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.

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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.

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philipallstar a day ago | parent [-]

If your goal is to reduce investment that creates jobs for labour, then you should do that.

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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!

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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.