I can't tell what's worse: intentionally obscuring the fact that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax or unintentionally forgetting that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax.
I can't tell what's worse: intentionally obscuring the fact that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax or unintentionally forgetting that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax.
On the other hand, almost a majority of people already pay no federal income tax anyways. Mitt Romney mentioned a number of 47% during his presidential campaign and that number was mostly true. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/sep/18/mitt-romne...
People love to talk about the marginal tax rates but not the average tax rates. And I think that’s right because the conversation should be focused on the wealthiest people.
> On the other hand, almost a majority of people already pay no federal income tax anyways.
That's an irrelevant diversion though, because the measure that matters when discussing the fairness of taxes is how much people are left with at the end after paying whatever taxes they pay, including sales tax, income tax, and any other kind of tax. And for those particular people you're talking about the answer is very little, next to none, and for the people for whom a wealth tax would even apply the answer is unimaginable amounts.
i hate when people bring it up. everybody that works pays payroll taxes which is around 25% when you count both sides.
It’s 15.3% counting both sides, and capped. And it’s the only “tax” that is paid back, at progressive rates, because it’s a retirement annuity not an income tax.
It’s an income tax wearing the trenchcoat of a retirement annuity- it’s not one for any practical purpose.
Federal payroll taxes in the US are 15.3% (7.65% for each side).
Social security and Medicare are also payroll "taxes" in that they're not optional and are automatically deducted.
> intentionally obscuring the fact that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax or unintentionally forgetting that the vast majority of people would pay ~no wealth tax.
I consider this fine, because proponents of a wealth tax consistently omit that it will ultimately be the middle class who pays the tax... the ultra-wealthy and wealthy can afford sophisticated strategies to render a wealth tax ineffective against them, and if that doesn't work they can just move somewhere else. Income tax was the same.
Them moving somewhere else is an easy fix. Just put an exit tax on the ultra wealthy.
If the ultra wealthy move out a few people will lose their jobs (their family office, some accountants, some property managers will work the same job for someone else). But overall people will not be worse off.
We have been doing this exact experiment in Seattle sine 2024 when Bozos moved out. And last month Howard Schultz moved out as well. The sky did not fall.
Another example- did the average Londoner get better off when Russian oligarch parked their money in London in early 2000s? And likewise - was the average Londoner worse off when that money was frozen in Jan 2022 when Ukrainian war started? Not really…
As has happened in nearly every European state with wealth taxes. But the elephant in the room is that these policies give the same ineffective, corrupt and entirely worthless politicians even more money to "manage". The very definition of delusional wishful thinking.
this is the key fact. If a wealth tax were enacted and a responsible group were endowed with the money we might reap some value from a wealth tax. Giving American Politicians more tax money is like giving a heroine addict more heroine.
You seem to forget that given the way taxes work, eventually, anyone, with any amount of money, will be considered "wealthy" because we'll keep running out of other people's money.
You're wealthy, or the definition will change to include you. The spice must flow.
Running out of billionaire's money would be a good thing[1].
If they don't have money then they can't buy elections and aren't insulated from the consequences of their actions.
[1] Note: I don't really think we should literally take all their money. Just enough to reduce some of the power imbalance.
All their "money" is in business ownership percentages. It's not money.
>because we'll keep running out of other people's money.
that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, for two reasons. For one, as even Paul points out in the piece, a wealth tax below what's practically a risk free return on capital (~5%) doesn't eat into the capital stock, it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases.
Secondly, there's no monotonous historical direction towards higher wealth taxes, in fact the opposite. We're living in an age of low wealth taxation, with only half a dozen countries or so, if I'm not mistaken, imposing one at all.
The risk free rate of return is usually only a point or two above inflation, and I’d argue that real wealth, rather than nominal wealth, is the true measure to look at to determine whether someone’s position has improved, stayed flat, or decreased.
> it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases
But what does this mean? If you have a load of money in some companies, that's helping to fund their activities, and the companies' share price goes up a bit, you haven't gained any money. And you won't gain any until you sell some shares, which is already taxed.
The ultra rich are desperate to maintain their exclusive access to essentially pay no taxes through their "Buy, Borrow, Die" strategy (if you don't understand what that is you should stop and read this: https://gemini.google.com/share/e230bcecaaeb) and so they are using scare tactics / gaslighting around wealth taxes because a wealth tax would disrupt this essentially zero tax strategy.
"Buy, borrow, die" is a bit of a bogeyman of the Left; it's not a common strategy for HNW or UHNW individuals, and to the extent it is used, there are much better ways to close it than a wealth tax, which is coarse and rife with implementation issues.
The main implementation issue with a wealth tax is that it doesn’t at all interact with the capital gains tax. It’s easy to fix the implementation issue by integrating the wealth tax into the capital gains tax (call it unrealized capital gains tax for starters), make the tax refundable when an asset loses value, and netting it against the actual capital gains tax.
With this framing, the wealth tax isn’t a new tax; it is only prepaying the capital gains tax instead of allowing it to be deferred forever.
Unrealised capital gains tax requires some way to assess the value of assets. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
It already exists in the form of property taxes, which are quite unpopular.
If most people you meet will pay a wealth tax how can you remember those who don't
Don't speak to loudly of this fact, otherwise some leftist politician could come to the conclusion that human capital – the discounted cash flow of one's future labor income – should be taxed as wealth, too.