Comment by lowbloodsugar
5 hours ago
Imagine, poor person, if you had to pay an additional 20% in income tax! That would not be fair!
Fuck off paul. Billionaires aren’t paying anything in income tax when they should be paying 60 or even 90.
So, yes, let’s hit them with a 5% wealth tax.
I recently read 'the second estate' and reading about the number of loopholes the ultra wealthy exploit to pay almost no taxes and establish dynastic wealth does boil the blood.
Off the top of my head:
* 'Income' generated from loans using shares pledged as collateral should be treated the same as if you sold those shares.
* Someone receiving an inheritance over x million dollars (carve out 95% of family farms and small businesses if you want), should pay taxes on it as if it were any other windfall
* Donor advised funds should have a 5% distribution / yr requirement, same as private foundations
* capital gains should probably be treated as regular income. I have no idea why 50k in gains on INTC is somehow privileged over the salary paid to a roofer working in the hot sun.
This just isn't true, unless you're the president.
Who is the single largest taxpayer in US history? I'll wait while you google it.
According to Google, this claim is sourced to a person rather famous for baseless claims, from the founding of companies he owns, to the capabilities of his products, to cash prizes for registering to vote, to when he will send humans to mars.
Continuing to accept this person as a credible source of information isnt a reasonable thing to do.
Prof G Markets podcast just had an episode on this with Ray Madoff. They talk about the claim that "the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of the income tax". But Ray points out that is misleading because the 1% is basically lawyers, physicians, accountants etc that make like $500,000/yr. These people still pay income tax and that's the group paying 40% of income tax. What that claim misses is the 0.1% that pay 0 income tax because they have no income. The claim makes people believe that the billionaires are the ones paying that huge sum but we fail to realize that the 1% is our neighbours, not just the billionaires flying private jets across the world.
$0 just feels like a concept -- I can imagine a really high quality structuring exercise that gets tax low by making sure leverage on capital is what's used for spending, but I'd be really surprised to see a 0.1%-er (or 0.001%-er) post $0 income tax. For one, it's disadvantageous for certain kinds of bank interactions. But also, capital calls come in, investments that are made often require a step-up in basis, leverage is taken out on assets that require a margin call or a sale, there are alternative tax regimes, the corporations that are owned by these parties have their own tax burdens..
To say the wealthy can afford to radically optimize taxes and that our system taxes capital much more lightly than labor seems accurate to me, but I just haven't seen offers for "pay zero tax for all your life" from high grade professionals.
If US citizens want that, they generally give up their citizenship, pay their exit tax, and live in a low tax jurisdiction. I do know people like this, and they are very unlike the 0.1% types you're referring to here, and they've given up the benefits of being a US citizen in exchange for their preferred lifestyle. (And paid a mark to market exit tax on all assets on their way out of the country)
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There's not an easy source for that information, especially not inflation adjusted. Who do you think the answer is?
Musk paid $11B in a year his wealth went up $86B on his way to likely being the first trillionaire. Are we supposed to cry about it?
The median net worth in the US is ~$200k. A lot of middle-class folks have likely paid more taxes in their lifetime than their entire net worth.
Nope. Just not post things like "billionaires pay no taxes."
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As a percentage of their income? Because that's the only number I care about. You don't get to hoard wealth off the backs of tens of thousands of workers and then act like paying a smaller percentage is some good deed being done. The more one benefits from society (and billionaires depend most on the financial security and infrastructure setup by society), the more one needs to pay back into the system they gained their wealth from.
This seems like such a poor understanding of reality. If you want to rank order people who contribute net taxes, you would put billionaires at the top, as they not only pay taxes themselves, but their businesses pay taxes, and their employees pay taxes, and their customers potentially pay taxes (VAT) as well.
The bottom of the list would be anyone who works for the state, as they are a massive net tax negative, followed by benefits recipients and pensioners, followed by low income workers, followed finally by the middle classes.
Are you sure you want that to be your guiding principle?
In what reality does a business owner get to claim their customers’ taxes as their own contribution?
Do you think employees and "customers" of the government don't pay tax?
Get rid of the employees and the taxes no longer get paid.
Get rid of the billionaire and the taxes still get paid.
Why do we credit those taxes to the billionaire rather than the employees?