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Comment by jmathai | Hacker News Reader

I think it's difficult to tax people on money they've earned and "paid" taxes on. The billionaire tax in CA is a good example. It makes sense that the ultra wealthy would rather move than to pay that tax - for lots of reasons ranging from greed to wanting to decide how their wealth gets used.

It reminds me of student loan forgiveness. It's too hard to retroactively forgive them. It may sound good in theory but it's not fair - i.e. for people who worked 2 jobs while going through college.

The laws for wealth accumulation moving forward need to be reformed and I think we have to accept that we let people run away with massive wealth and it turned out to be not the best thing for society.

Some lessons are learned the hard way.

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> it's difficult to tax people on money they've earned and "paid" taxes on

We already have property tax across the country. Sales tax is charged on post-tax spending. Hell, one could argue income is taxed multiple times given the SALT exemption.

Somehow multiple taxation is only an issue for inheritance and the rich.

Multiple taxation is not the problem. It's reforming tax law and charging on things that have already paid taxes.

Imagine tax reform which collects an extra 1% of sales tax for items you have already purchased.

I'm all for reforming tax such that the wealthy cannot dodge them and pay a higher effective tax rate. I just don't know how to get there.

> Multiple taxation is not the problem

This is precisely the difficulty you cited.

> Imagine tax reform which collects an extra 1% of sales tax for items you have already purchased

Literally property tax.

> I just don't know how to get there

Constitutionally authorize a national property tax that can only be increased by both an act of the Congress and affirmation in referendum alongside the next Presidential election. (It’s high time we brought plebiscite into our federal system.)

Politically: use its proceeds to cut taxes for the middle class. Double the income tax brackets. Provide a per-capita citizen’s dividend.

I understand what you're saying. What I was saying is difficult is introducing a new tax that would tax already taxed dollars. It's the "new" part - but I get that most new tax laws will do this.

So I probably agree with you.

> What I was saying is difficult is introducing a new tax that would tax already taxed dollars

But that’s empirically untrue. Every sales tax is precisely this. Every property-tax increase, too. They’re unpopular, as are all tax increases. But I don’t think they’re more difficult than raising first-pass income taxes.

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