| ▲ | sebzim4500 a day ago |
| Doesn't Switzerland do this instead of capital gains? Makes sense IMO, much better to tax wealth than discourage transactions. |
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| ▲ | spacebanana7 a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Taxing capital assets by taking large portions of their value destroys value by forcing liquidity events. Think forcing sales of farms, factories and domain names. I much prefer land value taxes (and similar taxes on non capital wealth like jewellery) and leisure taxes (ideally taxing people for every hour they don't work). Of course these are difficult to administer in practice, but British business rates and US overtime tax discounts effectively approximate this. |
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| ▲ | bitmasher9 a day ago | parent [-] | | The idea of taxing people for not working an hour sounds incredibly dystopian. | | |
| ▲ | overtone1000 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I had the same reaction. It also seems easy to pull apart. What about disabled people who are unable to work? I think something more like "investment income should be taxed at a higher rate than income earned through labor," accomplishes similar goals but is more intuitive and less problematic. | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar a day ago | parent [-] | | If your goal is to reduce investment that creates jobs for labour, then you should do that. | | |
| ▲ | overtone1000 a day ago | parent [-] | | This is a false dichotomy. Laborers could just as easily invest in job-creating endeavors as passive income earners. All taxes cause economic drag, not _just_ business and investment income taxes. The economy includes every participant, and laborers are not an externality. | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm sorry, I don't follow. Yes, people who are labourers could also somehow creating funding pools that are big enough to start companies, but so what? That doesn't negate the fact that they will be disincentivised to do so by a tax on investment income. |
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| ▲ | superxpro12 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What will they think of next? tying healthcare to employment that you lose the moment you get fired to meet quarterly profits? Madness i tell you! | |
| ▲ | fl4regun a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not as dystopian as the ability to get wealthier without working and pay no taxes (and even IF you sell to realize gains, your tax liability is still lower than someone who made money through labour) | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your definition of "wealthier" is stupid, though, because it relies on a measure that doesn't actually apply to the person in question. A share's price is just "the last sale price of the same type of share", and that is multiplied by the person's shareholding to get their "wealth". However they don't have any more money by this happening - it's just a huge assumption that the share price would stay the same across all their shares if they sold right now. The time we actually know what money they would make, making it concrete for tax, is when they sell. And we already do this. |
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| ▲ | philipallstar a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Makes sense IMO, much better to tax wealth than discourage transactions. It's much, much worse to tax wealth. |
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| ▲ | overtone1000 a day ago | parent [-] | | I disagree with you in the other thread, so I want to balance that by saying that I strongly agree with you here. |
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| ▲ | axus a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the government forced transfer of ownership %, instead of forcing a sale, it would be not as bad? |
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| ▲ | philipallstar 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's identical really. It's just instituting the nationalisation over time of all businesses. | | |
| ▲ | sebzim4500 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | In an ideal world, the government would sell some of whatever shares it gets at good times to pay off debt, for example when interest is high just before a tranche of government bonds expire |
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| ▲ | sebzim4500 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | They could accept either I suppose |
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| ▲ | tim333 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Apparently not. Googling, no one seems to actually do it in spite of some politicians talking about it. It seems quite a bad idea from a practical point of view. Not so much because it's socialist but it leads to all sorts of extra paperwork for no good reason. Like say you buy some utility company share for your retirement in 20 years and it fluctuates. Do you want to be valuing it and paying tax and then claiming it back when it goes down every year for 20 years or just declare the gain at the end? |
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| ▲ | philipallstar a day ago | parent [-] | | Well, it is socialist in that the government basically gets to own more of everything you own every year. |
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| ▲ | briandw a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Really? How? Show me a country that taxes wealth and is prosperous. Taxing unrealized gains results in owing tax on money you don’t have and makes starting a funded company impossible. |
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| ▲ | superxpro12 a day ago | parent [-] | | and on the other hand we have trillionaires who spend their wealth on fascist party propaganda and censorship |
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