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Comment by blacksqr | Hacker News Reader

Instead of taxing individual wealth, far easier and constitutionally sound to impose a corporate tax as a percentage of total stock value.

Let the markets determine the value of the stock, then calculating the tax is a few minutes' work.

Most people who get really rich do so by owning stock or shares in a corporation, partnership or LLC.

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What about privately-held stocks?

Sounds like it would be a big incentive for companies to stay private as long as possible.

While not a viable way to actually do things, it is fun to imagine crazy unicorns like WeWork being taxed on their outrageous valuations.

Many privately-held companies sell stock, and their value can thus be calculated.

For those that do no stock trades, a gross income tax would be a simple alternative.

Seems like a strategy could emerge to do private sales at well below estimated value, in order to game this system. You could make it illegal, but it would be incredibly hard to prove (and harder still to detect).

Seems like such a strategy would already be illegal as a means of avoiding capital gains taxes.

It would also have the side-effect of destroying the company's valuation and thus its credit rating.

Interesting proposal, but LLCs do not always have shares of stock in the normal way. Trusts, which are another common vehicle of the wealthy, would also be immune from this. You would get a pretty good take from the richest ~10% of people, though [1].

[1] http://money.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ri...

LLCs have membership shares, and large LLCs and partnerships generally have well-defined buy-in and cash-out values.

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