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?
Comment on just temporarily embarrassed billionaires, one good idea or lottery ticket from making it rich
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 15 hours ago
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
tburkhol@slrpnk.net 14 hours ago
Steve@communick.news 15 hours ago
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.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 14 hours ago
yeah this is income tax. what about wealth tax?
Steve@communick.news 14 hours ago
The US doesn’t have a wealth tax… Yet
The point is, not taxing leaving 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.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 6 hours ago
But property tax is a thing. And property tax is a wealth tax on a specific form of wealth.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta…
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.
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?
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 11 hours ago
China is 2nd place for number of billionaires so if they do it isn’t universal or just doesn’t work.
VOwOxel@discuss.tchncs.de 14 hours ago
US citizens pay US wealth tax… I don’t get what the difference might be.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 5 hours ago
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.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 11 hours ago
They pay property taxes, but Bezos’ wealth is in stock and bonds so no he doesn’t currently pay taxes on those.
Eq0@literature.cafe 14 hours ago
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.
Steve@communick.news 13 hours ago
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.FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 11 hours ago
Is this a bot? It responded to itself.
luokaton@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
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: youtu.be/f-oDDojrTcg?
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 15 hours ago
but the assets they actually make money on are not easy (often impossible) to move.
companies have been moved to china en masse since 1970 though
luokaton@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
socialist china sounds like a perfect place to move your assets to! they would never tax it 😉
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 10 hours ago
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?
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 be rid of them so society would start to balance out again…
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 11 hours ago
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.
nialv7@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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.