been worked out. It may or not include locally taxed properties. California’s one time billionaire tax I don’t think cares if it’s been taxed or not already.
They can’t move a lot of it. It’s mostly shares in companies, bonds, commodities, all traded on public markets. Some is in private markets. But that’s still all managed by banks. Banks all around the world started sharing data in 2016. So governments now have access to people’s international holdings.
Things like cars, boats, paintings, various high value sundries, they have insurance values that could be used.
In short, very carefully. Some things may be missed, but the vast majority of their wealth can be found and calculated.
oh that’s interesting. i would like to know whether somebody has actually written a detailed step-by-step guide to assess people’s net worth, because i haven’t seen any so far. so i’m interested in seeing it practically done.
You could ask Bezos’ ex-wife. It’s common in divorces.
oh yeah that’s an interesting thought! i hadn’t considered that before.
China is 2nd place for number of billionaires so if they do it isn’t universal or just doesn’t work.
iirc china does have a wealth tax (and it is effective), just that it isn’t 100% thorough, so some people still become billionaires.
US citizens pay US wealth tax… I don’t get what the difference might be.
They pay property taxes, but Bezos’ wealth is in stock and bonds so no he doesn’t currently pay taxes on those.
Correct, which is why we need a reformation of the wealth tax. Billionaires have gotten away with not being taxed according to their actual wealth for far too long.
the question is, how do you assess net wealth? is there any kind of way of knowing how much net wealth a person has?
there might be, i’d just like to see it.
Honestly, to me this is a bad take because only a handful of nations in the world consider to tax their nationals when living outside of their borders.
What does that matter?
The point is that it’s absolutely possible. There is no technical reason it can’t be done, it just isn’t often.
I think taxes should be meant as a contribution to the services to are getting (pension, roads, schools). If you are not living in a country, you shouldn’t pay taxes there. In the other hand, a company that ID physically on US soil should pay taxes there
If you make a fortune from your connections to an economy, people, and society; wherever you may live personally, it makes sense for you to contribute back to that society. You may not directly benefit from its roads, but you make money from the people who do. Money you wouldn’t be able to have without those roads.
That becomes very faint as a connection. If you live abroad and have no economic connection to my country of origin. Why should you pay? And how can you legally determine or versus the other?
If I were born and raised abroad, held no assets in your country, was never paid by anyone in your country, I wouldn’t have anything for them to tax. I’d just be some random foreigner. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
You can still have US nationality while living abroad (maybe being born on US soil or maybe not). Why should you then still pay taxes in US? You are not using “US services”
Is this a bot? It responded to itself. EDIT: Nope was just visually bugged
I responded to eq0.
Don’t know what you’re seeing
Ah you’re right must have been a graphical error
no they won’t. they can relocate their asses, i guess, but the assets they actually make money on are not easy (often impossible) to move.
tax the corporations.
here’s how: https://youtu.be/f-oDDojrTcg?
companies have been moved to china en masse since 1970 though
edit: but i agree with you about houses that are rented out
socialist china sounds like a perfect place to move your assets to! they would never tax it 😉
In an ideal scenario, other countries would see our prosperous age after taxing our billionaires, and they’d want some of that sweet stuff so they’d do the same.
All the billionaires would have to fairly pay back for the value people provided to make them so rich, or retreat to some uninhabited island somewhere.
Either way we’d totally win lol.
Then again, as an aside, did you know if you’re a U.S citizen and leave the U.S you’re still subject to income tax abroad? Isn’t that interesting? (Edit: other people mentioned this a lot haha)
I seriously wonder if all these asshats would actually revoke their citizenship en masse to avoid taxes.
…and then even if they did, we’d still be rid of them so society would start to balance out again…
I think the one example of this actually happening was in London, and the billionaires who did leave did not actually contribute anything to the local economy: as many of the workers they employed as possible were migrants brought in or outsourced and they kept skimming profits off the top to hoard. The businesses they ran continued operating as normal even if some got sold off.
EDIT: and they’ve been movng back because the place they fled to was Dubai lmfao