We need to return to a wealth-oriented tax. Neither income tax nor VAT are taxes on wealth.
But even as someone without a lot to worry about, I can't think of a fair way to tax wealth outside of land taxes, which would greatly disrupt the economy.
I think a wealth tax sounds good, but the implementation scares me.
What I worry about most with a wealth tax is calculating your wealth. Income tax is already hard enough. Now start adding up the value of your stock, your real estate, your personal property, etc.
And are you committing tax fraud because you have a million dollar painting that was hanging on your parents wall for decades that you inherited and never realized was valuable? Are you committing tax fraud if you have some crypto currency that you forgot about that has skyrocketed in value? If not, then these things can be used as tax dodges by the wealthy. If so, then it just makes everybody a potential criminal.
There are wealth taxes. (property tax is one of them, estate tax is another -- phased out by this bill) In my opinion, we could do with a lot more wealth taxes.
Wealth (standing still, unused) doesn't have an impact on anyone. The money doesn't go anywhere, influence anything. It's when money moves that affects people.
So why should people worry about taking wealth? Why not simply continue taxing the movement of money? When money is generated or transferred -- isn't that enough scope to achieve the desired outcomes of a wealth tax (which would otherwise be very difficult to implement)?
I don't need a wealth tax. I don't need the government to create and exact one. So, no, "We" don't need a wealth tax. It doesn't seem like an elegant solution. I do think the ultra-rich can pay slightly more taxes but IMO this is not the way to go about it; instead, close loopholes etc.
The real problem with wealth taxes is that they really can't raise very much revenue. In the US, even an extremely aggressive wealth tax, like, say, Elizabeth Warren's proposal of 2% over $50M and 3% over $1B, would only increase federal revenue by around $250B/year, or around 6%. It wouldn't even come to covering the federal deficit, let alone big social programs like free healthcare or college. And this is assuming zero capital flight and new tax avoidance, which is impossible.
We already have estate and property taxation, though. It's not like wealth taxes don't exist, they're just levied at specific times or on specific kinds of assets.
These comments and the article show a remarkable misunderstanding of a wealth tax.
I'll focus on just the article. If, as wealthy person, you can't make about 5% each year to cover that top tier of tax, I think it's totally fair to tax that wealth. That money is sitting in an account doing nothing and that person's additional contributions to society are near zero. Having that money invested in an index fund basically covers that 5% in the long run.
It's unbelievable how selfish you would need to be to be upset about paying a wealth tax. If you had hundreds of millions of dollars... What exactly is left that you can't afford to buy? As the article implies, all the wealth comes at once up front - so you deserve to keep all that wealth for some best case one time remarkable burst of effort and genius or worst case accidental lucky windfall while the rest of your peers and community work tirelessly to earn a living wage?
Nobody is saying they shouldn't pay taxes. People are saying they shouldn't be taxed on their wealth partially because anybody with an inkling of historic knowledge knows that a wealth tax will be coming to the masses shortly thereafter. Taxes are already far too complicated.
Whatever you have you have already paid taxes on - why does the government need to take more?
reply