Is there any movement to force owners to liquidate their shares upon their death? I'm surely not the first one to think of something like this.
Companies are property and people can make extremely foolish decisions with them if they want because they are their property. I can buy an original Hiroshige print and use it to light a fire if I want. By the same token you can leave your billion dollar company to your feckless coke snorting, whore frequenting grandson if you want. That’s what owning something means.
There's some pretty good arguments to be made that when a major shareholder of a public company dies, their shares should be distributed by the board and not their will.
And you claim (with no evidence) that there are good arguments for this.
Would it be clearer if I said that the board should get to decide who can buy the shares, whether that be the estate (who would pay itself for them) or someone else?
Security of property rights is a pretty compelling public interest. Keeping a particular company going is not on remotely on the same order. The fiduciary duty is a red herring. If you want to destroy your own property you can. If you make poor decisions about your own property that’s on you. Public companies are actively traded. If you don’t like management sell the shares. There are an uncountable number of ways that management can mess up. Why mess with property rights for one particular small class of ways companies can be messed up?
If there is an argument for taking someone’s property upon their death and give it to other people because they are co-owners of a company please make it.
> Deciding that you will do that to companies above a certain size is a tax on getting big, a discouragement to do so.
That's the biggest lie of all. High taxes has never discouraged someone from starting or growing a company. No one ever says, "gee I have a great idea but I don't want to pay a lot of tax on my windfall earnings so I just won't bother".
But if you're so worried about discouraging growth, then fine. Make it apply to the death of any shareholder -- upon death the board gets to say where the voting rights of the shares go. Let the owner will the value of the shares to whomever they want, but let the board decide where the voting power goes.
This is not consistent with my model of human behavior. Some indicative evidence pointing to people caring about tax rates would be the skill bias of migration from the EU to the US, the gap in GDP per capita between Switzerland and its neighbors or how US natives are much less likely to go into STEM fields than immigrants. People do actually respond to incentives.
> But if you're so worried about discouraging growth, then fine. Make it apply to the death of any shareholder -- upon death the board gets to say where the voting rights of the shares go. Let the owner will the value of the shares to whomever they want, but let the board decide where the voting power goes.
This has an obvious failure mode. The people on the board deciding on who gets to vote for the board is just institutionalizing corruption. Once the board gets to decide who is on the board without outside input the process is complete.
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St...
[1]: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highes...
[1] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979882
> Back in the 1950s, the rich were really good at tax avoidance. All they had to do was to donate more than their total income to charity. (The so-called flying nun tax exemption.) This was doable because when you donated items that appreciated in value, you didn't get taxed on the increase in value, but got to claim the whole value. So if your parents had bought a lot of art, you could donate the art. Better yet you could donate a million dollars to a charitable foundation you had, have them use it to buy a piece of art from you, and then donate 4 other pieces of art which are now valued at $1 million each. The result was a huge run-up in the value of things like art, and a simultaneous increase in public art for display. When you visit the Metropolitan Museum, you're basically seeing the benefits of a tax dodge.
That is terrible idea on so many levels it’s difficult to address them all. What is the value of the shares with no voting rights? And given your plan, I assume most boards would award the shares to themselves.
I don't know, Google and BRK-B have no voting rights yet are quite valuable. The company still has assets of value. The value isn't entirely in the vote.
Is it really? You seem to be saying that public property is sacred. If that is true its the only thing ever. Everything else has "within reason" attached to it, why not property rights.
In the US we generally don't confiscate companies from private individuals because we think we can run the company better. Additionally, shareholders would simply place the shares in a trust, or give the shares to their heirs before they die.
So, no. There really isn't any movement to force sales of family business at death.
I dunno, are you the Earl of your great grandfather's pocket watch, or the Duke of the Heirloom Dresser?