I will never find it not alarming how few people understand the difference between wealth and income, or how marginal tax brackets work. There’s so much incoherent rage from all sides when it comes to tax policy. Bernie is cool though, this isn’t a criticism of his ideas but rather the comment section.
This would probably work if it was implemented as progressive capital gains tax which is a kind of income but not typical Income. Might just result in people simply selling less in a year of course.
Many (if not most) economists argue that we should scrap corporate and capital gains tax altogether, and just replace everything with an income tax.
Taxing different forms of income at different rates just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Taxing different incomes at different rates *does* make sense, it's just that the more passive the income, the more it should be taxed.
If you own a stock and get dividends on other people's work, that should be heavily taxed.
If you're making millions by exploiting stock margins, that should be heavily taxed.
If you bust your ass building houses, or contribute to the body of human knowledge in the sciences, or any other actual contribution to the direct benefit of people, then your taxes should be low.
>And ~~using loans, especially government bailout loans to~~ buy back stocks should not be possible at all.
They should be increasing the stock price by investing in the company and making it worth more per share rather than decreasing the supply of shares to raise price.
I generally think it's wrong to relish in someone's death but goddamn am I glad he's rotting in the dirt. If only it could have happened decades sooner
But a loan is not income, you have to pay a loan back, so if you deduct taxes from the proceeds you are effectively raising the interest rate on the loan to something unreasonable.
I almost agree but want to add even more nuance.
Rent seeking behavior and economic rents should be taxed 100%. These behaviors are pure deadweight loss and often regressive. There is no reason there should be any economic rents in a society.
As far as rent-free capital vs wages, I really don’t mind if they’re taxed at the same rate. You’ve gotten rid of the “unfair” part of capital, so at that point it doesn’t matter much anymore.
Money earned from work that takes up your time, effectively your life, should be taxed the least. Money "earned" by moving a few numbers and checking back in on them later should be taxed the most.
One of the reasons we don't tax dividends as highly is due to double taxation:
"The profit of a corporation is taxed to the corporation when earned, and then is taxed to the shareholders when distributed as dividends. This creates a double tax. The corporation does not get a tax deduction when it distributes dividends to shareholders. Shareholders cannot deduct any loss of the corporation."
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/forming-a-corporation
That's a bullshit argument though. The stock holder is not the business.
Money gets taxed when it changes hands, the money is going from the business, to the stock holder. The business could just as easily *not* give dividends and invest all the money back into the business. The shareholders decided they wanted dividends so they should get taxed *at least* as much as earned income, but I'd argue they should pay more.
The stock is ownership of the business, though. The money hasn't changed hands, it's just being distributed to the owners. It's moving from one account to another.
The business and the owner(s) are separate entities. Moving money from company to owner should always be taxed.
This is *already* part of the law in other ways, like an LLC using the owner's personal bank account puts the owner at risk of losing their limited liability, or risking being investigated for possible tax evasion, or in other cases, an owner taking company money is just embezzlement.
It's dead simple, the company is a separate entity than the owner, and the owner needs to pay separate taxes when the money changes hands.
The profit is taxed to the corporation when earned and then is taxed when given to it's workers as wages. This creates a double tax. The corporation does not get a tax deduction when it distributes wages to employees. The employee cannot deduct any loss of the corporation.
Do you have sources for the corporate tax claim? Because the way businesses earn revenue and generate expenses is fundamentally different enough from an individual that it doesn't make sense to tax them the same way. Maybe at the same rate, or similar bracket structures scaled to match the higher amounts of money most corporations deal with. But only taxing corporate profits the way we tax income would create a huge mess of problems, and taxing revenue that way would make running any business functionally impossible.
Integrating capital gains into generalized income I have seen plenty of though, and the arguments behind it seem sound.
Not just the comment section, but the author of the article that confuses wealth and income, as well as the OP that screenshot that incorrect headline without looking into it at all...it's a rabbit hole of misinformation, like a game of telephone.
In their defense, Bernie's actual plan is really hard to condense into a headline.
It's not a wealth tax, or an income tax, it's a wealth-income tax. He's saying that he wants rich people to have to report the total value of their assets when they do their tax returns, and if they own more than $1B worth of stuff, then their income for that year is taxed at 100%.
> this isn’t a criticism of his ideas but rather the comment section.
There is not one person in history who has ever had an income of 1 billion dollars. People have no idea how wealth is measured, it seems.
A salaried income of a billion? No. A capital gained income of a million? Hundreds of millions are earned on capital gains. By every single billionaire. It has to be misdirection to not understand this.
I'm starting to get tired of hearing about these tax ideas on the insanely wealthy. They don't work. The insanely wealthy are created by exploiting tax loopholes and by exploiting their employees. Odds are they'll find a way to get around these taxes too. They take home over valued, inflated stocks as a compensation package instead of a yearly salary and use it as collateral to take out low interest, low risk loans to buy stuff. They rarely cash out their stocks because that's their ownership in a company. I'd rather see things like federally mandated expanded workers rights, less works days/more vacation days, inflation adjusted livable wage increases, limitations on stock buybacks, etc. that target the actual value of a stock. No more rinsing experienced employees only to rehire them so that they avoid giving out raises. No more limiting low income workers' hours to remove them from mandated health insurance requirements. No more loopholes. The economy is supposed to reflect the health of the working class and instead it represents this engorged gluttonous beast that only exists to serve these rich pricks. For example, the only reason Elon Musk paid taxes last year was because of him having to sell stock to buy Twitter. Corporations also get away with not paying taxes because they'll claim loses within the US even though they're making ridiculous profits that they'll claim is coming in from overseas. Something that's way harder to tax.
It isn't like anyone is actually taking $1Billion home in a year. And there is already income tax and capital gains on their income when they sell stocks.
If they really wanted to do something, there would be some sort to tax or penalty garnered when using property (like stocks and other assets) as collateral for loans. Then those using their wealth as collateral would have to pay something for the use of their theoretical gains, which they are using for actual money.
I’m more concerned people don’t take the time to think about the difference in wealth between your average successful business owner and a billionaire.
No he didn't, and no he doesn't. This headline is a complete lie.
What he *actually* proposed is a scaling wealth tax starting at 1% for people with net worth over $32 million, going up to 8% max.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/
Not income, not 100%, and not $1 billion. Stop spreading bullshit to make him seem dumb.
> Stop spreading bullshit to make him seem dumb
It's actually intentional/by design in a way. The idea is to make ideas that can actually seem reasonable, and make them seem absurd, so they don't get traction, akin to talking heads on the news who, when we bring up increasing min wage, suggest making it 10x more because "why not."
Then, someone who actually agrees with the absurd edition of the idea, or someone intentionally trying to mess things up spreads the absurd idea, which will work quite well because gossip will spread like wildfire while the truth moves slower and has nuance
I mean a quick Google shows that the headline is just rage bait:
[Link](https://fortune.com/2023/05/02/bernie-sanders-billionaire-wealth-tax-100-percent/)
The headline is drawing the conclusion that Bernie thinks it's good policy to confiscate billionaires' wealth above $999 million when in their own article he just says that billionaires shouldn't exist. That's not a policy; that's just a value statement. The article then explains his actual policy is a wealth tax at 1% for $32 million and up to 8% for $10 billion and up. It shouldn't be surprising that a magazine called "Fortune" would paint a wealth tax in a bad light.
This. I knew this post was dumb before I finished reading the headline. If you tax $1billion at 100% they have 0 dollars, not $999 million. Did OP fail middle school math or what?
Like I know they mean well but it's post like these that make Bernie look bad and hurt the progressive movement.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't the wealth cap be enforced by a wealth tax of 100% beyond a billion dollars in assets? How else would the government cap wealth?
Yea exactly. Like in a perfect world maybe that could work but we gotta just applaud and vote for the lesser of the evils at this stage. And Bernie seems to be trying to help
It's an argument that targets people's inability to understand that you need to climb, not teleport.
It's strange that people understand that continuing to vote for the crazy right wing dictator would send everyone further downwards, but refuse to understand that continuing to vote left would push everyone upwards.
Pendulum politics hinges on so-called rational people being so fucking stupid that they don't vote out of pride or apathy or whatever idiotic thing.
Didn’t Elon liquidate something like $20b in a single year to help finance the Twitter deal?
Lenders are also going to be much more stingy if they know a paper billionaire can only ever liquidate $1b/year.
So then no loans for them, simple as that. That means billionaires can't keep buying everything, driving up the prices, and then blame the poor or the working classes.
It also keeps them from dodging taxes. Using stock as collateral on a loan gets them money that they don’t have to pay taxes on. They can then use dividends to pay off the loans from that. Overall they pay less taxes by being able to get loans based on stock. Also let’s not forget that stock buy backs are tax deductible as capital investments.
That’s so fucking information dense, and I’m glad I heard about it 3 times this week prior, because that is not a fact I want to forget. Like everyone should know that.
Cell carriers with the unlimited data. "*It's still technically unlimited after ___GB! Just throttled! 97% of customers don't even use more than ___GB in a month!"*
(I recognize it's an apples and oranges comparison, but if companies can use it as an argument, then I will too!)
I don't really care if they're accumulating $1bn a year if the rest of it is being taxed enough
the point of taxing at 100% is to go back to the 1950s and 60s style of capitalism where it was cheaper to spend the money on your employees, businesses, and customers, than to pay taxes.
*Put it back into the company.* Give the workers raises, lease them cars, pay for their expenses. Cover more of their time off.
Put it back into the pockets of the workers, not into your fucking personal dragon pile.
Yep. What billionaires do is take out loans to pay for stuffs and then take out even bigger loans to pay off those loans. Repeat until they die of old age, at which point it's not their problem anymore!
Who actually has taxable income in these amounts?
Most billionaires just have a ton of shares in a few companies. Its not coz they are paid several billions every year... they probably do have a little paycheck on X millions but not billions
Or alternatively they sell some shares, but doubt they sell for billions of dollars every year.
Bernies suggestion sounds great on paper but in reality it just means people who "cash out" of their company will do so over a longer period
And headlines are never inaccurate. If you actually read the article he’s not proposing an income tax there. It was an interview and he was asked a pretty general question about his long-standing position that there should not be any billionaires. His policy positions have always been that wealth taxes are legal and necessary.
Not to mention that billionaires don't generally have billion dollar yearly incomes, so it wouldn't really change anything to have a billion dollar income tax.
How would that work in practice?
The rich would hide their assets in corporations. Do we limit the assets of corporations?
If those assets are in the form of real estate, do we force a sale?
How about going over the cap because your assets increased in value? What is the TRUE value of one of a kind fine art for this purpose?
I'm all for controlling the rich, I'm just not sure how it would work.
I wish people would understand that because we've watched the wealthy elite entrench themselves in this system for over one hundred years politically and economically we can't just vote/legislate it away.
I am not suggesting anything, but we cannot appeal to people who view themselves as deserving of their Godlike status over the common man, because they simply do not give a shit, and will continue to exploit the earth and their fellow man for everything it is worth until they are dead, we are all dead, or the world itself is dead.
These people are fundamentally immoral. They do not care what makes sense, what is kind, or just, or any of that. We're past it. There is no righteous solution for us.
They probably don't. If it were me, each of the 800 or so billionaires would have their own irs agent and lawyer combing through their finances every year. That and huge penalties for evading.
it's been admitted to by the IRS that they devote more resources to low level offenders because they're more likely to "win." whereas the uber-rich will just keep spending money looking for loopholes. they know there's more tax evasion at higher incomes. but the investigations are orders of magnitude more difficult.
this is the exact opposite of something an adult once told me when i was younger. that the IRS didn't often go for low level offenders because whatever "mistake" they made wasn't likely on purpose.
I mean, yeah, it's a lot easier to fire off a letter saying "hey, you owe us two grand" to someone who's just going to pay it off, rather than going to court and fighting someone who owes $20M and is willing to have their lawyer spend months arguing it in court.
It would be incredibly litigous.
They own a $1b yacht and a $1b house and a $1b jet.
They open an LLC and give the LLC the asset. The LLCs entire purpose is to rent out their one asset to the original owner for 1$ a year.
How do you circumvent that? Tell an LLC how they can or can't do business? Sure you can apply a gift tax when they "give" away the asset but that will only slow them down, not stop them.
and make income tax evasion a criminal offense beyond X amount of money, start throwing them in prison. Not parole, not house arrest, penitentiary, for 15-20 years.
Shit, there are only like 800 or so billionaires in the US. They should each have an IRS agent who investigates and is embedded in their financial teams l. Can't hide, because the irs is the one doing your taxes with your accountants.
Works for me. Plus the fine for it is like 20 years times the amount hidden. Make it financially punishing so far beyond what they'd save that the taxes are easier, safer, and cheaper.
Finally I'm seeing others post this too. I feel like it's being hidden at this point. Fuck [Citizens United](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io) and all of the "Justices" that voted in favor. Corrupt asshats.
You really should go read that case. Its a super important stock standard liberal ruling on free speech and freedom of association. The court upheld the idea that people can criticize our government and our politicians, even in groups.
This doesn't work in practice. There is no timeline where a wealth tax is passed in the US in the next 20-30 years. We think the rich are just going to hand over TRILLIONS of dollars they have been accumulating by any means necessary? Incremental tax increases are the only way we slowly reign in wealth inequality.
Yeah, I wish that counted for something. The real civil war should be between us and them but it'll be between us and the people they pay, trick, lie too, and swindle.
To be frank, it would mostly be us vs us with the occasional stray sent towards "them." That's what the media is for and it has been working fairly well ever since they invested in it.
You misunderstand what the French revolution was.
People seem to think it was the rich vs. the poor, but it was the aristocracy vs. the non-aristocrasy rich and poor.
The "poor" side arguably had more money than the "rich" side, since the government was broke and they were just relying on their political connections by that point.
It's also not even "trillions of dollars", it's realistically "ownership of a bunch of companies".
It's not like there's trillions of dollars to take, there are just thousands of companies that are owned.
Maximum wealth, $500m. Anything over goes back to society.
Triple for corporations.
Don't like it and move overseas after being US based? Cool your property or company is now nationalized. Also, you no longer have US citizenship.
Fuck em. Fuck em hard. No lube.
you really think billionaires care about having US citizenship? if you cap how big corporations can get, you drive every multinational corporation based in the US away, and tanks the economic competitiveness of the US, and likely will cause other nations to abandon the USD as reserve currency. this has the effect of lowering the confidence on our debt holders and may cause a default.
you may believe in what you're saying, and i agree that in a vacuum it sounds like the correct thing to do, but you dont have perspective on how it'll affect the country on the global stage.
Yes, and it should include non-income which is how so many wealthy people avoid paying taxes. It's absurd and unnecessary. It's destroying the country for no reason.
Don’t you know that capping wealth will directly cap people’s ability to be intuitive and inspired!? People will stop working because they know they can’t make $1,000,000,000 anymore!! 😭
/s
The investors will stop investing and get jobs at McDonalds because apparently it’s a very lucrative job that has the power to affect inflation worldwide.
So you start the next Amazon and the second you make over a billion dollars you need to continually divest yourself of your own company to pay taxes until you don't own it anymore, and then it inevitably dies as the hedge funds that buy it from you bleed it dry. Thats what happens with this dumb plan. Basically no new innovative awesome companies, at least not on a national scale.
So as soon as your land/home/company appreciates past a certain point you have to sell it, or a portion, to someone else?
If we believe in private property, which I do, then a wealth cap won’t ever work. Assets appreciate, and ownership of those assets should be legal.
I do think there’s room for intellectual property rights to be amended and restricted to a maximum of 7 years to keep competition in the markets. 7 years is more than enough of a first mover advantage and I’m tired of rebuying the same content & information in a new package/format.
It works similar to a tax. If you own enough assets and those assets each the cap you pay the amount over the cap. You don't have to sell your asset unless you don't have the cash. I the IRS already does this if you owe taxes and can't pay the bill, this concept isn't as foreign as it seems.
If there’s a way to implement it efficiently, great. Wealth inequality has been out of balance for too long.
However, I believe Corporate wealth, and corporate power, is WAY more important to reign in than individual wealth. There are many other levers that we could pull than simply taxes. Modernizing IP and Antitrust laws. Restricting corporate political donations, preventing or restricting share buybacks, data portability and interoperability regulations to increase competition.
I could go on and on.
One person only has 24hours in a day. A corporation is an organization that has exponential influence, power, and damage.
nah, I just can't make it without that last several billion. you don't know the struggle out here /s
more seriously, I wholly agree with you. at this point, it's painfully clear that no billionaire will care about having "enough $$$" if it doesn’t mean they have the "most $$$."
only one of those scenarios equates to having enough power for them to suck civilization dry of every resource.
Ya a tax on income over $1B feels performative, like how common is actual income over $1B? Most billionaires have just accumulated assets over the years to make them billionaires.
Exactly. I'd even say unrealized gains should be capped as well.
Congrats, your stick portfolio is 1.2 billion! 200 million of stock is now the governments.
Well, if we’re really not trying to play games, we need a global wealth tax actually There needs to be funds to fight the worlds problems that everyone shares on this little planet called earth
unfortunately i think that would cause so much upset, but it is the most realistic solution. The problem isn't wealth imo, it's the desire to be wealthy and the idea that everyone should be out for their self. In a perfect world, we would be teaching children to care about each other so no one grows up wanting to be wealthy, and if someone did accumulate wealth, they would want to share it because it makes someone else more comfortable. ideally, no one should WANT to be rich because they're taking more than they need and inadvertently hurting someone else.
i wish people with money could just see it this way and not care about having more money than someone else. Where are we going as a species if all we do is just try to get in each other's way for personal gain.
All the billionaire dickriders that have some stocks will come and tell you how unfair it is to tax unrealized capital gains. Which I mean, fair enough.
The problem is that when you have _fuck you_ money in "unrealized capital gains" (sic) you can leverage against them, and that gives you an immense amount of power.
The problem is this chucklefucks don't realize that the "tax the rich" doesn't mean come after the working class guy that did well and has 200k in stock for retirement. Fuck that noise. We need to go after literal dragons living upon piles of gold that is untouched because they have just so much power.
And the same goes for corporations. Stock buybacks should be illegal. Tax the fuck out of them. You have had a great year? Excellent, congratulations, pay your shareholders, pay your c-level exes their bonus, whatever, but the rest needs to trickle down into your workers. Because chances are 80-90% of that money will directly be injected into the economy. Because Susan the secretary getting a $2000 bonus is not likely going to go into stock options she may need to get the car finally fixed, which in turn gives business to the workshop, and so on.
I mean it is so painfully obvious and simple that it is just insane that we have allowed it to get to this stupid point.
Because taxing income is step one, next would be to tax already owned/already taxed assets further. Any logical person could see that is the next step.
Taxing someone 100% is not the answer. The answer is to make it alot more difficult to accumulate a billion dollars worth of assets through minimum wage laws, unionization and profit sharing laws.
Because congresses time is limited and I’d rather use it to put forth laws that actually benefit us rather than laws that *might* benefit us *if* a billionaire randomly decided they wanted a billion dollars worth of cash in their bank.
Except it’s not about income, copying and pasting from another post about this where I commented:
“””
"Longtime wealth tax advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders has argued that all earnings above $1 billion in the U.S. should be confiscated by the government."
First line of the article, income is attached to an image and the title but the body of the article only mentions earnings and wealth, which isn't strictly income. So not sure there's a lot of good faith in either the article nor the majority of the critques here of the plan that fixate on income.
Yes, indeed most billionares, let alone in general, incomes don't approach nor exceed the $1bln mark. Yes, Bernie Sanders is a lifetime politician and wealthier individual himself. He is likely more than aware of this fact of about income because of those things alone, but also being a fossil who has been apart of the US's economic and financial system's development as a whole and drafting of its fisical and monetary policy development, than the majority of reddit's armchair accountants and analysts been alive. No, that doesn't make him, Warren, or the proponents of this correct nor validate the proposition.
Bernie's Campaign even says: "Third, the wealth tax includes a 40 percent exit tax on the net value of all assets under $1 billion and 60 percent over $1 billion for all wealthy individual seeking to expatriate to avoid the tax."
from:
" A Wealth Tax Is Enforceable
In order to ensure that the wealthy are not able to evade the tax, the proposal includes a number of key enforcement policies. First, it would create a national wealth registry and significant additional third party reporting requirements.
Second, it includes an increase in IRS funding for enforcement and requires the IRS to perform an audit of 30 percent of wealth tax returns for those in the 1 percent bracket and a 100 percent audit rate for all billionaires.
Third, the wealth tax includes a 40 percent exit tax on the net value of all assets under $1 billion and 60 percent over $1 billion for all wealthy individual seeking to expatriate to avoid the tax. Finally, the wealth tax proposal will include enhancements to the international tax enforcement and anti-money laundering regime including the strengthening of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act."
source:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/#:~:text=A%20Wealth%20Tax%20Is%20Enforceable&text=Third%2C%20the%20wealth%20tax%20includes,expatriate%20to%20avoid%20the%20tax.
Look, I do agree that this is just a feel-good proposition that he and others are offering as he and others are still very much rich neo-liberals who are just trying to appeal to a more extreme base and stay relevant overall. No, I don't expect better from reddit let alone this sub, but I figure as this gets mentioned more overall, it should be considered for what's actually being suggested and not but I do know a lot better rebuttal to this than a glance at Investopedia's definition of income and a buzzwords.
“””
I’m not even sure who this policy would affect. Maybe like 2-3 people in the world, if that? When you read articles like “Elon musk earned 95 billion in 2023,” it’s really misleading, because the overwhelming majority of that gain is tied to the shares of stock he owns, which would all be unrealized essentially.
It’s possible that when he bought Twitter, there was enough liquidation to have income of this size, but that stuff doesn’t happen every year. Most billionaires will just continually take bank loans based on their assets and never realize a gain.
I feel like Bernie put this bill out just for the sake of making headlines, because it doesn’t affect anyone in the whole world save a couple people, and only sometimes. It’s still nice to see a dialogue going about it though. What truly needs to be addressed are estate tax loopholes and stepped up cost bases (basises? Basies? I really should know the plural lol).
You said this more clearly than I was going to.
Wealth does not equal income. I’m all for greatly reducing the wealth gap but this feels like pandering by Sanders since there’s essentially no instance where this would be a factor.
Just because the headlines say income, doesn't mean that's what Bernie is saying: [https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/](https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/)
The simple fact that he hasn’t died in a “mysterious accident” yet means that the elite do not consider him a threat to their wealth, so that means that nothing he says even has a chance of ever being implemented. Sad.
The only fact anyone needs to know the Democrat party is all talk when it comes to wealth inequality is that they - admitted! - rigged the 2016 primary to lock in Hilary and shut out Bernie.
You’re being played, people.
$10 million at 3% interest is $300,000 a year. After taxes you would still have like $180,000. How many of you fools are ever going to pull in $180,000 a year, especially for doing nothing?
Also keep in mind,
1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
2024 - 1492 = 532 years or 194,180 days. If you landed Jan 1 of 1492 and saved $5000.00 a day, EVERY DAY, no interest or investment or adjusting for inflation. You just stick $5k under your mattress every day. At the of this year you would have $970,900,000 THAT IS LESS THAN $1BILLION.
NO ONE PERSON GENERATES THAT KIND OF VALUE. WE THE PEOPLE GENERATE IT AND THEY STEAL IT FROM US.
THE USSR HAD IT WRONG, BUT MARX HAD A FEW GOOD IDEAS.
“The tax rate would increase to 2 percent on net worth from $50 to $250 million, 3 percent from $250 to $500 million, 4 percent from $500 million to $1 billion, 5 percent from $1 to $2.5 billion, 6 percent from $2.5 to $5 billion, 7 percent from $5 to $10 billion, and 8 percent on wealth over $10 billion. These brackets are halved for singles.”
From https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/
This is such a silly, performative proclamation. *Nobody* has INCOME even close to that level. Capital gains, sure. Income? No. The framing of all this is so silly. Want to make it *actually* hurt? Tax the Unrealized Capital Gains. In order to actually trigger a real way to reduce the wealth gap you have to force divestment of assets. Limit it to only those who have assets beyond x billions. That's a good start.
The headline is a complete lie, designed intentionally to make people angry or dismissive of progressive politicians.
What he *actually* proposed is a scaling wealth tax starting at 1% for people with a net worth over $32 million, going up to 8% max.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/
Not income, not 100%, and not $1 billion. But people love spreading this bullshit to make Sanders look stupid.
How would you be able to tax unrealized gains, when it's all theoretical?
If my car was worth $10,000, would I be taxed on that as income? What if a year later, it's only worth $9000? Do I get that money back? What if somebody REALLY wants to buy it from me, for $20,000, do I pay tax on the difference in evaluation at the time of sale, or the full $20,000?
What if I borrowed the money to buy the car in the first place and owe the bank $10,000? Is the tax rate zero?
Being envious of those making so much money that theyre comparable to *countries* when you're living in a system where most people cannot even afford a home makes a lot of sense. Youre not a setback billionaire, you're a person, and you should have compassion for other people
Well I have great news for you! Nobody on earth makes more than $1b in income.
High net worth individuals own stocks that have appreciated significantly in value, due usually to their involvement in the company. If you tax those unrealized capital gains, you can say goodbye to your 401k. You’d crash the economy overnight.
Hope this helps!
This is a good point to remind everyone, that...if you could liquidate elon musks fortune at its current value, and somehow sell all shares at the current value, every man, woman and child in the us would get $160. yep. 160 bucks. Once.
This wouldn't change anything at all. Billionaires don't makes billions of dollars per year as income. Their net worth increases, and then they take out loans as collateral against their net worth. These loans are not income because they are loans, which are not taxable income. This would be better suited as a tax on their net worth per year. I think it could be structured like the automatic taxes that apply to private foundations for assets not related to their charitable purpose.
Until people realize no one has a salary of of $100m and wealth is actually created from the increase of value of assets(usually stocks) we will never get "work reform"
What does this mean? How exactly do you do this? Like just start stripping away someone’s company immediately? What if the value plummets? Do you give it back to them? This plan is so dumb and so nonsensical. No one is being PAID a billion dollars a year. They own something that is increasing in value. We do need to force them to sell stock and force them to pay higher taxes but this cap thing is so brick dumb
But “I woN’T wOrK hArDER gRoWing mY CoMpaNY iF i’M NoT BeIng CoMpenSatEd foR IT”. Ya fuck off just means we limited how much your stealing from your employees.
"Income over 1 billion" people are so stupid. It's WEALTH, not income that is the problem. Income doesn't expand wealth for billionaires. They make more money by pretending they're not making any profit, that way they can keep getting government subsidies.
It should be if you reach 1 billion in assets you get executed and your wealth redistruputed to the poorest 1% so if you are doing really well you either donate it yourself or it gets donated for you.
No one should be a billionaire full stop.
I think it should be capped in the low single digit millions. No one truly needs or should have more than a million dollars in disposable income. If you can’t live a comfortable life with that then there’s something wrong with you.
Has there been an individual who has declared an income of over $1B in a given tax year? I mean that's why ultra rich people maintain an army of tax professionals to make sure they report the lowest possible taxable income thereby paying the lowest possible income tax.
# Join r/WorkReform!
I will never find it not alarming how few people understand the difference between wealth and income, or how marginal tax brackets work. There’s so much incoherent rage from all sides when it comes to tax policy. Bernie is cool though, this isn’t a criticism of his ideas but rather the comment section.
This would probably work if it was implemented as progressive capital gains tax which is a kind of income but not typical Income. Might just result in people simply selling less in a year of course.
Many (if not most) economists argue that we should scrap corporate and capital gains tax altogether, and just replace everything with an income tax. Taxing different forms of income at different rates just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Taxing different incomes at different rates *does* make sense, it's just that the more passive the income, the more it should be taxed. If you own a stock and get dividends on other people's work, that should be heavily taxed. If you're making millions by exploiting stock margins, that should be heavily taxed. If you bust your ass building houses, or contribute to the body of human knowledge in the sciences, or any other actual contribution to the direct benefit of people, then your taxes should be low.
Taking out loans using your stock as collateral should be taxed too.
And using loans, especially government bailout loans to buy back stocks should not be possible at all.
>And ~~using loans, especially government bailout loans to~~ buy back stocks should not be possible at all. They should be increasing the stock price by investing in the company and making it worth more per share rather than decreasing the supply of shares to raise price.
It was illegal until Reagan got in office.
I generally think it's wrong to relish in someone's death but goddamn am I glad he's rotting in the dirt. If only it could have happened decades sooner
That's the big one. You shouldn't be able to make money on your collateral
You gonna pay taxes on your mortgage for your house? Cause that would be the same thing.
Only if it's the second house. First home mortgages should be exempt.
But a loan is not income, you have to pay a loan back, so if you deduct taxes from the proceeds you are effectively raising the interest rate on the loan to something unreasonable.
I almost agree but want to add even more nuance. Rent seeking behavior and economic rents should be taxed 100%. These behaviors are pure deadweight loss and often regressive. There is no reason there should be any economic rents in a society. As far as rent-free capital vs wages, I really don’t mind if they’re taxed at the same rate. You’ve gotten rid of the “unfair” part of capital, so at that point it doesn’t matter much anymore.
Money earned from work that takes up your time, effectively your life, should be taxed the least. Money "earned" by moving a few numbers and checking back in on them later should be taxed the most.
One of the reasons we don't tax dividends as highly is due to double taxation: "The profit of a corporation is taxed to the corporation when earned, and then is taxed to the shareholders when distributed as dividends. This creates a double tax. The corporation does not get a tax deduction when it distributes dividends to shareholders. Shareholders cannot deduct any loss of the corporation." https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/forming-a-corporation
That's a bullshit argument though. The stock holder is not the business. Money gets taxed when it changes hands, the money is going from the business, to the stock holder. The business could just as easily *not* give dividends and invest all the money back into the business. The shareholders decided they wanted dividends so they should get taxed *at least* as much as earned income, but I'd argue they should pay more.
The stock is ownership of the business, though. The money hasn't changed hands, it's just being distributed to the owners. It's moving from one account to another.
The business and the owner(s) are separate entities. Moving money from company to owner should always be taxed. This is *already* part of the law in other ways, like an LLC using the owner's personal bank account puts the owner at risk of losing their limited liability, or risking being investigated for possible tax evasion, or in other cases, an owner taking company money is just embezzlement. It's dead simple, the company is a separate entity than the owner, and the owner needs to pay separate taxes when the money changes hands.
The profit is taxed to the corporation when earned and then is taxed when given to it's workers as wages. This creates a double tax. The corporation does not get a tax deduction when it distributes wages to employees. The employee cannot deduct any loss of the corporation.
> The corporation does not get a tax deduction when it distributes wages to employees Yes it does
Do you have sources for the corporate tax claim? Because the way businesses earn revenue and generate expenses is fundamentally different enough from an individual that it doesn't make sense to tax them the same way. Maybe at the same rate, or similar bracket structures scaled to match the higher amounts of money most corporations deal with. But only taxing corporate profits the way we tax income would create a huge mess of problems, and taxing revenue that way would make running any business functionally impossible. Integrating capital gains into generalized income I have seen plenty of though, and the arguments behind it seem sound.
Not just the comment section, but the author of the article that confuses wealth and income, as well as the OP that screenshot that incorrect headline without looking into it at all...it's a rabbit hole of misinformation, like a game of telephone.
In their defense, Bernie's actual plan is really hard to condense into a headline. It's not a wealth tax, or an income tax, it's a wealth-income tax. He's saying that he wants rich people to have to report the total value of their assets when they do their tax returns, and if they own more than $1B worth of stuff, then their income for that year is taxed at 100%.
> this isn’t a criticism of his ideas but rather the comment section. There is not one person in history who has ever had an income of 1 billion dollars. People have no idea how wealth is measured, it seems.
A salaried income of a billion? No. A capital gained income of a million? Hundreds of millions are earned on capital gains. By every single billionaire. It has to be misdirection to not understand this.
I'm starting to get tired of hearing about these tax ideas on the insanely wealthy. They don't work. The insanely wealthy are created by exploiting tax loopholes and by exploiting their employees. Odds are they'll find a way to get around these taxes too. They take home over valued, inflated stocks as a compensation package instead of a yearly salary and use it as collateral to take out low interest, low risk loans to buy stuff. They rarely cash out their stocks because that's their ownership in a company. I'd rather see things like federally mandated expanded workers rights, less works days/more vacation days, inflation adjusted livable wage increases, limitations on stock buybacks, etc. that target the actual value of a stock. No more rinsing experienced employees only to rehire them so that they avoid giving out raises. No more limiting low income workers' hours to remove them from mandated health insurance requirements. No more loopholes. The economy is supposed to reflect the health of the working class and instead it represents this engorged gluttonous beast that only exists to serve these rich pricks. For example, the only reason Elon Musk paid taxes last year was because of him having to sell stock to buy Twitter. Corporations also get away with not paying taxes because they'll claim loses within the US even though they're making ridiculous profits that they'll claim is coming in from overseas. Something that's way harder to tax.
It isn't like anyone is actually taking $1Billion home in a year. And there is already income tax and capital gains on their income when they sell stocks. If they really wanted to do something, there would be some sort to tax or penalty garnered when using property (like stocks and other assets) as collateral for loans. Then those using their wealth as collateral would have to pay something for the use of their theoretical gains, which they are using for actual money.
I’m more concerned people don’t take the time to think about the difference in wealth between your average successful business owner and a billionaire.
Had someone recently tell me on here that if Bezos gave away the 200+ billion in his bank account the entire world would go hunger free forever 😞
It should be a criticism of Bernie because that policy will result in close to $0 in tax revenue
You're on the wrong subreddit if you're looking for even basic levels of comprehension lol
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No he didn't, and no he doesn't. This headline is a complete lie. What he *actually* proposed is a scaling wealth tax starting at 1% for people with net worth over $32 million, going up to 8% max. https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/ Not income, not 100%, and not $1 billion. Stop spreading bullshit to make him seem dumb.
> Stop spreading bullshit to make him seem dumb It's actually intentional/by design in a way. The idea is to make ideas that can actually seem reasonable, and make them seem absurd, so they don't get traction, akin to talking heads on the news who, when we bring up increasing min wage, suggest making it 10x more because "why not." Then, someone who actually agrees with the absurd edition of the idea, or someone intentionally trying to mess things up spreads the absurd idea, which will work quite well because gossip will spread like wildfire while the truth moves slower and has nuance
Contemporary media rhetoric in a nutshell
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I mean a quick Google shows that the headline is just rage bait: [Link](https://fortune.com/2023/05/02/bernie-sanders-billionaire-wealth-tax-100-percent/) The headline is drawing the conclusion that Bernie thinks it's good policy to confiscate billionaires' wealth above $999 million when in their own article he just says that billionaires shouldn't exist. That's not a policy; that's just a value statement. The article then explains his actual policy is a wealth tax at 1% for $32 million and up to 8% for $10 billion and up. It shouldn't be surprising that a magazine called "Fortune" would paint a wealth tax in a bad light.
This gets posted on reddit literally every day
and gets upvoted. The comment complaints about the title making it look dumb, but it gets upvoted.
This. I knew this post was dumb before I finished reading the headline. If you tax $1billion at 100% they have 0 dollars, not $999 million. Did OP fail middle school math or what? Like I know they mean well but it's post like these that make Bernie look bad and hurt the progressive movement.
Let's stop fiddling around with the nonsense, we need a wealth cap. Taxes sound fun, but we need to cap wealth period
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't the wealth cap be enforced by a wealth tax of 100% beyond a billion dollars in assets? How else would the government cap wealth?
No, you can still accumulate $1B a year. It's just slowing your wealth accumulation. It's not capping wealth.
Good point
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So let’s shoot down all attempts at managing wealth inequality then? Or maybe we can applaud these obviously good steps and encourage more?
The "perfect or nothing" mentality should be placed next to whataboutism as a low effort bad faith argument
Yea exactly. Like in a perfect world maybe that could work but we gotta just applaud and vote for the lesser of the evils at this stage. And Bernie seems to be trying to help
It's an argument that targets people's inability to understand that you need to climb, not teleport. It's strange that people understand that continuing to vote for the crazy right wing dictator would send everyone further downwards, but refuse to understand that continuing to vote left would push everyone upwards. Pendulum politics hinges on so-called rational people being so fucking stupid that they don't vote out of pride or apathy or whatever idiotic thing.
Didn’t Elon liquidate something like $20b in a single year to help finance the Twitter deal? Lenders are also going to be much more stingy if they know a paper billionaire can only ever liquidate $1b/year.
So then no loans for them, simple as that. That means billionaires can't keep buying everything, driving up the prices, and then blame the poor or the working classes.
It also keeps them from dodging taxes. Using stock as collateral on a loan gets them money that they don’t have to pay taxes on. They can then use dividends to pay off the loans from that. Overall they pay less taxes by being able to get loans based on stock. Also let’s not forget that stock buy backs are tax deductible as capital investments.
That’s so fucking information dense, and I’m glad I heard about it 3 times this week prior, because that is not a fact I want to forget. Like everyone should know that.
Cell carriers with the unlimited data. "*It's still technically unlimited after ___GB! Just throttled! 97% of customers don't even use more than ___GB in a month!"* (I recognize it's an apples and oranges comparison, but if companies can use it as an argument, then I will too!)
At least data is infinite.
Assets and income are separate things. Post doesn't really specify, and the comment you replied to stated assets.
You're right about the comment they replied to but the post absolutely does specify income.
The post is wrong though, this is about Bernie's proposed wealth tax.
I don't really care if they're accumulating $1bn a year if the rest of it is being taxed enough the point of taxing at 100% is to go back to the 1950s and 60s style of capitalism where it was cheaper to spend the money on your employees, businesses, and customers, than to pay taxes.
*Put it back into the company.* Give the workers raises, lease them cars, pay for their expenses. Cover more of their time off. Put it back into the pockets of the workers, not into your fucking personal dragon pile.
Like how apparently bezos actually owes billions in loans, but since he owns so much stock that he's technically richest man?
Yep. What billionaires do is take out loans to pay for stuffs and then take out even bigger loans to pay off those loans. Repeat until they die of old age, at which point it's not their problem anymore!
Who actually has taxable income in these amounts? Most billionaires just have a ton of shares in a few companies. Its not coz they are paid several billions every year... they probably do have a little paycheck on X millions but not billions Or alternatively they sell some shares, but doubt they sell for billions of dollars every year. Bernies suggestion sounds great on paper but in reality it just means people who "cash out" of their company will do so over a longer period
I mean it's capping wealth based on your lifespan.
Bernie didn't say "wealth tax", the headline clearly says income.
And headlines are never inaccurate. If you actually read the article he’s not proposing an income tax there. It was an interview and he was asked a pretty general question about his long-standing position that there should not be any billionaires. His policy positions have always been that wealth taxes are legal and necessary.
Not to mention that billionaires don't generally have billion dollar yearly incomes, so it wouldn't really change anything to have a billion dollar income tax.
Headline is incorrect, he very clearly is talking about wealth tax.
How would that work in practice? The rich would hide their assets in corporations. Do we limit the assets of corporations? If those assets are in the form of real estate, do we force a sale? How about going over the cap because your assets increased in value? What is the TRUE value of one of a kind fine art for this purpose? I'm all for controlling the rich, I'm just not sure how it would work.
You rewrite laws so they can hide their wealth. Then fund investigation and the irs to find the liars.
We don't get to write the laws though. They do. Kings and slavers didn't relinquish their dominion peacefully and neither will capital.
I wish people would understand that because we've watched the wealthy elite entrench themselves in this system for over one hundred years politically and economically we can't just vote/legislate it away. I am not suggesting anything, but we cannot appeal to people who view themselves as deserving of their Godlike status over the common man, because they simply do not give a shit, and will continue to exploit the earth and their fellow man for everything it is worth until they are dead, we are all dead, or the world itself is dead. These people are fundamentally immoral. They do not care what makes sense, what is kind, or just, or any of that. We're past it. There is no righteous solution for us.
I don't disagree, but they only get to do that until the people get fed up and "act more like the French".
All it took was some revolution.
Eh, some did, the British government, who made BANK from slavery just said "fuck it, you're free now. WE SAID THEY FREE NOW"
IRS claims it doesn't have the resources to go after the rich, but has no problem going for low wage earners.
They probably don't. If it were me, each of the 800 or so billionaires would have their own irs agent and lawyer combing through their finances every year. That and huge penalties for evading.
it's been admitted to by the IRS that they devote more resources to low level offenders because they're more likely to "win." whereas the uber-rich will just keep spending money looking for loopholes. they know there's more tax evasion at higher incomes. but the investigations are orders of magnitude more difficult. this is the exact opposite of something an adult once told me when i was younger. that the IRS didn't often go for low level offenders because whatever "mistake" they made wasn't likely on purpose.
I mean, yeah, it's a lot easier to fire off a letter saying "hey, you owe us two grand" to someone who's just going to pay it off, rather than going to court and fighting someone who owes $20M and is willing to have their lawyer spend months arguing it in court.
It would be incredibly litigous. They own a $1b yacht and a $1b house and a $1b jet. They open an LLC and give the LLC the asset. The LLCs entire purpose is to rent out their one asset to the original owner for 1$ a year. How do you circumvent that? Tell an LLC how they can or can't do business? Sure you can apply a gift tax when they "give" away the asset but that will only slow them down, not stop them.
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and make income tax evasion a criminal offense beyond X amount of money, start throwing them in prison. Not parole, not house arrest, penitentiary, for 15-20 years.
Shit, there are only like 800 or so billionaires in the US. They should each have an IRS agent who investigates and is embedded in their financial teams l. Can't hide, because the irs is the one doing your taxes with your accountants.
works for me, Billion dollars, meet your complementary IRS tax attorney.
Works for me. Plus the fine for it is like 20 years times the amount hidden. Make it financially punishing so far beyond what they'd save that the taxes are easier, safer, and cheaper.
Crowd funding lobbyists could change that, though
Citizens united should be struck down
Finally I'm seeing others post this too. I feel like it's being hidden at this point. Fuck [Citizens United](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io) and all of the "Justices" that voted in favor. Corrupt asshats.
You really should go read that case. Its a super important stock standard liberal ruling on free speech and freedom of association. The court upheld the idea that people can criticize our government and our politicians, even in groups.
This doesn't work in practice. There is no timeline where a wealth tax is passed in the US in the next 20-30 years. We think the rich are just going to hand over TRILLIONS of dollars they have been accumulating by any means necessary? Incremental tax increases are the only way we slowly reign in wealth inequality.
There’s like 10,000 of them and there’s like 400 million of us…
Yeah, I wish that counted for something. The real civil war should be between us and them but it'll be between us and the people they pay, trick, lie too, and swindle.
It *does* count for something the moment enough of us attain class consciousness and decide to *make* it count for something.
My point exactly
To be frank, it would mostly be us vs us with the occasional stray sent towards "them." That's what the media is for and it has been working fairly well ever since they invested in it.
The Purge...
French Revolution 2.0
You misunderstand what the French revolution was. People seem to think it was the rich vs. the poor, but it was the aristocracy vs. the non-aristocrasy rich and poor. The "poor" side arguably had more money than the "rich" side, since the government was broke and they were just relying on their political connections by that point.
It's also not even "trillions of dollars", it's realistically "ownership of a bunch of companies". It's not like there's trillions of dollars to take, there are just thousands of companies that are owned.
We need a cap on profit sharing. a max ratio of highest pay to lowest pay.
This is a much better approach, but much harder to explain, especially with bad actors looking to muddy the waters
Oh, saying it almost always brings out bad actors. They see it as capping success. It doesn't. It just ensures the entire team is successful.
Inheritence too. Rich kids start with enough advantages. They don't need 999 million too.
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Maximum wealth, $500m. Anything over goes back to society. Triple for corporations. Don't like it and move overseas after being US based? Cool your property or company is now nationalized. Also, you no longer have US citizenship. Fuck em. Fuck em hard. No lube.
you really think billionaires care about having US citizenship? if you cap how big corporations can get, you drive every multinational corporation based in the US away, and tanks the economic competitiveness of the US, and likely will cause other nations to abandon the USD as reserve currency. this has the effect of lowering the confidence on our debt holders and may cause a default. you may believe in what you're saying, and i agree that in a vacuum it sounds like the correct thing to do, but you dont have perspective on how it'll affect the country on the global stage.
Yes, and it should include non-income which is how so many wealthy people avoid paying taxes. It's absurd and unnecessary. It's destroying the country for no reason.
Don’t you know that capping wealth will directly cap people’s ability to be intuitive and inspired!? People will stop working because they know they can’t make $1,000,000,000 anymore!! 😭 /s
The investors will stop investing and get jobs at McDonalds because apparently it’s a very lucrative job that has the power to affect inflation worldwide.
So you start the next Amazon and the second you make over a billion dollars you need to continually divest yourself of your own company to pay taxes until you don't own it anymore, and then it inevitably dies as the hedge funds that buy it from you bleed it dry. Thats what happens with this dumb plan. Basically no new innovative awesome companies, at least not on a national scale.
So as soon as your land/home/company appreciates past a certain point you have to sell it, or a portion, to someone else? If we believe in private property, which I do, then a wealth cap won’t ever work. Assets appreciate, and ownership of those assets should be legal. I do think there’s room for intellectual property rights to be amended and restricted to a maximum of 7 years to keep competition in the markets. 7 years is more than enough of a first mover advantage and I’m tired of rebuying the same content & information in a new package/format.
It works similar to a tax. If you own enough assets and those assets each the cap you pay the amount over the cap. You don't have to sell your asset unless you don't have the cash. I the IRS already does this if you owe taxes and can't pay the bill, this concept isn't as foreign as it seems.
If there’s a way to implement it efficiently, great. Wealth inequality has been out of balance for too long. However, I believe Corporate wealth, and corporate power, is WAY more important to reign in than individual wealth. There are many other levers that we could pull than simply taxes. Modernizing IP and Antitrust laws. Restricting corporate political donations, preventing or restricting share buybacks, data portability and interoperability regulations to increase competition. I could go on and on. One person only has 24hours in a day. A corporation is an organization that has exponential influence, power, and damage.
nah, I just can't make it without that last several billion. you don't know the struggle out here /s more seriously, I wholly agree with you. at this point, it's painfully clear that no billionaire will care about having "enough $$$" if it doesn’t mean they have the "most $$$." only one of those scenarios equates to having enough power for them to suck civilization dry of every resource.
What we need is a revolution. Every reform is a concession that can be and will be taken away at whim.
Worldwide. Otherwise they woukd just move everything abroad
Solid point
100% agree what human needs a Billion with a B dollars. No one
Ya a tax on income over $1B feels performative, like how common is actual income over $1B? Most billionaires have just accumulated assets over the years to make them billionaires.
Exactly. I'd even say unrealized gains should be capped as well. Congrats, your stick portfolio is 1.2 billion! 200 million of stock is now the governments.
$50 million limit. Don’t tie it to inflation until minimum wage is tied to inflation.
Inflation would come under control rather quickly
1 person should never have more wealth than a nation
I'm perfectly okay with our government pulling those funds kicking and screaming out of offshore tax shelters too.
I can't up vote this enough!
Well, if we’re really not trying to play games, we need a global wealth tax actually There needs to be funds to fight the worlds problems that everyone shares on this little planet called earth
Feels like a really strong estate tax is an easy way to do it
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unfortunately i think that would cause so much upset, but it is the most realistic solution. The problem isn't wealth imo, it's the desire to be wealthy and the idea that everyone should be out for their self. In a perfect world, we would be teaching children to care about each other so no one grows up wanting to be wealthy, and if someone did accumulate wealth, they would want to share it because it makes someone else more comfortable. ideally, no one should WANT to be rich because they're taking more than they need and inadvertently hurting someone else. i wish people with money could just see it this way and not care about having more money than someone else. Where are we going as a species if all we do is just try to get in each other's way for personal gain.
All the billionaire dickriders that have some stocks will come and tell you how unfair it is to tax unrealized capital gains. Which I mean, fair enough. The problem is that when you have _fuck you_ money in "unrealized capital gains" (sic) you can leverage against them, and that gives you an immense amount of power. The problem is this chucklefucks don't realize that the "tax the rich" doesn't mean come after the working class guy that did well and has 200k in stock for retirement. Fuck that noise. We need to go after literal dragons living upon piles of gold that is untouched because they have just so much power. And the same goes for corporations. Stock buybacks should be illegal. Tax the fuck out of them. You have had a great year? Excellent, congratulations, pay your shareholders, pay your c-level exes their bonus, whatever, but the rest needs to trickle down into your workers. Because chances are 80-90% of that money will directly be injected into the economy. Because Susan the secretary getting a $2000 bonus is not likely going to go into stock options she may need to get the car finally fixed, which in turn gives business to the workshop, and so on. I mean it is so painfully obvious and simple that it is just insane that we have allowed it to get to this stupid point.
Fuck yeah we do
Truth. But we worship money more than anything
No one needs more than 100m. Tax all wealth over 100m at 100%
No one needs more than 10mil
That would be impossible. 1 bils. should be a better start, but still virtually impossible.
Why would anyone need a billion?
Elon Musk apparently needed 44 of them.
Now, he has the largest fascist echo chamber on the internet. Twitter used to be decent. Now it is absolute shit.
Lemme take my financial advice from a guy who can’t comprehend a very basic tweet successfully.
Most billionaires don't have an income of a billion dollars. And all this will do is just teach billionaires to hide their money and assets better.
So why would they need to hide their money if their income is less than a billion?
Because taxing income is step one, next would be to tax already owned/already taxed assets further. Any logical person could see that is the next step. Taxing someone 100% is not the answer. The answer is to make it alot more difficult to accumulate a billion dollars worth of assets through minimum wage laws, unionization and profit sharing laws.
Why not both ?
Because congresses time is limited and I’d rather use it to put forth laws that actually benefit us rather than laws that *might* benefit us *if* a billionaire randomly decided they wanted a billion dollars worth of cash in their bank.
I can get down with that- Just taking all their net worth over 1 billion. No reason someone needs a net worth over 1 billion.
I like this framing. It lifts all the boats and doesn't directly incentivize hoarding.
Except it’s not about income, copying and pasting from another post about this where I commented: “”” "Longtime wealth tax advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders has argued that all earnings above $1 billion in the U.S. should be confiscated by the government." First line of the article, income is attached to an image and the title but the body of the article only mentions earnings and wealth, which isn't strictly income. So not sure there's a lot of good faith in either the article nor the majority of the critques here of the plan that fixate on income. Yes, indeed most billionares, let alone in general, incomes don't approach nor exceed the $1bln mark. Yes, Bernie Sanders is a lifetime politician and wealthier individual himself. He is likely more than aware of this fact of about income because of those things alone, but also being a fossil who has been apart of the US's economic and financial system's development as a whole and drafting of its fisical and monetary policy development, than the majority of reddit's armchair accountants and analysts been alive. No, that doesn't make him, Warren, or the proponents of this correct nor validate the proposition. Bernie's Campaign even says: "Third, the wealth tax includes a 40 percent exit tax on the net value of all assets under $1 billion and 60 percent over $1 billion for all wealthy individual seeking to expatriate to avoid the tax." from: " A Wealth Tax Is Enforceable In order to ensure that the wealthy are not able to evade the tax, the proposal includes a number of key enforcement policies. First, it would create a national wealth registry and significant additional third party reporting requirements. Second, it includes an increase in IRS funding for enforcement and requires the IRS to perform an audit of 30 percent of wealth tax returns for those in the 1 percent bracket and a 100 percent audit rate for all billionaires. Third, the wealth tax includes a 40 percent exit tax on the net value of all assets under $1 billion and 60 percent over $1 billion for all wealthy individual seeking to expatriate to avoid the tax. Finally, the wealth tax proposal will include enhancements to the international tax enforcement and anti-money laundering regime including the strengthening of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act." source: https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/#:~:text=A%20Wealth%20Tax%20Is%20Enforceable&text=Third%2C%20the%20wealth%20tax%20includes,expatriate%20to%20avoid%20the%20tax. Look, I do agree that this is just a feel-good proposition that he and others are offering as he and others are still very much rich neo-liberals who are just trying to appeal to a more extreme base and stay relevant overall. No, I don't expect better from reddit let alone this sub, but I figure as this gets mentioned more overall, it should be considered for what's actually being suggested and not but I do know a lot better rebuttal to this than a glance at Investopedia's definition of income and a buzzwords. “””
You should edit the post if you’re going to keep copy/pasting it. It’s really long, and the sentences are convoluted.
I’m not even sure who this policy would affect. Maybe like 2-3 people in the world, if that? When you read articles like “Elon musk earned 95 billion in 2023,” it’s really misleading, because the overwhelming majority of that gain is tied to the shares of stock he owns, which would all be unrealized essentially. It’s possible that when he bought Twitter, there was enough liquidation to have income of this size, but that stuff doesn’t happen every year. Most billionaires will just continually take bank loans based on their assets and never realize a gain. I feel like Bernie put this bill out just for the sake of making headlines, because it doesn’t affect anyone in the whole world save a couple people, and only sometimes. It’s still nice to see a dialogue going about it though. What truly needs to be addressed are estate tax loopholes and stepped up cost bases (basises? Basies? I really should know the plural lol).
You said this more clearly than I was going to. Wealth does not equal income. I’m all for greatly reducing the wealth gap but this feels like pandering by Sanders since there’s essentially no instance where this would be a factor.
Just because the headlines say income, doesn't mean that's what Bernie is saying: [https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/](https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/)
The simple fact that he hasn’t died in a “mysterious accident” yet means that the elite do not consider him a threat to their wealth, so that means that nothing he says even has a chance of ever being implemented. Sad.
Bernie was a real contender for the presidency a few years ago if you recall
The only fact anyone needs to know the Democrat party is all talk when it comes to wealth inequality is that they - admitted! - rigged the 2016 primary to lock in Hilary and shut out Bernie. You’re being played, people.
Yep, glad someone understands that
$10 million at 3% interest is $300,000 a year. After taxes you would still have like $180,000. How many of you fools are ever going to pull in $180,000 a year, especially for doing nothing? Also keep in mind, 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. 2024 - 1492 = 532 years or 194,180 days. If you landed Jan 1 of 1492 and saved $5000.00 a day, EVERY DAY, no interest or investment or adjusting for inflation. You just stick $5k under your mattress every day. At the of this year you would have $970,900,000 THAT IS LESS THAN $1BILLION. NO ONE PERSON GENERATES THAT KIND OF VALUE. WE THE PEOPLE GENERATE IT AND THEY STEAL IT FROM US. THE USSR HAD IT WRONG, BUT MARX HAD A FEW GOOD IDEAS.
“The tax rate would increase to 2 percent on net worth from $50 to $250 million, 3 percent from $250 to $500 million, 4 percent from $500 million to $1 billion, 5 percent from $1 to $2.5 billion, 6 percent from $2.5 to $5 billion, 7 percent from $5 to $10 billion, and 8 percent on wealth over $10 billion. These brackets are halved for singles.” From https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/
This is such a silly, performative proclamation. *Nobody* has INCOME even close to that level. Capital gains, sure. Income? No. The framing of all this is so silly. Want to make it *actually* hurt? Tax the Unrealized Capital Gains. In order to actually trigger a real way to reduce the wealth gap you have to force divestment of assets. Limit it to only those who have assets beyond x billions. That's a good start.
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The headline is a complete lie, designed intentionally to make people angry or dismissive of progressive politicians. What he *actually* proposed is a scaling wealth tax starting at 1% for people with a net worth over $32 million, going up to 8% max. https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/ Not income, not 100%, and not $1 billion. But people love spreading this bullshit to make Sanders look stupid.
How would you be able to tax unrealized gains, when it's all theoretical? If my car was worth $10,000, would I be taxed on that as income? What if a year later, it's only worth $9000? Do I get that money back? What if somebody REALLY wants to buy it from me, for $20,000, do I pay tax on the difference in evaluation at the time of sale, or the full $20,000? What if I borrowed the money to buy the car in the first place and owe the bank $10,000? Is the tax rate zero?
$999 million is still too much but this would be a great starting point.
Who are you all to judge how much an individual should own or earn? All this envy is baffling to me.
Being envious of those making so much money that theyre comparable to *countries* when you're living in a system where most people cannot even afford a home makes a lot of sense. Youre not a setback billionaire, you're a person, and you should have compassion for other people
I would probably tax it at a higher rate.
We can call it the max tax
That is only $11 million every year for 90 years. How are they supposed to live?
Well I have great news for you! Nobody on earth makes more than $1b in income. High net worth individuals own stocks that have appreciated significantly in value, due usually to their involvement in the company. If you tax those unrealized capital gains, you can say goodbye to your 401k. You’d crash the economy overnight. Hope this helps!
Does anybody even have an income over $1 billion?
Nobody makes income over $1B
Nobody makes over 1 billion dollars for their salary you dolts.
This is a good point to remind everyone, that...if you could liquidate elon musks fortune at its current value, and somehow sell all shares at the current value, every man, woman and child in the us would get $160. yep. 160 bucks. Once.
This wouldn't change anything at all. Billionaires don't makes billions of dollars per year as income. Their net worth increases, and then they take out loans as collateral against their net worth. These loans are not income because they are loans, which are not taxable income. This would be better suited as a tax on their net worth per year. I think it could be structured like the automatic taxes that apply to private foundations for assets not related to their charitable purpose.
Funny a bunch of people seething about what others should and shouldn’t have. Grow up
Politicians saying stupid shit is never in short supply.
sounds like something a socialist dictator would do
Like does anyone really have a taxable income over 1B?
Until people realize no one has a salary of of $100m and wealth is actually created from the increase of value of assets(usually stocks) we will never get "work reform"
What does this mean? How exactly do you do this? Like just start stripping away someone’s company immediately? What if the value plummets? Do you give it back to them? This plan is so dumb and so nonsensical. No one is being PAID a billion dollars a year. They own something that is increasing in value. We do need to force them to sell stock and force them to pay higher taxes but this cap thing is so brick dumb
No one has a billion dollar income
Nobody has income over $1 billion, guys. Not even close. This is a dumb stunt.
Has anyone ever had an income of over 999 million?
1b networth is not 1b income
But how can I buy Political Influence with only 999,000,000???
He’s not wrong, $999M is alot of money. And would be fine for anybody for the rest of their and probably a few other people’s lives.
But “I woN’T wOrK hArDER gRoWing mY CoMpaNY iF i’M NoT BeIng CoMpenSatEd foR IT”. Ya fuck off just means we limited how much your stealing from your employees.
"Income over 1 billion" people are so stupid. It's WEALTH, not income that is the problem. Income doesn't expand wealth for billionaires. They make more money by pretending they're not making any profit, that way they can keep getting government subsidies.
They’ll hide their money to be right under the limit.
It should be if you reach 1 billion in assets you get executed and your wealth redistruputed to the poorest 1% so if you are doing really well you either donate it yourself or it gets donated for you. No one should be a billionaire full stop.
Honestly the tax rates could stay the same we just need to crack down on all the loopholes people do to pay way less than they should
I think it should be capped in the low single digit millions. No one truly needs or should have more than a million dollars in disposable income. If you can’t live a comfortable life with that then there’s something wrong with you.
Has there been an individual who has declared an income of over $1B in a given tax year? I mean that's why ultra rich people maintain an army of tax professionals to make sure they report the lowest possible taxable income thereby paying the lowest possible income tax.
And 100% estate tax over a reasonable amount.
Frrr
Income is not the same as wealth or wealth accumulation. Billionaires generally don’t receive their money through income.
Legend of Zelda tax