The point of the law is to reduce the power of billionaires. Billionaires Using their power to change the rules and systemically avoid loss of power using a mechanisim available to literally nobody else is pretty much the antithesis of this idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_financial_transaction_...
> As a result, revenues from these taxes were disappointing. For example, revenues from the tax on fixed-income securities were initially expected to amount to 1,500 million Swedish kronor per year. They did not amount to more than 80 million Swedish kronor in any year and the average was closer to 50 million.[4] In addition, as taxable trading volumes fell, so did revenues from capital gains taxes, entirely offsetting revenues from the equity transactions tax that had grown to 4,000 million Swedish kronor by 1988
So off by an order of magnitude in their estimates _and_ nuked revenue from the capital gains taxes. Overall probably one of the dumbest ideas ever executed because it was so easy to forecast the second order effects.
Property taxes, paid by every single homeowner, are a wealth tax. The difference is that for most homeowners, their house is their most valuable asset. Not the case for billionaires.
And it's a logical motivator, not an emotional one as you state. You can't take money from people who don't have money.
Says who? Taxes don't exist to "punish" the rich or successful businesses. They exist to pay for things. If someone is mostly looking forward to the taking of money rather than the building of things with that money, they are being ridiculous.
Isn't that what you said? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223139 You didn't say anything about punishment.
I agree taxes are to pay for stuff. Taxing people with money makes the most sense.
Not "because they can afford it" but "because it doesn't hurt." The "hurt" I'm referring to isn't the wallets of the rich, rather the existing revenue, the balance of things, society, etc.
The true sentiments will always depend on who/what is being taxed and who/what is advocating for the tax. Almost everyone I see supporting this particular tax is supporting it more as a means of "punishment" that can be levied against the rich.
> Taxing people with money makes the most sense.
Sure. Not sure how you would tax people without money... but it is always going to come down to "how much" and "what for", more than anything. Then you have to contend with downstream effects. People with money can and will move if they feel they are being taxed too much. This is no different than setting the price of a widget. You can always raise it but then you will have less buyers.
That's a wealth tax by another name.
There will almost never be a government that does this because the incentives are not there.
There are more incentives in prolonging a problem than there are in solving it.
> Or run for office yourself
Winning an election against career politicians is difficult and next to impossible. There is virtually no way to do this without having backing. As soon as you have backing you have new incentives. The purpose of a career politician and the machine behind them is to win elections. That may or may not involve solving problems that matter to constituents.
A government that gets elected by cutting income taxes? You're right you aren't cut out for politics.
This is proven by looking at the disastrous Trump admin. Who came in thinking "Uh government is so bloated we need to spend smarter and cut waste" and did DOGE for a bit, then quit, and added more money to our deficit and barely saved anything and spent more money hiring back essential people bc they couldn't distinguish essential spend from frivolous spend
Which mistakes of France and GB are you referring to? The money (90%) will go to health care spending. So, yes - vastly overpriced crap - France spends half for universal care with better outcomes.
Let’s assume a founder has 10%. There are two options to prevent them from becoming a billionaire. Either that company cannot grow past a 10 billion market cap. That would destroy retirement for most normal Americans. The other option is to force the founder to liquidate to pay taxes. If so, then yes, they would stop further building out these companies at a certain market cap once they have no real stake or say in them anymore. Why would they work for free once they are at the limit. I wouldn’t and I think almost nobody would.
Billionaires are a symptom of a problem that the US had under control for almost half a century until Reagan basically broke American economic policy.