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Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

You can put a wealth tax on billionaires without putting taxes on poverty level workers ($500/month in the US).

You're making bizarre nonsensical arguments here--slippery slope, strawman, etc.

That was clearly not the point. The point is there's always someone with a different bar for what is excessive wealth. Chances are that 80%+ of the world population would find your income staggering, the same way you consider a billionaire's wealth staggering.

So how do you decide who's scale to use?

Stunned that a community of software engineers is forgetting the top-down approach to algorithm design.

We already have a tiered system of taxes in the US. We don't tax everyone 50% because the average US wage is 100x that of a third world country average wage. It's possible to examine only the US wealth distribution and make choices about taxing the highest of the high earners there in isolation of all other earners in the world.

> So how do you decide who's scale to use?

Like the way all other murky subjects are settled, you just decide on one. We don't legalize murder just because some slayings are justified. The existence of grays areas does not preclude the black and white.

Wealth taxes seem so dumb to me. In many cases it's forcing sale of private or public company ownership from those who know the company best often to - you guessed it - institutional investors. It's bad enough how much control institutional investors have, but to force it by law seems even more ridiculous.

There has to be a better solution.

You had me for one second with that argument. But if you sell off your company, you would still get rich and be taxed - so why wouldn't you stay on board and your goal is not to get richer, but to create the best business you can?

You have to sell the business to pay the tax. That is why wealth taxes are pretty dumb without carve outs for many kinds of assets.

Why not sell 49% of the business?

The percentage doesn't matter. You have to pay taxes on the stock you own (ie, your startup). You do that by selling the stock. As the value of the company increases, you are forced to sell off increasingly large chunks of your stake to pay the bill thereby loosing ownership (control) in the process.

With an estate tax, the value is assessed once, I'd assume (at death/inheritance), then due to be paid. You might have to sell of a third or whatever of the fortune/company, and keep the majority.

Sure, over successive generations, the family might lose control of their original fortune/company, but that is compatible with the intention of the tax.

You'd lose control much, much faster than that at the sort of rates being proposed. Even 1% per annum would destroy control well within a career, let alone a generation considering exponential growth.

edit: Just noticed that you are talking about estate taxes and I'm talking about wealth taxes...

This is the real problem. In theory it could be argued that a wealth tax and estate tax are the only really fair taxes in a capitalist economy.

He who owns then capital is king, so tax the capital.

But in reality it would as you say force all sorts of unwanted liquidation and monetisation of assets just to pay the tax.

Land value tax is the only really fair tax.

I used to think this, but over time I changed my mind. Plenty of capital, particularly in an increasingly digital economy, requires no land, and ignoring that privileges that digital capital even more than just not being tied to physical space does already.

To the concentration of wealth? Like what? Wish their was, but I haven't heard of it.

Better solution - sell off the company to the employees. This way you also promote worker ownership.

It's a nice thought, my wife had an ESOP actually. She had a stake in the 5 figures when she left the company (it takes several years to vest and we can't touch it). But the problem is as an employee I don't really like my net worth tied up in my employers stock. I'd rather have it diversified and in an index fund.

But what you propose is probably better than the alternative at least.

The top 1% complaining about the top 0.01% while ignoring 99% of the world is a nonsensical argument?

Wow, yeah. Putting it like this makes it pretty crazy right?

You don't see your error?

Most of the wealth is in unrealized gains. How do tax that? Let's say I buy a painting for $1 and discover its a Van Gogh. Now its worth $50 million. Should I be forced to sell it to pay taxes?

We already have this issue for our existing tax system. You have to declare your income and use a huge set of tax rules and laws to determine your AGI and appropriate tax bracket. Taxing billionaires changes nothing here other than deciding once your AGI has enough zeros you get more taxes applied.

In this case there is no income so nothing to tax. Yet I would be worth $50 million and some would cry that's its unfair, which I think is silly.

Then lobby to change the tax laws, just like folks are lobbying to add billionaire taxes. The billionaire tax has nothing to do with the rich having ways of hiding wealth or income, deferring losses, etc. to reduce their tax burden. You're making an argument that obfuscates and obscures the real argument here that billionaires should not exist as they serve no utility in a society besides absorbing resources.

Not sure I understand. The laws work just like I described. Nothing to tax, which is the way it should be.

Then nothing changes in your fantastical scenario that I find a $1B painting in my attic and sit on it.

What we're talking about here is when people like Jeff Bezos have billions of dollars of income--direct income from gains realized in asset sales, income generated from property, stock sales, salaries, etc.--we shave a significant portion of those gains off in a wealth tax.

Well that's just another unworkable scheme. The income is already taxed at the highest rate so what you're suggesting is base the income tax rate on how much a person is worth, like if they are a billionaire make the tax rate 99%. How would the IRS determine a person's financial worth without doing a complete audit of all their assets? That could take years for a billionaire.

Then you can borrow against the Van Gogh for the rest of your life and likely never pay taxes. Then when you die, assuming your Van Gogh minus what you borrowed to live is less than the estate tax exemption (today it sits ~$12M or $24M if married) you can pass on the $12M/$24M to your kids federal tax free. Is that fair? IDK.

Well estate tax is a different matter. I think its in the best interest of the country to tax estates heavily above a certain limit to help eliminate royalty in the US.

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