> Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.
But what is wealth? And when should you tax it?
Let's say I take a piece of duct tape and a banana and ducttape the banana to a wall.... how much tax should I pay for that? I mean... how much could a banana cost?
If i sell that "art", for example for $6.2M (yes, it sold for that much), then sure, i did my "work", earned $6.2M, and in the current system i'm taxed for my "work" (well.. income for my work).
So, by your logic, when should I get taxed? And for what value? The net worth of that banana on the wall is $1, so should I be taxed on that value? But if someone wants to pay $6.2M for that, should my tax change, even before it's bought? Do I get my taxes back if he changes his mind?
What if instead I start a small company named Sava (a river nearby) that sells books. Do I get taxed now, when the value of the company is $10k in books in the warehouse? What if someone believes in my company so much, he wats to buy 1 millionth of my company for $1000, should I be taxed on the theoretic value of my company (1B now)? Or should I be taxed only when I actually sell that stock and earn the money?
Yes, life is not fair, kids of rich parents start with a lot of money. My parents were not rich, but believed in the future of computing and bought me (a kid back then) a computer in the time when you had to take out a loan to get one. My friends parents bought him a motorcycle. I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?
Instead of focusing on taking away stuff where the taxes were already paid, lets rather focus on people like bezos paying the same amount of taxes as other businesses do, like mom and pop book stores (i'm talking percentages, not net values), and to stop the abuse of every goddamn tax loophole they abuse now.
You're basically describing one way the rich dodge wealth taxes and saying we can't do it because it's hard to figure the value of some things out.
I don't deny it's very tricky and people will absolutely do their best to dodge as much as possible, but that doesn't invalidate the purpose they serve. You can't claim those hundreds of properties you have are worth $1.
I'm by no means an expert but my idea would be to tax rich people yearly after a cap. We don't want to tax workers but the whole swath of parasites that simply extract from society.
Your company example is odd. Can you lend based on your theoretical valuation of $1B? Then perhaps we tax if you do. I don't know all the answers off the top of my head and neither should I.
That doesn't mean we let people accumulate wealth infinitely. It's a problem and there's no way to ignore it. The more wealth is accumulated, the more they accumulate and for a lot of assets it is literally a zero sum game. If they own everything, we own nothing.
Posing edge cases and possible dodge scenarios like you did is exactly what a politician should be spending their time on when proposing these.
> I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?
Not more than what's fair. Unless you're secretly a multi-millionaire, this wouldn't ever affect you. I don't understand people's fears of taxation on the super rich when they aren't even close to that.
These taxes are not for working people. If you don't live off a trust fund from daddy you probably don't have to worry. Well, if we're being honest, this will never happen because they own the politicians too... but a man can dream.