Comment on just temporarily embarrassed billionaires, one good idea or lottery ticket from making it rich

• 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.

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  • 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:

    Image

    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.

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    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?

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    • Steve@communick.news ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

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      • gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        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.

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  • 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.

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    • gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      iirc china does have a wealth tax (and it is effective), just that it isn’t 100% thorough, so some people still become billionaires.

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• VOwOxel@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  US citizens pay US wealth tax… I don’t get what the difference might be.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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