Assuming billionaires were going to get a special tax, how would you actually determine how much to tax them? Sure some would be straightforward like Musk where it’s entirely derived from a few companies with known ownership stakes, but what about all the others?
We don’t even know the names of most of the billionaires. With all the games they can play to hide money, now made even easier thanks to the changes Trump made in his first few months, how would you even figure out who and what amount to tax? They don’t have a normal salary or easily documented income like everyone else.
One rifle per family.
Not exactly a solution for the ultra rich oligarchs, but a progressive consumption tax would be a good policy. It would be applied as a sales tax on everything, everyone would get regular rebate checks to cancel out the tax on spending up to the exemption. It could make all the megayachts more expensive.
5% wealth tax, and no loans for corpos or other orgs, only for humans and even then it would be considered a charity (meaning if they default money goes puff), this would mostly be coming from tax that was collected earlier.
Also no patents, only open source research. So people can set up bussinesses easily and anywhere, buyers will pay for labour.
We already know how to grow food and build houses, let’s end these issues first and only then focus on advancing science and tech, and any advancement should be for betterment of all humanity, not for individualistic gains.
An incremental step would be to look at the tax cuts of the last few decades, and role them back. That especially includes other types of income and passthroughs
As someone who has participated in startups, the options and shares market is a rigged game. We also need to restore rules for the ultra wealthy so they play the same game as we do
Wealth tax and land value tax
ultra 1040 without lawyers to drive buses through loopholes
Wealth caps
Worldwide wealth caps
Start at 100 million…after a decade, lower that to 10 million
Anything, income, gift, whatever, over that goes 100% to taxes
Nobody had the right or need to be worth over 10 million dollars
Wealth caps are also an extremely simple solution, a very simple rule to add to the current system to fix so maby issues.
Governments will get so much more Income that they can immediately do free healthcare, free education, etc.
Nobody will have a huge amount of money, and as such, a huge amount of power anymore which will lower the chance of wars. With that we can significantly lower expenses to killing materials and instead focus on life
We can solve poverty, which, in addition to free mental health care, will also solve most crimes (yeah, crimes of passion will remain)
We can finally spend a huge amount of resources on climate change and fixing the environment around us!
We can make government funded non profit investment foundations for infrastructure projects, for independent journalism, etc so that we have great independent news and great infrastructure
A simple rule with so many great consequences…
But it would would require the rich allowing us to implement that simple rule. World wide. So it won’t ever happen
Sounds good in theory. But it is inoperative in a capitalist society. Here’s a thought exercise:
Management might have a salary of $5 million but stock worth 1 billion. Maybe you expect they divest their stock? Okay, who buys? Who has control of the company? Does it become a societal asset? Can’t have a company run by a million-person committee.
Your wealth cap works where someone has liquidity over 100million. I suggest that few do as it’s not a tax-advantaged strategy.
The biggest loophole they use is taking out loans and using stock as collateral. Stock is supposed to be unrealized so if it is used as part of ANY transaction it should instantly become taxable.
Then every 5 years or so, force everyone to “realize” their stock value for taxation
I feel like that just overcomplicates things. As long as they can’t use the money, they’re not causing harm, right?
If you want a more consistent stream of income, a wealth tax would make more sense.
But they are using the money. It’s invested, it’s supporting a profitable cause, driving an agenda
I’ve heard this before but don’t understand how it works… Eventually they’ll need to pay it off, no? So they sell stocks to pay the loan?
yeah, but by the time you have to pay it back your stock has accrued more value, so you just take out another loan. as long as the assets you possess are plentiful you can just keep borrowing against them.
this is also why the rich want super low interest rates, because they get the most leverage from them and they want asset values to skyrocket. the scheme doesn’t work if your assets are stagnant or decrease in value.
Its a buy borrow die strategy. You take loans and refi them to be larger and larger until you die, when you do, the cost basis is reset (so if your cost basis was 1,000,000, but you investments are now worth 20,000,000, your cost basis becomes an untaxable 20,000,000) this new “stepped up” untaxable money (in investments) is used to pay off the debt by selling some assets, lets say 5,000,000 in debt covered by selling (untaxable) investments. This would be for someone with a handful of millions of dollars, I can only imagine what it is like for someone who has hundreds of billions in assets…
Tax the total of any loans backed by speculative assets taken out in a one year period as both realized gains and income if they total more than 100x the average take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners (currently around $16k).
If they want higher loans without taxes, people have to be paid more.
EDIT: formatting
A potential mathematical approach to equal taxation that works in any country:
- Calculate the average income of every citizen. Let A = the average income (amount per year)
- Set a baseline tax amount for the average (e.g. 10%). Let P = baseline tax percentage
- Given a person’s income, calculate how far above or below they are compared to the average. Let I = a person’s income. We can calculate the difference, D, with D = I - A. A positive value means the person’s income is above average, whereas negative is below.
- Calculate the difference as a percentage. Let Q = D / A
- Calculate the percentage of the tax percentage. This will determine how much more or less a person will have to pay: R = Q * P
- Finally, calculate the person’s unique tax amount: T = P + R. If R was a positive value, that means the person will pay more. If R was a negative value, they pay less. If R = 0, they pay the base amount.
Example: Let’s say the average income per year is $50,000 USD, and the baseline tax rate is 10%
So A =50,000 and P = 10% / 100 = 0.1
Given a person’s income: $30,000/yr:
I = 30,000
Calculate the difference:
D = 30,000 – 50,000 = –20,000
Q = –20,000 / 50,000 = –0.4 (–40%)
Calculate how much more/less the person pays:
R = –0.4 * 0.1 = –0.04 (–4%)
Calculate the unique tax amount:
T = 0.1 + (–0.04) = 0.1 – 0.04 = 0.06 (6%)
There might be a better set of formulas, but this is what I came up with. Let me know if I made a mistake in my math.
I really like this approach. The only problem I see with this is that the measure of center you’re using for the calculation would have to be chosen well. Maybe a weighted average towards lower incomes or using a median, but properly choosing the measure of center would be really important along with verifying that a linear increase or decrease in percentage is also the best solution.
I think figuring out the rate at which taxation should increase relative to ones income should be the first step, then mapping that onto a set of equations that could calculate taxes would be the best approach.
So someone with an income of $1M (20A) has a tax liability of $2M, and earning $10M means you owe $200M? At least with traditional tax brackets, it’s hard (but not impossible) to accidently get marginal rates over 100%.
Yeah, there’s probably a better set of formulas to use.
The main idea behind my idea is that people who make more pay more, whereas people who make less pay less. Additionally, those who don’t make money pay no tax as it works out mathematically.
Demand full proof of ownership from any company and asset. If they provide strawman, tax those.
If they don’t provide verifiable information, seize the companies and assets and put them into public hands, or if that’s not possible (digital services for example) deny them to operate in your country. The actual owners will reveil themselves quickly. Then tax them.
100% of what they make over $1B.
I think OP is asking how you figure that out. In general, billionaires don’t “make” anything - on paper.
Close all the loopholes that let them skirt the capital gains taxes and other nonsense. Make it illegal to use stocks as collateral on loans. Etc.
With a large bladed machine.
I would do a small transaction tax like 1% that should hopefully put the brakes on short term trading and tax inheritance the same as lottery winnings. Tax investment the same as income. for corps tax them based on their entire holdings right up to their top owner with all its subsidiaires but they can deduct any tax they pay in authorized countries (so the way we do sanctions now we could take away their taxes being able to be deducted).
You have a special division of the IRS whose job is to identify the top few hundred wealthiest individuals and then tax them. These people wouldn’t have to self report like the rest of us.
Idk how it is in the US but in Canada, they already have all our numbers. Really wouldn’t be hard to enforce except many billionaires wealth doesn’t come from their income.
Just tax assets too
