20% min tax on $100M assets

If it hasn’t already been mentioned, the taxation of unrealized gains would likely require the liquidation of “something” - the sudden sale of which by lots of people would drive the prices of those assets lower.

Jeff

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once implemented for the billionaire crowd, politicians‘ appetite for steadily lowering the threshold may grow.

And this is why I oppose taxing unrealized gains. They shouldn’t even be called “gains,” because they can evaporate at any time, exactly as they did on October 29, 1929, and many, many other times.

If they start taxing us on money that we haven’t earned yet, there will no end of it. And one party would rather tax poor people than rich people, so you know it would never stop with the multimillionaires.

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I’m not concerned - these applies to people with $100,000,000 minimum.
I mean who cares?

You should. We all know how bad politicians are at math. So they name this the “billionaire tax” but the start line is 1/10th that. And remember 10+ years ago about raising taxes on millionaires but when the details were released a married police officer and school teacher would have increased taxes.

Definite an "F"s for truth in advertising.

So how low does the threshold have to go before you care? Because that is where politicians will take it.

JLC

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“And get rid of the “step up” basis on inheritance. At SOME point, taxes should be paid on great wealth, just like the rest of us. I see no reason for the Walton daughters to have multiple billions sitting around while the workers who built the company are on food stamps.”

Walmart is paying $15/hr to start here. And health care benefits.

Of course, you’d allow ‘inflation’ to be counted, right? Buy 100 shares of XYZ in 1960, and by 2020, probably half the ‘gain’ is just for inflation. Your $30,000 house in 1960…now worth $500,000…but half the gain is just inflation. Not ‘wealth’.


“And get rid of the “step up” basis on inheritance. At SOME point, taxes should be paid on great wealth, just like the rest of us. I see no reason for the Walton daughters to have multiple billions sitting around while the workers who built the company are on food stamps.”

Your property tax (and any personal property tax in some state on cars, planes, boats) is a STATE TAX, which states can do. Or municipal tax or county tax. Big difference.


The billionaire tax law will fail for several constitutional problems. First, the constitution says the feds can only have ‘direct taxes’ proportional to state population. There is no ‘wealth’ ‘direct tax’ …


One obvious way around this would be to have ‘billionaires’ contribute large sums to their ‘family foundations’ and 'charitable foundations. Like the Clintons, where Clinton kids get nice $500,000 ‘director jobs’ for life. Those foundations would be tax exempt.

If fact, they are already doing it with Buffet promising to give ALL his wealth to the Gates Foundation. Billions and billions and billions, along with of course, Bill Gates. That might just speed up the transition or cause more ‘foundations’ to be created.

Let’s see…the Elon Musk Space Foundation - which funds research and development into space travel.

The Elon Musk advanced car foundation - which funds research into EVs and autonomous driving cars…

All donations would be, of course, written of as charitable donations likely reducing their income taxes on ‘unrealized gains’ by 90%…

Of course, that 100 million limit…with 8% inflation for 10 years, would move the curve down to just ‘50 billion’ equivalent… if not inflation indexed…and before you know it in another 10 years of high inflation, down to 25 million equivalent…

There’s a reason the Kennedy clan keeps most of it’s real estate in off shore 'Family" trusts. They ‘rent’ their homes. The offshore trust likely pays next to zero income taxes as it’s set up ‘not to make money’.

t.

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“So how low does the threshold have to go before you care? Because that is where politicians will take it.”

I’m not worried. There’ll be regime change before it gets down to ordinary people’s level, even ordinary rich people.

$100,000,000 - seriously?

F*** them…

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I’m not worried. There’ll be regime change before it gets down to ordinary people’s level, even ordinary rich people.

$100,000,000 - seriously?

F*** them…

Exactly. What seems to be lost on these big economic “thinkers” is that if “100 millionaires” and inherited wealth continues to escape taxation, lower income millionaires will have to pay even more.

Remember, the dumbest thing you can do in America, tax-wise, is to work for wage & salary income.

intercst

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<>

It’s not without precendent however. My property taxes on my house (Texas) is exactly that.

Absurd! Your property taxes in Texas HAVE NO RELATION WHATSOEVER to unrealized capital gains on that house.

There are 5 identical houses on your block, they are each worth $1M, and the assessed value is $1M, and the tax rate is 1.8%, so each house has $18,000/yr in property taxes. You bought your house 17 years ago for $200k and are sitting on an $800k unrealized capital gain. The neighbor to your right bought it 3 months ago for $1.05M, and is sitting on a $50k unrealized capital loss. The neighbor to your left bought 2 years ago at $750k, and is sitting on a $250k unrealized capital gain. Yet, all 3 of you pay the same amount of property taxes - $18k/yr.

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Absurd! Your property taxes in Texas HAVE NO RELATION WHATSOEVER to unrealized capital gains on that house.

There are 5 identical houses on your block, they are each worth $1M, and the assessed value is $1M, and the tax rate is 1.8%,

Mark,

The burden of property taxes which are different than assets, but at the same wedding going down the aisle, is the $100 million minimum to face this tax. There is no burden for the multimillionaire paying this. There is a very large burden on small property owners.

The reasons people have $100 million and up involve gaming the system. The system needs to call in a few chips. We need economic growth. This thread should be including that as the motive.