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Comment by dlp211 | Hacker News Reader

Capital can move globally, but if you remain a citizen, you still owe on the wealth tax, because again, no instrument is restricted. If you want to renounce your citizenship to the US and pay the exit tax instead, be my guest, I'm sure we could tighten up any loopholes and remove access to American capital markets for those that want to flee.

I also love how creating liquidity is now considered being a financial parasite. The US is nothing without the financial innovations that we have developed and embraced over the last 150 years.

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Think about it, it will be cheaper/better for $1M of US capital to be invested in UK vs the US.

In the US both you and the founder/management team/other investors all pay tax if company is successful; in UK, only you (as US citizen) pay tax. You and the founders/management can split the difference and will be better off.

These things may sound small but play out significantly at scale (like interest rates etc)

> Think about it, it will be cheaper/better for $1M of US capital to be invested in UK vs the US.

That is a vast oversimplification of the problem that ignores all of the reasons to start and do business and business operations in the US, because there are already tons of places that you could start your company at that would result in lower taxes, yet very few if any choose to do so. You are making a huge logical leap that businesses will be as successful running out of the UK with its laws, regulations, and taxes as the US.

The world is not as simple and clean as whatever economic model you can cook up in your head. If it was, companies wouldn't pay developers in the US $300k/yr.

I agree, but you can make the same argument about people borrowing less if the fed increases interest rates by 0.1%. There are a ton of factors that go into someone getting financing and moving interest rate by 0.1% should be a non-issue. But on average these things do change people's behavior.

My principle is we should remove all obstacles for starting/running/investing in companies, which are the engine of the economy and create both wealth and jobs, and we should tax outcomes and consumption. Also, we should keep things simple to avoid both overhead and tax avoidance that comes with complexity.

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