Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy?
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 3 hours agoThat’s going to take a lot of math and market analysis to work out the specifics of. I’m just one rando on the internet. This was more of a high level framework to start from. With a team of wonks and a bit of time you could pin down precise numbers.
ChristerMLB@piefed.social 2 hours ago
ah, but I was just wondering what it means
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
So, most billionaires just sit on unrealized assets and take out loans against them that are untaxable. This way they avoid capital gains taxes from spending down their assets, as long as they never sell them, they never have to pay taxes and can sit on them until they die. Then it’s their kid’s problem. If you put a tax on those loans that exceeds capital gains tax, now they’re losing money by living off loans, and they’re actually better off selling some shares and stock options to pay for their Bugatti and super yacht.
The foreign investment profits tax means if they skip town and try collecting income from the companies they own from a beach in the Cayman islands, (or a brothel in Thailand) they are still paying tax on it before that money leaves the local market. That’s going to cool off the market for foreign investment but it’s also going to mean that even if they skip town, they can’t dodge the taxes on income from domestic businesses.