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I think any serious move by the US to tax wealth (as most Americans view it) would cause nearly immediate and substantial movement of wealth to locations where it is taxed less or moved from one type of wealth to another that is not taxed, taxed less, or can be hidden more easily. Larry Ellison owns somewhere in the range of $30B worth of Oracle stock. Do you think he would leave his assets in Oracle stock if suddenly it were vulnerable to a 10% tax?
This... As with income tax, a wealth tax would hit the upper middle classes (with fewer tax sheltering opportunities) the hardest. The truly wealthy (e.g. the company owners) have plenty available means to hide/recategorize their wealth, incomes, assets, inc... Many people don't seem to get this. When you have an army of tax accountants, a global business presence, and a bevy of govt. loopholes, a wealth tax isn't really too traumatic.
If you are Joe Schmo professional with 6 figures in stock value, well then a wealth tax may hurt a bit.
A wealth tax such as a 'millionaire's tax' or other lefty nonsense has always resulted in a plunge in the percentage of tax returns filed by such folks who chose to leave the state instead; ask the liberals who've destroyed too many major cities to list starting with Baltimore.
They tried it a year or to ago, and the percentage of tax returns filed by such folks plunged by over 35% from the previous year.
Leona Helmsley was right; Only the little people pay taxes'.
If you are a US ciitizen, you and yours are taxed by the US no matter where in the world you and they are.
A graduated 2% wealth tax would allow us to abolish all payroll taxes while still meeting all Social Security and Medicare obligations going forward.
If Leona Helmsley had been right, the wealthy would not pay any taxes. Instead, they pay huge amounts of taxes. It's just that they have so much wealth that it doesn't really matter all that much. With literally billions in assets, Ms. Helmsley nevertheless got to spend 18 months of her life in prison for federal tax evasion and related crimes. What a dummy.
The nonsense stories in the disinformation media about millionaires leaving those states that had enacted tax increases on millionaires were all complete bunk. Rich people do not pull up stakes and move to East Oshkosh because of a few extra dollars in taxes. What drove the data for those idiotic claims was the numbers of people whose incomes were modestly above the million-dollar threshhold before the Great Recession that no longer were after it had hit. Nobody moved anywhere. People who had an income of $1.1 million one year sank to $950K the next. But liars will try to trick the gullible with stuff like that, and they appear to have gotten away with it as far as some are concerned.
Last edited by fairlaker; 11-25-2013 at 07:07 PM..
A "wealth tax" is a tax on assets, regardless of whether those assets produce income or capital gains. Suppose that this tax is 1% annually. If I invest $1M in the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund, my wealth-tax will be $10,000. If I keep that money in the bank, earning zero interest, again my wealth tax is $10,000. Unless that $1M disappears by year's end, regardless of how it is stored, I'm going to pay $10,000 tax on it.
A wealth tax taxes what a person possesses, instead of what a person consumes (sales tax) or earns (income tax, capital gains tax). It is very much like a real-estate property-tax, except that real estate is a physical asset with an assessed value, whereas "wealth" could be a paper asset with only a reported value.
This all sounds very scary, since the hardest-hit would be comparatively affluent people who aren't great at investing (otherwise they would be more worried about capital gains taxes). But I would not worry; the odds of such a tax being enacted are very, very low.
...households from the United States to Europe and Japan may soon face fiscal shocks worse than any market crash. The White House and New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio aren't the only ones calling for higher taxes (especially on the wealthy)...
Carl Castrogiovanni Wrote:
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Only a fool thinks such a confiscation would be "one-time-only". Only a fool doesn't get that inequality is the natural way of things - all things.
If you could round up all the wealth in the world, and then divide it up equally among every person, it would take no time at all for some to get relatively rich (not by theft, but by being smart and taking risks) and others to get relatively poor. That's the way it is and is why inequality happens because we humans are NOT equal. Equal outcomes will never be sustainable...
Aka, random silliness. No one advocates equal outcomes. Every sensible person however realizes that that are degrees of inequality that are unacceptable, and that we are very likely at one of those right now.
Aka, random silliness. No one advocates equal outcomes. Every sensible person however realizes that that are degrees of inequality that are unacceptable, and that we are very likely at one of those right now.
sure but people always want the people who make more than them to be the one to pay for it and in actuality most of them coudn't give a crap about anyone other than themselves.most people who think the rich should pay more want more **** for themselves and couldnt give have a crap about what would be best for the world.
the vast majority of people in this country who are poor and struggling are still way better off than most of the rest of the world.if they actually wanted an acceptable degree of inequality they would be asking for things like food and water for people in the world for those who are actually starving and have no access to healthy drinking water, medical treatment for easily curable but deadly diseases for those in 3rd world countries who die from them etc.instead they want their cable iphones cars etc while they live indoors with plumbing electricity foot and drinkable water.it's a crock of ****.
if tomorrow the govt said they're gonna take every dollar anyone makes over a million dollars a year and use it to make sure everyone in the world has food, drinkable water, isn't dying from **** nobody in this country dies from any more, brings infant mortality rates in third world countries down to what they are in this country (mind you the poor people here would still be living way better than the poor people in these other countries) the people here who want more from the rich now wouldn't be remotely happy with that. they would still want more for themselves and wouldnt care that things were now a lot more equal.
Why would we want to discourage building wealth when government is so dependent more and more on fewer and fewer provide their revenues. More wealth then great revenues. democrat ats know this as they always look to wealthy to [provide for anyhting they want.
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