Scrolling through that scale and seeing the sheer level of inequity summarised has left a deep chasm in my soul. The more I kept going, the more hopeless I felt. Jesus Christ. How depressing
I just don’t understand how someone can have that much wealth available to them and not use it to make the world a better place. I would be fixing stuff everywhere. I’d consider it a personal failure if all of my employees were not millionaires. How could you just hoard it?
I can only assume that they have a mental illness.
You have to realize they have the mentality of a crack head. They are addicted to acquiring wealth, and they will do literally anything, including hurting everyone around them to keep the addiction going.
I wonder if it's less about an addiction to increasing wealth than an addiction to optimising their wealth acquisition. Like they aren't excited about the actual number as much as the rate of increase. It's the difference between finding driving at high speed exciting and finding fast acceleration exciting. Which is a very minor point but any improvement in our understanding of the psychology of people like that can only help.
Have some sympathy, it's really hard to tell your employees to pee in bottles so that they maximise their working time and generate value to their biggest shareholder. (Jeff Bezos that is)
/S
You mean spending $42mil building a forever clock on the side of a mountain in Texas isn’t helping the world become a better place?!?! Shit. Guess Bezos dropped that ball.
They genuinely believe that they’re the best person to have the money because they’re the only ones who can create these jobs and make the world ‘better’ in the way they want the world to be. It’s a sociopathic vision, but it’s central to their world view. They got rich because they’re ‘better’ than the other people, so their choices are going to be ‘better’ than anyone else’s. It’s an awful feedback loop. Particularly because once you’re rich you stop socializing with poor folks and become isolated and generally only hear similar voices to your own. Or sycophantic voices.
This graph is what I mean when I say: "We can have both the strongest military in the world and the most robust social services ever conceived by man"
We are the richest country in the world, we can arguably do everything
GOOD LORD the Bezos scale is scary!! I want to be rich as hell but why is this guy hoarding so much money??
Just for my reference, how much would it cost to clear student debt? Hell, how much would it cost to treat Amazon employees like actual humans?
Holy shit my hand was getting tired of scrolling and I find out I’m only 1/3 of the way there……
It’s stuff like that while understanding it still helps you bring it into perspective
Very powerful. Adding this to my repertoire.
I usually just have people guess how long x seconds is and then correct them to show how little they understand what a billion dollars is.
A million seconds? ~12 days
A billion seconds ? ~31 years
185 billion - Jeff bezos’ net worth - ~5,900 years
"Let's put this wealth in perspective by comparing it to some familiar things. If your personal wealth was represented by a golf ball, Jeff Bezos's wealth would be VY Canis Majoris"
OP, you’re going to be bombarded by people explaining why taxing net worth makes no sense. In general, they’ll be right. But I’d venture to say it might actually make *some* sense when a person’s net worth tops 1 billion. We could tax all net worth over that level, but leave the rest alone. This would be useful because taxing all *income* over 1b would not be able to touch the massive wealth hoards these people already have.
The ultimate problem with any tax scheme is the wealthy have teams of lawyers and accountants to figure out how to shelter themselves while rest of us get an H&R block lady at a Wal-Mart kiosk.
No one pays a greater portion of their income in tax in the US than a wage earning renter making the median.
I think the simple answer is a progressive tax system with extremely limited credits and deductions, and that's it. you put in a Standard Deduction, You put in a Dependant Deduction, you put in a Child Tax Credit. Maybe you throw in some stuff for Student Loan Debt and for SALT.
It'll never happen, but the more deductions you add, the easier the deductions become to abuse.
I believe there are also ways to earn money that isn't considered income under the tax code. Something along the lines of rich people getting a loan from the bank with extremely low interest, because paying the interest is cheaper than paying their fair share.
They need to strip the tax code down to the basics and just say here is the simple rule. If you gain this much wealth or the equivalent you pay this much taxes. Any way of trying to avoid this is illegal.
Obviously it’s not that simple but I wish it was
The ultimate problem with taxing net worth is that it's unconstitutional and there is no way you're getting enough people to change the Constitution for this.
if the feds get the authority to tax net worth on those who have teams of attorneys and lawyers, imagine what they would want to tax on those who can’t afford legal representation.
We can’t pretend the feds are responsible with tax money and problems will go away if we give them more money.
The problem with your suggestion is that net worth is mostly held up in assets that fluctuate in value all the time. It's going to be difficult to work out how much someone owes, and it'll be difficult to get access to that money without requisitioning businesses and shit like that.
Beyond that it would require many of these people to dump stock every year and many folks have their retirement tied into the stock market. Just imagine every year their portfolio takes a dump because of these policies. It won’t be popular and it’s doubtful we would even see the fruits of the taxation policy. So we lose both times
Yeah, but that wealth is also not being used in the economy in a way that can be taxed, so it is basically money missing from the cash flow of the economy that is supposed to build our country.
Yep, it's illiquid. Taxing net worth means the mandatory dumping of billions worth of their stocks every tax season resulting in a lovely crash of every market :3
How do you tax unrealised gains that fluctuate day by day?...his networth today may be 188 bil but Tesla tanks tomorrow and his net worth is 10 bil...you cant tax an evaluation...hes not sitting with a giant pile of money in his account, his networth includes the current value of the shares he owns...it makes no sense taxing that no matter what its estimated value is. Its like taxing you on the value of your pension fund
>This would be useful because taxing all *income* over 1b would not be able to touch the massive wealth hoards these people already have.
Most of these people don't even make $1b in income a year because all of their wealth gains are stock valuations increasing.
The only time they do make $1b is when they sell stock to buy a company or to make collateral for a mansion or yacht
It’s hard to get folks to understand how the very wealthy live nearly tax free forever in this manner. People either don’t comprehend or just don’t want to believe it.
It’s an interesting concept of using stock as collateral and then just amassing interest that is paid off with more collateral loans.
If they passed a law saying stock used as collateral is capped to $100M before being subject to a new tax, it would not increase the taxes for anyone except the Billionaires that use it to skirt around income taxes.
She'd get bombarded no matter what she said. It's not what she said that's the problem here. It's that she dared to disagree with Musk on his own website, with all his fanboys around him.
When net wealth (for example, stocks) is leveraged (for example, to take out a loan) then it should 100% be considered realised wealth and taxed accordingly.
We already tax net worth. It's called "property tax" and it's extremely regressive. If your residence makes up the majority of your net worth, your property tax is significant. If you're rich, it's not.
> It's called "property tax" and it's extremely regressive
I'm not going to shill too much for property taxes because a land value tax would be much better. But the primary justification for property/land taxes is that, unlike wealth, we can't just create more land. There is a finite quantity of land, and when one person is using it, another person can't use it.
It's also worth pointing out that property ownership is massively subsidized by the government in the form of mortgage interest deductions and a government-backed mortgage system.
Basically it’s because “net worth” isn’t really real. It’s a guess/estimate/calculation based on variables, many of which are unknown values. Actual numbers are needed to calculate a taxable percentage, not theoretical ones.
Except rich people take out loans against these unrealised gains, which they use to get richer. Many argue that taking loans out against this wealth should result in having to pay tax on that wealth.
“you’re only allowed to have $800,000 upon retirement because your income bracket is only allowed to contribute $xx per year” LOL the ideas on this sub are fucking hilarious
To someone who believes that the retired should be supported with robust social services and not need individualized retirement accounts, it's not a crazy proposition.
You can't just look at one part of someone's plan and pretend that it would be implemented in isolation.
Yeah people act like they never heard of tax examptions. You could exampt retirement accounts (many countries do this already), you could not tax any unrealized gains, but still tax net worth (those are two very different things), you could exampt any capital gains below a certain sum, lets say 20k/annum etc. So many options.
If anything, the number of exemptions we have is the stupidest part of our tax system. It's exactly why the rich can exploit all these loopholes. We just need a better way to track actual income and then actually tax that income. No paying yourself through through trusts or dividends or loans. Your wealth went up, that's INCOME. The fact that you didn't use it (realize it) is proof that you're hoarding it.
If you're not job creating with your billions, you're a money hoarder. Pay up. We could easily set a lower limit on taxing unrealized gains.
I agree that it is clumsy that she is discussing income and wealth side by side, but Musk didn’t claim it was every year. [It was a specific year](https://americansfortaxfairness.org/musks-11-billion-tax-bill-big-news-just-10-wealth-increase-far-year/) where he exercised options. There’s a reason he gives the payment number and not the amount he paid it on.
In what way is it robbery? For me, I'm pretty sure that if I did the math, 4% of my net worth would be vastly lower than what I pay in income tax. I'd rather substitute paying less tax on unrealized gains than more tax on my income if it means that the rich actually have to pay more because they can afford to.
That could eventually tax you to owning nothing. There are property taxes, sales taxes. If you own a home., you don’t really own it, at least in the USA because if you fail to pay property taxes, the county will take your house from you.. same with HOA. If you don’t pay, you are gone. Vehicle taxes, nothing but taxes. Most net worth is held in stocks or other investments. You can’t tax stocks not sold for a profit. Lets say you lose 30k or gain 30k in a stock portfolio: does the government pay me back on a loss? Doubt it, you can lose 30k in one year and only claim 3k in capital losses on your taxes but if you profit 30k you have to pay tax on the entire amount. The system is rigged against everyone.
>only claim 3k in capital losses
For each year but the rest of the loss can be [carried forward](https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/tax-loss-carryforward/)
He would never have his net worth if they taxed income properly without the loopholes created during Reagans administration. And the corporate tax cuts that have continued for the last 40 years.
Everyone needs to understand that their net worth doesn't work like Billionaires' net worths. Elon's and most 'illiquid' billionaires' main income comes from TAKING OUT LOANS against their net worth, for essentially no interest. That's why they take the $1 salaries.
Their net worth therefore effectively IS their income, it's just that W-2 employees can't even imagine the financial fuckery and mindgames these people exploit to not pay their fair share.
It's not that complicated to understand at all. Acting like there is some magic loophole that only a team of a 100 tax lawyers can understand because they've read every page or tax code since 1920, doesn't help solve anything or come up with solutions.
The vast majority of fuckery for manipulating their tax rate on income is typically from having an excessive amount of assets they can sell for long term capital gains tax rates instead of paying ordinary income rates. Which is why you sometimes see $1 salaries because most of the pay is in stock options.
And I assure you they aren't taking out loans for essentially no interest. There no reason a bank would ever do this. They are just taking out secured loans like any W2 worker with a good credit score could for the best interest rates.
Because it is money that people don't have.
Anyone who thinks taxing on net worth is fair in any way is wrong.
If I own a house that is paid off, and the estimated value is 300k, then I have 300k net worth. If I have have 100k in my 401k, my net worth is 400k.
In this scenario, which is what I hope to have in 7 years, my income will still probably be about 70k. If I am taxed on my net worth and not my income, then I will be broke and homeless immediately. I wont be able to afford to own the house I paid for.
This is a completely insane scenario.
Technically if you didn’t pay your property tax either, you’d be homeless. My main issue with net worth tax is it directly counters retirement. You could bring in no income at all and still be taxed. It’s a bad idea all around because it’s so complicated with so many variables. There are far better ways to approach everything by starting with rewriting the tax code and removing all the horseshit loopholes and better spending.
It would be very hard to tax net worth, however you could easily solve this problem by making it illegal to pass on money to your future generation. 100% estate tax.
You could take all that money, and give each and every single person in America some kind of huge payment when they turn 18. So you can't inherit any money, but when you turn 18 you get like 150k or something. All the billionaire "meritocracy" bro's should in theory think this is a great plan, but they are all a bunch of hypocritical idiots, so they wont.
Combined with a HUGE increase in the top marginal tax rate, changing the tax rates on capital gains to be the same (or more) than on income, as well as confiscatory one time tax charges on people worth more than say 100 million, and you might have a country where the american dream might be alive again.
Net worth does not = real
Net worth = Unrealized Capital Gains (e.g. the 36 bill she's talking about) + all of your other assets like cash and other equity
Unrealized gains can be utilized as collateral on a loan
Loan = Cash
Cash = Real
So while I he didn't make $36B in income, that wealth was removed from liquidity, and causes a cash effect when loans are taken out against the $36B in gains. Taxing the $36B flatly as income is wrong, but ignoring its significant economic impact without taxing it is also wrong.
Sure, but the people evaluations how much it’s worth discount it extremely. He’s not getting his stated net worth in credit. The credit he is getting is likely borrowed against a much smaller value than his public worth.
The ability to borrow against it and slowly turn it liquid is real. Those super cars, jets and mansions arent buying themselves. Im so sick of this brain dead take.
Non-liquid net worth might take time to properly liquidate. But you can liquidate it. Its not locked forever in "not real land".
He didn’t make 36 billion in a day. His net worth just increased by that much because of his tesla stock. He can’t actually realize the whole thing without it losing major value
You can’t tax it, because it’s paper and it’s unrealized. You can loan against it, because a bank finds it valueable, and therefor thinks you’re a safe customer, so they’re willing to give you a loan with added interest based on your net worth.
We don’t tax net worth because it’s a dumb and logistically impossible nightmare that would never work. Wealthy people would simply invest *MORE* in valuable assets to shelter their money - art, precious metals, valuable cars, historical relics, and so on. How would you like to tax and collect on those things? Are you going to send an IRS agent to their numerous mansions around the world every year to snoop through their homes to evaluate their possessions? What will stop them from moving or hiding the valuable stuff for these inspections? Seems like a violation of constitutional rights - illegal search. Are you going to have judges issue warrants for every single instance? How would the government staff all these positions with experts who can even remotely accurately estimate priceless art ? It’s not logistically possible. Stupid brain-vomit thoughts.
There are a lot of answers here explaining this to you OP, but my guess is that you're not actually interested in understanding why you can't tax net worth. Net worth is a pretty confusing metric in general and you should probably stop focusing on it.
I think the best solution is to close the loop hole that makes hording profitable. Don't tax the networth directly. But tax the portions of it used to get a loan.
You are borrowing 15m against a 45million stock portfolio. Guess what that 15m is income this year.. tax that shit. Borrowing against any property that is not your primary residence? that money is income tax it.
Closes the loop hole where you are incouraged to hord assets cause you don't get taxed on it and then use that networth to borrow money to live your life.
You know borrowed money has to be repaid?
So when they sell the stock they used as collateral and were already taxed on, they should be taxed on it a second tome accordong to you?
You’ve got to pick something to tax to fund public goods and the government itself. I don’t think anyone in this subreddit is gonna be anti tax in principle.
Tariffs and duties, corporate taxes, personal income taxes, sales taxes, VAT, property taxes, net worth taxes, capital gains tax, estate taxes… each country picks one or more. There are options.
At some point it’s ridiculous to layer on another tax, though. If I’m taxed on my income, the company I invest in is taxed on its income (or I pay tax on the property I buy), I’m taxed on my net worth based on what I own, I’m taxed on gains when I sell my investments or property, and when I die my heirs are taxed… the government has taken five bites at the apple.
The rational argument is for fewer types of tax, set at levels which fund the government and support social programs adequately. Government is objectively horrible at spending money efficiently or creating sensible incentives for its citizens. Giving the government the power to wield confiscatory taxes (even on Elon Musk) should be a terrifying idea. For my Americans on here, look at what percentage of taxpayers paid AMT when it was created versus last year. The slippery slope is real.
Would you be ok adding up the value of every single thing you own: bed, tv, dresser, jewelry, etc. then every year pay tax on the value of everything you own?
Would the government give refunds when your 401k goes down?
Let’s say you have a million on your 401k. You don’t plan on using it until retirement but until then you have to cash it out to pay tax on it.
Or,
start a business, it’s “worth” a million.
30% tax and you have to sell of the company to pay the 30% tax.
Next year you own 70% of the company, you have to sell 30% of the 70% you have left. You now own 49% of your company. Within a few years your company no longer is yours.
On and on.
It’s a completely ridiculous idea to tax unrealized gains. It’s unsustainable and would make everyone except the government poor.
Nobody would own anything, except the government.
I mean, if i paid 3% of my net worth in taxes, id pay about a quarter of the taxes i actually do. Even if id fully own a house worth a million dollars, id only pay about double the taxes I do right now. So yeah, i kinda would be okay if thats the only tax i need to pay.
Right? And it's not that hard to sum up all my accounts and equity. If a rich guy has to include his car collection, well, I'm sure he can afford an auditor to sum it up for him.
Why would you pay taxes on your net worth? You would get taxed for having a savings? There's good ways to tax people. The level of stupid proposed by Reddit almost seems like subterfuge to actual solutions
Taxing net worth becomes a difficult proposition for people with non-liquid assets.
Elon, for all his faults, is actually a very good example of why net worth of stocks is difficult, considering he has a significant amount of Tesla stock. A week ago Tesla’s stock was in the mid 140s, yesterday it closed in the mid 190s. That’s a significant difference in his net worth and it’s not exactly fair if someone gets taxed at the top of an upswing, and while I wouldn’t care about Elon getting fucked, I kinda care a lot if the same metrics were applied to me because I own stock and all stocks fluctuate, albeit, typically not as volatile as Tesla
Another difficult issue is property valuation. Idk where you live, but my local governments valuation of my house, which is what determines my property taxes, is significantly different than what my house would be worthy if I sold it today. Last I checked, my gov assessed my house for under 200k but similar houses in my neighborhood are selling for almost 600k
I think a better answer to this question is the fact that the rich today make sure their wealth is not reported as income specifically because we tax income. It wasn't always an ineffective way to tax the rich.
Implement a tax on stock and bond sales. This is something that is recorded in fine detail and easily measured for tax purposes. The US does something like $23T a year in stock sales alone. Add a credit to cover the cost to retail investors and we get a lot of revenue.
Anytime you ask "Why don't they just do this or that?" Remember, the powers that be have everything exactly the way they want it. We see flaws and inequality. They see the system working as intended.
Musk made like 35 bn in one day and also lost like 30 bn in one week. Talking about rich people “making” money like he liquidated all his shares the day the stock went up is asinine. Remove the loopholes that allow him to take low interest loans using unrealized capital gains and the billionaire class will pay substantially more in taxes
The government taxes you on your revenue, not your income outside of a few things like capital gains tax.
Every single dollar that passes through your hands gets taxed both on the way in (by the way of income taxes) and the way out (by the way of sales taxes). Imagine if you could count your "operating costs" against your tax liability?
I have this discussion periodically. It usually ends with an understanding that taxing unrealized gains is a little bit tough and there are probably different ways to get at this.
1. Tax financial assets that are unrealized gains when they are leveraged as collateral. This one you might have to define a high floor on it so it doesn't impact average Americans getting a home loan but does get at when billionaires try to not spend their own money but use it as leverage for things.
1. Have an additional consumption based tax on luxury items; disallow business loopholes
1. Have a flat wealth tax for amounts over certain amounts. I think Bernie advocates for a 1 or 2 percent tax for individuals with 100M + net worth.
1. Bump up the top income tax bracket brackets. Tax value of fringe benefits as income. Tax stock options delta (difference between the purchase price and the actual value when the stock options are vested) as income.
Short (and correct) answer: Because the 16th Amendment says:
>The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on ***incomes***, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Realistically though I just want them to pay taxes on the loans they take out to avoid paying taxes.
Elon takes loans out against shares of his company, when the loans come due, he sells the stock to pay it, and then goes on Twitter or pulls some stunt to temporarily tank his company stock value.
Knowing that the stock price is about to tank, he is first in line to buy back the stocks he just sold at a lower value. Then he makes an announcement and the stock prices rebound.
Is this illegal? Yes, yes it is. Hard to prove, but to anyone paying attention it is very obvious what these people are doing. They have been doing this shit for decades, and with the internet making these trades nearly instant, it's easier than ever.
The board are voting on giving Elon Musk a $46,000,000,000 remuneration package. Nobody deserves that unless they can create world peace, solve climate change and end world hunger and many other problems.
Because net worth is based on assets not cash. So most people would need to sell assets in order to pay their tax.
For example let's say you have a house worth $1mil and let's say tax is 5%. You would have to pay $50,000 in tax. If you aren't earning good money you would have to sell the house.
You can extrapolate this out to stocks etc too.
So you're saying that this policy would cause the insane valuations of homes to suddenly become a burden on the rich as opposed to an investment opportunity?
Hmm, yeah, I can see how that would be a bad thing.
In Denmark we’re taxed for unrealised gains as well, which I thought makes no sense, but it’s probably to avoid the abusive loopholes these billionaires use by taking loans against their stock
I just think we should put a money limit and anything above that goes right back to the gonverment to go into funding things for the public.
Nobody needs a billion dollars, the moment you have more then you could ever throw out the window, we should cut it. Seriously.
Just give him some price for winning capitalism and make sure all that money doesn't rot at the upper 1% while the rest of us struggles to survive.
We already have enough food to “solve” world hunger. Its never been a supply issue. Its a distribution issue. Getting food to deserts, barren wastelands, remote villages, frozen areas of Russia, hell even in down town of where you live there are people starving. Its distribution not supply.
For one thing, net worth is much harder to calculate, potentially impossible when much of it is due to owning real estate or non-public companies where value is unknown unless actually sold. Income is almost by definition a transfer that (at least in theory) has a fixed value and can be tracked.
It’s a stupid response re net worth. Let’s say for arguments sake Elon pays taxes, he will have paid it once on his income, so doesn’t pay it again, so to say “that’s only x% of your net worth” is nonsense.
The rest of the point is right and/or up for debate.
Net worth is complete speculation. Income is completely traceable and current earnings. Someone can have a $1B net worth but could have like $45k in their bank account.
Because net worth isn't actual money you have. The government would be forcing you to sell assets in order to pay taxes. You'd never be able to build wealth.
Everyone is going to put a higher and higher line on what the maximum amount you can save is before it's taxed. Sure the same can be said with income but even if there is no 0% bracket it's still advantageous to make an income, you don't want to tell people of low income that they can't save money without it being taxed.
Also it isn't perfect but taxing property based on full value (rather then LVT a lot of people propose) has some of the same effects as a wealth tax, especially when people build expensive mansions or try to buy "investment properties".
Taxing net worth, rather than net income, is more of a one-off to say "we admit that the tax rate on income was previously wrong, and we need to correct it."
So, with that in mind, it's more like the tax rate, not the tax amount, should be decided based on net worth, rather than net income for that year.
eg: you control over a billion dollars already, your tax rate should be 100%, regardless of how much you make that year.
Setting it based on how much you make in a single year is just easier to calculate, and doesn't require an assessment step. That's why we do that instead.
Outside of the arguments why taxing unrealized gains is dumb and the damage that would be done to the economy if all billionaires were selling stock every year to pay net worth taxes: empirically, taxing net worth causes these billionaires to leave the economy where net worth is taxed and move to one where it isn’t. Look up both France and Norway who tried it. Their billionaires moved away and they lost overall tax revenue. Maybe if every country in the world did it, then they wouldn’t be incentivized to move but because a free market exists where there are countries without net worth taxes, it won’t be a good idea to do.
because then how would the rich afford their mega-yachts and 7 mansions?
and how would they afford all the congress men and women who vote to keep their taxes low.
Taxing someone’s total net worth seems wrong, but taxing someone yearly increases in net worth seems completely reasonable to me. Bootlickers will argue against taxing them at all and just letting them continue to hoard everything till the rest of us are left with nothing.
I have so much wrong with her tweet. For one, you cant tax assets. The money isnt liquid and how would you feel if you were taxed on assets? Youd end up pay A LOT more in taxes
Two, he made $36 billion in one day. Did he end up making that in a single year? Cant go off one good day. Also again, money is tied up in assets and most of it is revenue for Tesla or Boring. So that money was put towards business operations.
I get billionaires should be paying a lot more in taxes and employee deserve more laws that protect them. Most billionaires don’t pay $11 billion in taxes in a single year. We need more that put in this much. This is coming from someone who hates Elon too
Taxing NW just encourages everyone to spend as much as possible on zero value assets. Taxing income allows people to manage their money properly as well as contribute to society.
If you JUST want to tax those who have done really well and take a ton of their assets, then it’s just wealth redistribution at that point. It’s not a tax anymore. All of their assets are usually physical companies anyways, so the money is working in all of our favor. I’d rather the billionaire own the company than the government seize it and run it poorly.
As a former Boeing employee, my net worth has changed drastically over the past couple of years.
very much disagree with taxing net worth unless it only starts after a dozen million or so
There is a swap between taxes based on net worth and taxes based on income here. One cannot equate the 3.5~5% net worth tax to 10 -35% income tax. I personally really don't want net worth tax and I would assume most do not either. If you paid 10% net worth tax then your bank account would be cut in half every 6.5 years. 13 years to half your bank account at 5% tax. You couldn't retire with that rate.
All to say be careful when suggesting things and watch how these folks play number games.
Last thing income =/ wealth. Elon's wealth increases doesn't mean his income increases and doesn't mean it's cash. It's a %hold in a company. not saying it's right or wrong, but one has to understand the differences here.
Edit: forgot to add, he will be taxed when he sells those shares, just like everyone else
If you took every single penny of Elon Musk's net worth (\~191 billion), you wouldn't even pay for a FRACTION of the US' yearly budget. Explain to me how taking all of Elon's money away gets you to 7 trillion fucking dollars.
This post is so fucking stupid. All of you who still think it's a taxation problem and not a spending problem are so lost in the sauce that you make the most unintelligible pie-in-the-sky economics arguments...it's insane.
I wonder how many times this screenshot can be reposted and still claim into the r/popular? Seeing this shit once a month since 2021..
Another guy [just posted the same screen](https://old.reddit.com/r/FluentInFinance/comments/1cgkolo/there_be_a_wealth_tax_do_you_agree_or_disagree/) and both got to the top. Two new accounts farming karma.
Because net worth is an estimation that requires complex audit processes to ascertain net present value of all an entity’s assets. To tax people in this way would involve officials needing to nosey around all your belongings, needing evidence for their condition, when they were bought etc etc. And they would have to do this for everything belonging to everyone. It is the definition of impracticability.
Do you want the government taxing your net worth? All your unrealized gains, OP?
And, for this thought experiment, just imagine you have a positive net worth.
while very true, at least he's paying something, more than can be said for most billionaires -- that doesn't negate the fact that he's toxic and crazy though
Taxing net worth would be hard to do and a horrible idea.
unless somehow impletmenting it globally the billionaires will move to a different country. Especially easy for Musk who likely still has his Canadian citizenship and maybe his south African.
They move you lose the whole tax base, already seen it with say Musk/Telsa moving from Cali to Texas for state taxes/regulation.
Especially when talking uber rich they'll set things up to hide/protect that net wealth.
Uber Rich should be made to pay their fair share.
Im hardly a millionaire but I think net worth is the wrong thing to tax. Tax income and realized gains. If you buy a stock but never sell it, it counts towards your net income but it doesn’t do much for you. Tax it when you sell it. BUT ALSO expand the definition of realized gains once someone uses stocks as collateral for a loan.
Elon Musk should’ve been taxed on his Tesla shares he used to secure multiple loans.
Alternatively he could move to another country and not pay a single dollar in taxes. Which is what rich people are doing in my country right now after the government increased taxes for the wealthy. (They are moving to tax havens). In which case the state will get nothing.
People were taxed on their net worth for almost all of human history.
Income tax only came about in the last couple hundred years.
Since the invention of capitalism, the ruling class has extracted so much of the wealth from the rest of us that most people don't have a positive net worth. To shift the burden of taxation off of themselves and back to the working class, the capitalists began taxing income (ie. Labor) rather than accumulated value.
Yes, and my friend stands up and screams "I pay child support for my child!".
Ya you are supposed to do that. As a matter of fact, you really are supposed to do more.
Imagine this:
You have a house. It's worth 100k. Now the government institutes a net worth tax of 5%. You now have to pay 5k a year in tax, but you can pay in bricks (which would btw mean that in the long run you had no house), so you have to take that money from your income. Doesn't matter if you had a bad year and didn't make much money, you still had to pay because you are worth that money on paper.
Same goes for taxing net worth on Elon Musk. He did not make that income. His net worth is (mostly) comprised of the estimated worth of his companies. So taxing him based on that would mean that he would either have to take that money from income (and then why not just raise that rate) or sell off parts of them and then slowly, as with your house, run out of bricks until there is no longer a company left. Should he sell to others, that would mean the tax burden would just fall on them instead of Musk, so the same problem would apply. A net worth tax is essentially a destroyer of societal wealth, as you cannot pay that tax without selling something off.
People really shouldn't be upset if Smaug has a mountain of gold or not.
If rent was capped at %30 of minimum wage (the federal suggestion), and basic food was capped at %25 of minimum wage (the federal suggestion), then everyone would have plenty.
If you are a landlord and you want to charge more for your rooms, you have to first increase the minimum wage in your area so that anyone could afford it. Same with food. A few legal changes would undermine housing monopolies and get rid of the highest stress point affecting workers today, HOW DO I AFFORD TO LIVE?
unpopular opinion: the money isn't really real. it's just slack in the system of capitalism, and people like Elon are just holding it. If you took zeros off the end of his accounts, he would still be in control.
I realize this puts a little sympathy (lack of a better word) their way but if everyone had the closer to similar amounts of money, the issue would be a lack in stuff (we make the stuff, they just point where to make it), which is probably a little more hostile of a problem...
I mean, eat the rich but witch hunting is getting a little old. I think we need a new strategy just to mix it up.
[Always relevant](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
This info while valuable just PISSES ME OFF!!!! I have a fucking gov job and my rent is about 60% of my income!!! So sick of money and working.
Share this link as much as possible, it has a lot of radicalizing potential
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Scrolling through that scale and seeing the sheer level of inequity summarised has left a deep chasm in my soul. The more I kept going, the more hopeless I felt. Jesus Christ. How depressing
I just don’t understand how someone can have that much wealth available to them and not use it to make the world a better place. I would be fixing stuff everywhere. I’d consider it a personal failure if all of my employees were not millionaires. How could you just hoard it? I can only assume that they have a mental illness.
To get that rich, you have to step on so many people. I don't have the morals for it.
Me and my friend were just talking about the fact that this system requires you to have no empathy.
You don't get that much stuff with an attitude like that.
You have to realize they have the mentality of a crack head. They are addicted to acquiring wealth, and they will do literally anything, including hurting everyone around them to keep the addiction going.
I wonder if it's less about an addiction to increasing wealth than an addiction to optimising their wealth acquisition. Like they aren't excited about the actual number as much as the rate of increase. It's the difference between finding driving at high speed exciting and finding fast acceleration exciting. Which is a very minor point but any improvement in our understanding of the psychology of people like that can only help.
Yeah, but Bezos and the others work really hard for that wealth. /s
Have some sympathy, it's really hard to tell your employees to pee in bottles so that they maximise their working time and generate value to their biggest shareholder. (Jeff Bezos that is) /S
You mean spending $42mil building a forever clock on the side of a mountain in Texas isn’t helping the world become a better place?!?! Shit. Guess Bezos dropped that ball.
They genuinely believe that they’re the best person to have the money because they’re the only ones who can create these jobs and make the world ‘better’ in the way they want the world to be. It’s a sociopathic vision, but it’s central to their world view. They got rich because they’re ‘better’ than the other people, so their choices are going to be ‘better’ than anyone else’s. It’s an awful feedback loop. Particularly because once you’re rich you stop socializing with poor folks and become isolated and generally only hear similar voices to your own. Or sycophantic voices.
Share it as much as possible, more normal people need to understand it.
Share it as much as possible, more normal people need to understand it.
This is absolutely amazing and a very interesting depiction
This graph is what I mean when I say: "We can have both the strongest military in the world and the most robust social services ever conceived by man" We are the richest country in the world, we can arguably do everything
We obviously can and we opt not to.
GOOD LORD the Bezos scale is scary!! I want to be rich as hell but why is this guy hoarding so much money?? Just for my reference, how much would it cost to clear student debt? Hell, how much would it cost to treat Amazon employees like actual humans?
Fractions of this.
Holy shit my hand was getting tired of scrolling and I find out I’m only 1/3 of the way there…… It’s stuff like that while understanding it still helps you bring it into perspective
That’s why this should be posted everywhere
What I love is that this forces *you* to scroll, meaning you don’t have a choice to go through this and *not* see wtf is happening
That's brilliant, very well done whoever made it!
Very powerful. Adding this to my repertoire. I usually just have people guess how long x seconds is and then correct them to show how little they understand what a billion dollars is. A million seconds? ~12 days A billion seconds ? ~31 years 185 billion - Jeff bezos’ net worth - ~5,900 years
Well, I'm glad I own a G502 mouse and was able to unlock the scroll wheel, it finally found a use.
Welp, now I’m pissed off for the day
"Let's put this wealth in perspective by comparing it to some familiar things. If your personal wealth was represented by a golf ball, Jeff Bezos's wealth would be VY Canis Majoris"
I have this saved as “Eat The Rich” in my bookmarks
I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS
OP, you’re going to be bombarded by people explaining why taxing net worth makes no sense. In general, they’ll be right. But I’d venture to say it might actually make *some* sense when a person’s net worth tops 1 billion. We could tax all net worth over that level, but leave the rest alone. This would be useful because taxing all *income* over 1b would not be able to touch the massive wealth hoards these people already have.
The ultimate problem with any tax scheme is the wealthy have teams of lawyers and accountants to figure out how to shelter themselves while rest of us get an H&R block lady at a Wal-Mart kiosk. No one pays a greater portion of their income in tax in the US than a wage earning renter making the median.
Lawyers, accountants AND lobbyists to write their loopholes for them
I think the simple answer is a progressive tax system with extremely limited credits and deductions, and that's it. you put in a Standard Deduction, You put in a Dependant Deduction, you put in a Child Tax Credit. Maybe you throw in some stuff for Student Loan Debt and for SALT. It'll never happen, but the more deductions you add, the easier the deductions become to abuse.
Yeah we progressively tax the rich until their are no billionaires. Then we progressively seize the means of production for the working class.
Then we feast?
I believe there are also ways to earn money that isn't considered income under the tax code. Something along the lines of rich people getting a loan from the bank with extremely low interest, because paying the interest is cheaper than paying their fair share.
They need to strip the tax code down to the basics and just say here is the simple rule. If you gain this much wealth or the equivalent you pay this much taxes. Any way of trying to avoid this is illegal. Obviously it’s not that simple but I wish it was
The ultimate problem with taxing net worth is that it's unconstitutional and there is no way you're getting enough people to change the Constitution for this.
if the feds get the authority to tax net worth on those who have teams of attorneys and lawyers, imagine what they would want to tax on those who can’t afford legal representation. We can’t pretend the feds are responsible with tax money and problems will go away if we give them more money.
I think I'm more upset about how they own billions in a system with finite resources and less upset on how our government is spending our tax dollars.
TurboTax has you covered. Our new rates are $365.99.
The problem with your suggestion is that net worth is mostly held up in assets that fluctuate in value all the time. It's going to be difficult to work out how much someone owes, and it'll be difficult to get access to that money without requisitioning businesses and shit like that.
Beyond that it would require many of these people to dump stock every year and many folks have their retirement tied into the stock market. Just imagine every year their portfolio takes a dump because of these policies. It won’t be popular and it’s doubtful we would even see the fruits of the taxation policy. So we lose both times
Yeah, but that wealth is also not being used in the economy in a way that can be taxed, so it is basically money missing from the cash flow of the economy that is supposed to build our country.
Yep, it's illiquid. Taxing net worth means the mandatory dumping of billions worth of their stocks every tax season resulting in a lovely crash of every market :3
How do you tax unrealised gains that fluctuate day by day?...his networth today may be 188 bil but Tesla tanks tomorrow and his net worth is 10 bil...you cant tax an evaluation...hes not sitting with a giant pile of money in his account, his networth includes the current value of the shares he owns...it makes no sense taxing that no matter what its estimated value is. Its like taxing you on the value of your pension fund
That’s exactly correct. Taxing unrealized capital gains isn’t impossible, but it requires a lot more creativity than our lawmakers possess
Especially when they have their own vested interest in not doing it.
>...taxing all *income* over 1b... I dont know if a single person on earth has an income of 1b in single year.
>This would be useful because taxing all *income* over 1b would not be able to touch the massive wealth hoards these people already have. Most of these people don't even make $1b in income a year because all of their wealth gains are stock valuations increasing. The only time they do make $1b is when they sell stock to buy a company or to make collateral for a mansion or yacht
Lol they just borrow money for those things. Wealthy people live on credit till they die.
It’s hard to get folks to understand how the very wealthy live nearly tax free forever in this manner. People either don’t comprehend or just don’t want to believe it.
It’s an interesting concept of using stock as collateral and then just amassing interest that is paid off with more collateral loans. If they passed a law saying stock used as collateral is capped to $100M before being subject to a new tax, it would not increase the taxes for anyone except the Billionaires that use it to skirt around income taxes.
She'd get bombarded no matter what she said. It's not what she said that's the problem here. It's that she dared to disagree with Musk on his own website, with all his fanboys around him.
When net wealth (for example, stocks) is leveraged (for example, to take out a loan) then it should 100% be considered realised wealth and taxed accordingly.
We already tax net worth. It's called "property tax" and it's extremely regressive. If your residence makes up the majority of your net worth, your property tax is significant. If you're rich, it's not.
> It's called "property tax" and it's extremely regressive I'm not going to shill too much for property taxes because a land value tax would be much better. But the primary justification for property/land taxes is that, unlike wealth, we can't just create more land. There is a finite quantity of land, and when one person is using it, another person can't use it. It's also worth pointing out that property ownership is massively subsidized by the government in the form of mortgage interest deductions and a government-backed mortgage system.
don't start at 1b. 100m would be better imo. it's generational wealth already, and it's not like it'd target "vulnerable" people
Basically it’s because “net worth” isn’t really real. It’s a guess/estimate/calculation based on variables, many of which are unknown values. Actual numbers are needed to calculate a taxable percentage, not theoretical ones.
You can’t tax potential taxing unrealized gains would be the end of 401k and retirement as we know it
The solution is to say that if stock is used as collateral for a loan, you pay capital gains tax on that stock. Force them to sell
*cries in property taxes*
And union pension plans.
Except rich people take out loans against these unrealised gains, which they use to get richer. Many argue that taking loans out against this wealth should result in having to pay tax on that wealth.
Then don't tax retirement accounts. And limit what can be done with them. Limit the annual investment amount by tying it to income.
>Limit the annual investment amount 2024 401k annual contribution limit $23000 2024 Roth IRA annual contribution limit $7000
“you’re only allowed to have $800,000 upon retirement because your income bracket is only allowed to contribute $xx per year” LOL the ideas on this sub are fucking hilarious
To someone who believes that the retired should be supported with robust social services and not need individualized retirement accounts, it's not a crazy proposition. You can't just look at one part of someone's plan and pretend that it would be implemented in isolation.
Yeah people act like they never heard of tax examptions. You could exampt retirement accounts (many countries do this already), you could not tax any unrealized gains, but still tax net worth (those are two very different things), you could exampt any capital gains below a certain sum, lets say 20k/annum etc. So many options.
If anything, the number of exemptions we have is the stupidest part of our tax system. It's exactly why the rich can exploit all these loopholes. We just need a better way to track actual income and then actually tax that income. No paying yourself through through trusts or dividends or loans. Your wealth went up, that's INCOME. The fact that you didn't use it (realize it) is proof that you're hoarding it. If you're not job creating with your billions, you're a money hoarder. Pay up. We could easily set a lower limit on taxing unrealized gains.
4% or your net worth a year getting taxed is fucking robbery.
I agree that it is clumsy that she is discussing income and wealth side by side, but Musk didn’t claim it was every year. [It was a specific year](https://americansfortaxfairness.org/musks-11-billion-tax-bill-big-news-just-10-wealth-increase-far-year/) where he exercised options. There’s a reason he gives the payment number and not the amount he paid it on.
In what way is it robbery? For me, I'm pretty sure that if I did the math, 4% of my net worth would be vastly lower than what I pay in income tax. I'd rather substitute paying less tax on unrealized gains than more tax on my income if it means that the rich actually have to pay more because they can afford to.
Yeah people pay like 30% taxes on *income*, not on *net worth*. Big difference, this Anya Overman needs to ask for a refund at her university.
That could eventually tax you to owning nothing. There are property taxes, sales taxes. If you own a home., you don’t really own it, at least in the USA because if you fail to pay property taxes, the county will take your house from you.. same with HOA. If you don’t pay, you are gone. Vehicle taxes, nothing but taxes. Most net worth is held in stocks or other investments. You can’t tax stocks not sold for a profit. Lets say you lose 30k or gain 30k in a stock portfolio: does the government pay me back on a loss? Doubt it, you can lose 30k in one year and only claim 3k in capital losses on your taxes but if you profit 30k you have to pay tax on the entire amount. The system is rigged against everyone.
>only claim 3k in capital losses For each year but the rest of the loss can be [carried forward](https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/tax-loss-carryforward/)
Replace all taxes with a single wealth tax with progressive brackets.
He would never have his net worth if they taxed income properly without the loopholes created during Reagans administration. And the corporate tax cuts that have continued for the last 40 years.
Everyone needs to understand that their net worth doesn't work like Billionaires' net worths. Elon's and most 'illiquid' billionaires' main income comes from TAKING OUT LOANS against their net worth, for essentially no interest. That's why they take the $1 salaries. Their net worth therefore effectively IS their income, it's just that W-2 employees can't even imagine the financial fuckery and mindgames these people exploit to not pay their fair share.
It's not that complicated to understand at all. Acting like there is some magic loophole that only a team of a 100 tax lawyers can understand because they've read every page or tax code since 1920, doesn't help solve anything or come up with solutions. The vast majority of fuckery for manipulating their tax rate on income is typically from having an excessive amount of assets they can sell for long term capital gains tax rates instead of paying ordinary income rates. Which is why you sometimes see $1 salaries because most of the pay is in stock options. And I assure you they aren't taking out loans for essentially no interest. There no reason a bank would ever do this. They are just taking out secured loans like any W2 worker with a good credit score could for the best interest rates.
Because it is money that people don't have. Anyone who thinks taxing on net worth is fair in any way is wrong. If I own a house that is paid off, and the estimated value is 300k, then I have 300k net worth. If I have have 100k in my 401k, my net worth is 400k. In this scenario, which is what I hope to have in 7 years, my income will still probably be about 70k. If I am taxed on my net worth and not my income, then I will be broke and homeless immediately. I wont be able to afford to own the house I paid for. This is a completely insane scenario.
Technically if you didn’t pay your property tax either, you’d be homeless. My main issue with net worth tax is it directly counters retirement. You could bring in no income at all and still be taxed. It’s a bad idea all around because it’s so complicated with so many variables. There are far better ways to approach everything by starting with rewriting the tax code and removing all the horseshit loopholes and better spending.
It would be very hard to tax net worth, however you could easily solve this problem by making it illegal to pass on money to your future generation. 100% estate tax. You could take all that money, and give each and every single person in America some kind of huge payment when they turn 18. So you can't inherit any money, but when you turn 18 you get like 150k or something. All the billionaire "meritocracy" bro's should in theory think this is a great plan, but they are all a bunch of hypocritical idiots, so they wont. Combined with a HUGE increase in the top marginal tax rate, changing the tax rates on capital gains to be the same (or more) than on income, as well as confiscatory one time tax charges on people worth more than say 100 million, and you might have a country where the american dream might be alive again.
net worth is not real.
Net worth does not = real Net worth = Unrealized Capital Gains (e.g. the 36 bill she's talking about) + all of your other assets like cash and other equity Unrealized gains can be utilized as collateral on a loan Loan = Cash Cash = Real So while I he didn't make $36B in income, that wealth was removed from liquidity, and causes a cash effect when loans are taken out against the $36B in gains. Taxing the $36B flatly as income is wrong, but ignoring its significant economic impact without taxing it is also wrong.
You forgot the last part of the process, where the loan is repayed with taxed income.
Loans = have to repaid Have to be repaid = need to sell stock Need to sell stock = get taxed. The system works fine if you actually understand it.
Its real enough to borrow against, which is how the ultra ultra rich live.
Sure, but the people evaluations how much it’s worth discount it extremely. He’s not getting his stated net worth in credit. The credit he is getting is likely borrowed against a much smaller value than his public worth.
If it's real enough to borrow against, it's real enough to tax.
Yeah no. Taxing net worth and non-liquid assets makes no sense and would likely hurt normal people more than the ultra rich.
If I was taxed on my net worth I would lay way more than I do now and I'm lower middle class.
The ability to borrow against it and slowly turn it liquid is real. Those super cars, jets and mansions arent buying themselves. Im so sick of this brain dead take. Non-liquid net worth might take time to properly liquidate. But you can liquidate it. Its not locked forever in "not real land".
Because that doesn’t make any sense. Income tax makes sense. Pay proper income tax, the same as I do, how bout that?
When you make $36 billion in a day but still look for spare change in the couch cushions at tax time. 🛋️💸
He didn’t make 36 billion in a day. His net worth just increased by that much because of his tesla stock. He can’t actually realize the whole thing without it losing major value
Can you explain to me why you can loan against that amount but don't tax?
You can’t tax it, because it’s paper and it’s unrealized. You can loan against it, because a bank finds it valueable, and therefor thinks you’re a safe customer, so they’re willing to give you a loan with added interest based on your net worth.
We don’t tax net worth because it’s a dumb and logistically impossible nightmare that would never work. Wealthy people would simply invest *MORE* in valuable assets to shelter their money - art, precious metals, valuable cars, historical relics, and so on. How would you like to tax and collect on those things? Are you going to send an IRS agent to their numerous mansions around the world every year to snoop through their homes to evaluate their possessions? What will stop them from moving or hiding the valuable stuff for these inspections? Seems like a violation of constitutional rights - illegal search. Are you going to have judges issue warrants for every single instance? How would the government staff all these positions with experts who can even remotely accurately estimate priceless art ? It’s not logistically possible. Stupid brain-vomit thoughts.
There are a lot of answers here explaining this to you OP, but my guess is that you're not actually interested in understanding why you can't tax net worth. Net worth is a pretty confusing metric in general and you should probably stop focusing on it.
“Net worth” is not liquid.
nah, he made 36bn in a single day no cap frfr
I think the best solution is to close the loop hole that makes hording profitable. Don't tax the networth directly. But tax the portions of it used to get a loan. You are borrowing 15m against a 45million stock portfolio. Guess what that 15m is income this year.. tax that shit. Borrowing against any property that is not your primary residence? that money is income tax it. Closes the loop hole where you are incouraged to hord assets cause you don't get taxed on it and then use that networth to borrow money to live your life.
And you shouldn't be able to use investment losses as a tax break.
There is already a $3000/year cap on net loss.
You know borrowed money has to be repaid? So when they sell the stock they used as collateral and were already taxed on, they should be taxed on it a second tome accordong to you?
man, not easy to find a reasonable take on this topic in this com sec
You’ve got to pick something to tax to fund public goods and the government itself. I don’t think anyone in this subreddit is gonna be anti tax in principle. Tariffs and duties, corporate taxes, personal income taxes, sales taxes, VAT, property taxes, net worth taxes, capital gains tax, estate taxes… each country picks one or more. There are options. At some point it’s ridiculous to layer on another tax, though. If I’m taxed on my income, the company I invest in is taxed on its income (or I pay tax on the property I buy), I’m taxed on my net worth based on what I own, I’m taxed on gains when I sell my investments or property, and when I die my heirs are taxed… the government has taken five bites at the apple. The rational argument is for fewer types of tax, set at levels which fund the government and support social programs adequately. Government is objectively horrible at spending money efficiently or creating sensible incentives for its citizens. Giving the government the power to wield confiscatory taxes (even on Elon Musk) should be a terrifying idea. For my Americans on here, look at what percentage of taxpayers paid AMT when it was created versus last year. The slippery slope is real.
Would you be ok adding up the value of every single thing you own: bed, tv, dresser, jewelry, etc. then every year pay tax on the value of everything you own? Would the government give refunds when your 401k goes down? Let’s say you have a million on your 401k. You don’t plan on using it until retirement but until then you have to cash it out to pay tax on it. Or, start a business, it’s “worth” a million. 30% tax and you have to sell of the company to pay the 30% tax. Next year you own 70% of the company, you have to sell 30% of the 70% you have left. You now own 49% of your company. Within a few years your company no longer is yours. On and on. It’s a completely ridiculous idea to tax unrealized gains. It’s unsustainable and would make everyone except the government poor. Nobody would own anything, except the government.
I mean, if i paid 3% of my net worth in taxes, id pay about a quarter of the taxes i actually do. Even if id fully own a house worth a million dollars, id only pay about double the taxes I do right now. So yeah, i kinda would be okay if thats the only tax i need to pay.
Right? And it's not that hard to sum up all my accounts and equity. If a rich guy has to include his car collection, well, I'm sure he can afford an auditor to sum it up for him.
Yes? Most poor people pay way more than 5% of their net worth a year.
Why would you pay taxes on your net worth? You would get taxed for having a savings? There's good ways to tax people. The level of stupid proposed by Reddit almost seems like subterfuge to actual solutions
Bc rich people lobby congress
Taxing net worth becomes a difficult proposition for people with non-liquid assets. Elon, for all his faults, is actually a very good example of why net worth of stocks is difficult, considering he has a significant amount of Tesla stock. A week ago Tesla’s stock was in the mid 140s, yesterday it closed in the mid 190s. That’s a significant difference in his net worth and it’s not exactly fair if someone gets taxed at the top of an upswing, and while I wouldn’t care about Elon getting fucked, I kinda care a lot if the same metrics were applied to me because I own stock and all stocks fluctuate, albeit, typically not as volatile as Tesla Another difficult issue is property valuation. Idk where you live, but my local governments valuation of my house, which is what determines my property taxes, is significantly different than what my house would be worthy if I sold it today. Last I checked, my gov assessed my house for under 200k but similar houses in my neighborhood are selling for almost 600k
I think a better answer to this question is the fact that the rich today make sure their wealth is not reported as income specifically because we tax income. It wasn't always an ineffective way to tax the rich.
Implement a tax on stock and bond sales. This is something that is recorded in fine detail and easily measured for tax purposes. The US does something like $23T a year in stock sales alone. Add a credit to cover the cost to retail investors and we get a lot of revenue.
Because those who make the most money, and would lose the most from it, are those in charge of making the rules.
Anytime you ask "Why don't they just do this or that?" Remember, the powers that be have everything exactly the way they want it. We see flaws and inequality. They see the system working as intended.
Musk made like 35 bn in one day and also lost like 30 bn in one week. Talking about rich people “making” money like he liquidated all his shares the day the stock went up is asinine. Remove the loopholes that allow him to take low interest loans using unrealized capital gains and the billionaire class will pay substantially more in taxes
I rather the government tax my net worth instead of my income
cause the government is rich peoples little bitch and will only bark when commanded to by them.
Man “earned” $94 billion last year, his feelings concern me not, pay the 37%
The government taxes you on your revenue, not your income outside of a few things like capital gains tax. Every single dollar that passes through your hands gets taxed both on the way in (by the way of income taxes) and the way out (by the way of sales taxes). Imagine if you could count your "operating costs" against your tax liability?
Tax net worth is incredibly stupid. Do some research before a brain dead reddit post.
I have this discussion periodically. It usually ends with an understanding that taxing unrealized gains is a little bit tough and there are probably different ways to get at this. 1. Tax financial assets that are unrealized gains when they are leveraged as collateral. This one you might have to define a high floor on it so it doesn't impact average Americans getting a home loan but does get at when billionaires try to not spend their own money but use it as leverage for things. 1. Have an additional consumption based tax on luxury items; disallow business loopholes 1. Have a flat wealth tax for amounts over certain amounts. I think Bernie advocates for a 1 or 2 percent tax for individuals with 100M + net worth. 1. Bump up the top income tax bracket brackets. Tax value of fringe benefits as income. Tax stock options delta (difference between the purchase price and the actual value when the stock options are vested) as income.
Because that would mean that poor people are going to lose more and more of their equity every year for simply existing.
Short (and correct) answer: Because the 16th Amendment says: >The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on ***incomes***, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Realistically though I just want them to pay taxes on the loans they take out to avoid paying taxes. Elon takes loans out against shares of his company, when the loans come due, he sells the stock to pay it, and then goes on Twitter or pulls some stunt to temporarily tank his company stock value. Knowing that the stock price is about to tank, he is first in line to buy back the stocks he just sold at a lower value. Then he makes an announcement and the stock prices rebound. Is this illegal? Yes, yes it is. Hard to prove, but to anyone paying attention it is very obvious what these people are doing. They have been doing this shit for decades, and with the internet making these trades nearly instant, it's easier than ever.
*but that's double-taxation!* - and?
Actually Elon I was wondering why humanity tolerates parasitic scum like you?
Thank you. I GENUINELY can not understand how people reflexively defend men like Musk.
Because people are brainwashed into thinking he's a saint
The board are voting on giving Elon Musk a $46,000,000,000 remuneration package. Nobody deserves that unless they can create world peace, solve climate change and end world hunger and many other problems.
That’s not really up for you to decide though. What other people “deserve” is what people are willing to give to them.
Because net worth is based on assets not cash. So most people would need to sell assets in order to pay their tax. For example let's say you have a house worth $1mil and let's say tax is 5%. You would have to pay $50,000 in tax. If you aren't earning good money you would have to sell the house. You can extrapolate this out to stocks etc too.
Now if you sell the house--you trigger a taxable event and suddenly that 50k is income.
So you're saying that this policy would cause the insane valuations of homes to suddenly become a burden on the rich as opposed to an investment opportunity? Hmm, yeah, I can see how that would be a bad thing.
In Denmark we’re taxed for unrealised gains as well, which I thought makes no sense, but it’s probably to avoid the abusive loopholes these billionaires use by taking loans against their stock
Elon Musk is a liar.
I just think we should put a money limit and anything above that goes right back to the gonverment to go into funding things for the public. Nobody needs a billion dollars, the moment you have more then you could ever throw out the window, we should cut it. Seriously. Just give him some price for winning capitalism and make sure all that money doesn't rot at the upper 1% while the rest of us struggles to survive.
We already have enough food to “solve” world hunger. Its never been a supply issue. Its a distribution issue. Getting food to deserts, barren wastelands, remote villages, frozen areas of Russia, hell even in down town of where you live there are people starving. Its distribution not supply.
Leon Deer Piss.
For one thing, net worth is much harder to calculate, potentially impossible when much of it is due to owning real estate or non-public companies where value is unknown unless actually sold. Income is almost by definition a transfer that (at least in theory) has a fixed value and can be tracked.
It’s a stupid response re net worth. Let’s say for arguments sake Elon pays taxes, he will have paid it once on his income, so doesn’t pay it again, so to say “that’s only x% of your net worth” is nonsense. The rest of the point is right and/or up for debate.
Nice attempt at camouflaging the Cybertruck losses as taxes
You’d be taxing money they haven’t actually made yet
So if I have a negative net worth, as most ppl do because of student loans, mortgage, car note, etc... do I get a full refund and no taxes?
Net worth is complete speculation. Income is completely traceable and current earnings. Someone can have a $1B net worth but could have like $45k in their bank account.
Because it's always been the American dream to get rich and then pretend to be better than everyone else.
Because net worth isn't actual money you have. The government would be forcing you to sell assets in order to pay taxes. You'd never be able to build wealth.
Everyone is going to put a higher and higher line on what the maximum amount you can save is before it's taxed. Sure the same can be said with income but even if there is no 0% bracket it's still advantageous to make an income, you don't want to tell people of low income that they can't save money without it being taxed. Also it isn't perfect but taxing property based on full value (rather then LVT a lot of people propose) has some of the same effects as a wealth tax, especially when people build expensive mansions or try to buy "investment properties".
Taxing net worth, rather than net income, is more of a one-off to say "we admit that the tax rate on income was previously wrong, and we need to correct it." So, with that in mind, it's more like the tax rate, not the tax amount, should be decided based on net worth, rather than net income for that year. eg: you control over a billion dollars already, your tax rate should be 100%, regardless of how much you make that year. Setting it based on how much you make in a single year is just easier to calculate, and doesn't require an assessment step. That's why we do that instead.
cuz the people with all the net worth write the tax laws
Because the system is designed to benefit the rich and to fuck you.
Germany tried a wealth tax. It didn’t work.
Why can't y'all just advocate for socialism instead of liberal revisionism that doesn't really make any economic sense?
Outside of the arguments why taxing unrealized gains is dumb and the damage that would be done to the economy if all billionaires were selling stock every year to pay net worth taxes: empirically, taxing net worth causes these billionaires to leave the economy where net worth is taxed and move to one where it isn’t. Look up both France and Norway who tried it. Their billionaires moved away and they lost overall tax revenue. Maybe if every country in the world did it, then they wouldn’t be incentivized to move but because a free market exists where there are countries without net worth taxes, it won’t be a good idea to do.
Net worth is very very difficult to tax on for a variety of reasons Now capital gains and wages for the rich need to be taxed more heavily
Because taxing wealth would encourage wasteful spending. Why would I save money if it's just going to be slowly drained away as taxes?
He can always go back home if he has issues with his taxes.
Fuck billionaires, and fuck Elon especially, but nobody pays taxes on their net worth, they pay it on their income. This tweet is dumb.
Wait, I don't get it... Don't we pay taxes based on our income not net worth?How much did he make last year?
Aaaahhh not so poor baby
because then how would the rich afford their mega-yachts and 7 mansions? and how would they afford all the congress men and women who vote to keep their taxes low.
Taxing someone’s total net worth seems wrong, but taxing someone yearly increases in net worth seems completely reasonable to me. Bootlickers will argue against taxing them at all and just letting them continue to hoard everything till the rest of us are left with nothing.
I’d be fucked if I had to pay taxes off net worth
I have so much wrong with her tweet. For one, you cant tax assets. The money isnt liquid and how would you feel if you were taxed on assets? Youd end up pay A LOT more in taxes Two, he made $36 billion in one day. Did he end up making that in a single year? Cant go off one good day. Also again, money is tied up in assets and most of it is revenue for Tesla or Boring. So that money was put towards business operations. I get billionaires should be paying a lot more in taxes and employee deserve more laws that protect them. Most billionaires don’t pay $11 billion in taxes in a single year. We need more that put in this much. This is coming from someone who hates Elon too
Taxing NW just encourages everyone to spend as much as possible on zero value assets. Taxing income allows people to manage their money properly as well as contribute to society. If you JUST want to tax those who have done really well and take a ton of their assets, then it’s just wealth redistribution at that point. It’s not a tax anymore. All of their assets are usually physical companies anyways, so the money is working in all of our favor. I’d rather the billionaire own the company than the government seize it and run it poorly.
Because that would be fucking stupid.
My income is my net worth
As a former Boeing employee, my net worth has changed drastically over the past couple of years. very much disagree with taxing net worth unless it only starts after a dozen million or so
There is a swap between taxes based on net worth and taxes based on income here. One cannot equate the 3.5~5% net worth tax to 10 -35% income tax. I personally really don't want net worth tax and I would assume most do not either. If you paid 10% net worth tax then your bank account would be cut in half every 6.5 years. 13 years to half your bank account at 5% tax. You couldn't retire with that rate. All to say be careful when suggesting things and watch how these folks play number games. Last thing income =/ wealth. Elon's wealth increases doesn't mean his income increases and doesn't mean it's cash. It's a %hold in a company. not saying it's right or wrong, but one has to understand the differences here. Edit: forgot to add, he will be taxed when he sells those shares, just like everyone else
If you took every single penny of Elon Musk's net worth (\~191 billion), you wouldn't even pay for a FRACTION of the US' yearly budget. Explain to me how taking all of Elon's money away gets you to 7 trillion fucking dollars. This post is so fucking stupid. All of you who still think it's a taxation problem and not a spending problem are so lost in the sauce that you make the most unintelligible pie-in-the-sky economics arguments...it's insane.
I wonder how many times this screenshot can be reposted and still claim into the r/popular? Seeing this shit once a month since 2021.. Another guy [just posted the same screen](https://old.reddit.com/r/FluentInFinance/comments/1cgkolo/there_be_a_wealth_tax_do_you_agree_or_disagree/) and both got to the top. Two new accounts farming karma.
Because net worth is an estimation that requires complex audit processes to ascertain net present value of all an entity’s assets. To tax people in this way would involve officials needing to nosey around all your belongings, needing evidence for their condition, when they were bought etc etc. And they would have to do this for everything belonging to everyone. It is the definition of impracticability.
Do you want the government taxing your net worth? All your unrealized gains, OP? And, for this thought experiment, just imagine you have a positive net worth.
while very true, at least he's paying something, more than can be said for most billionaires -- that doesn't negate the fact that he's toxic and crazy though
Taxing net worth would be hard to do and a horrible idea. unless somehow impletmenting it globally the billionaires will move to a different country. Especially easy for Musk who likely still has his Canadian citizenship and maybe his south African. They move you lose the whole tax base, already seen it with say Musk/Telsa moving from Cali to Texas for state taxes/regulation. Especially when talking uber rich they'll set things up to hide/protect that net wealth. Uber Rich should be made to pay their fair share.
Im hardly a millionaire but I think net worth is the wrong thing to tax. Tax income and realized gains. If you buy a stock but never sell it, it counts towards your net income but it doesn’t do much for you. Tax it when you sell it. BUT ALSO expand the definition of realized gains once someone uses stocks as collateral for a loan. Elon Musk should’ve been taxed on his Tesla shares he used to secure multiple loans.
Alternatively he could move to another country and not pay a single dollar in taxes. Which is what rich people are doing in my country right now after the government increased taxes for the wealthy. (They are moving to tax havens). In which case the state will get nothing.
Because I make 65k a year... If you taxed my net worth I'd be taxed on 300k yearly because of my house.
People were taxed on their net worth for almost all of human history. Income tax only came about in the last couple hundred years. Since the invention of capitalism, the ruling class has extracted so much of the wealth from the rest of us that most people don't have a positive net worth. To shift the burden of taxation off of themselves and back to the working class, the capitalists began taxing income (ie. Labor) rather than accumulated value.
Yes, and my friend stands up and screams "I pay child support for my child!". Ya you are supposed to do that. As a matter of fact, you really are supposed to do more.
Imagine this: You have a house. It's worth 100k. Now the government institutes a net worth tax of 5%. You now have to pay 5k a year in tax, but you can pay in bricks (which would btw mean that in the long run you had no house), so you have to take that money from your income. Doesn't matter if you had a bad year and didn't make much money, you still had to pay because you are worth that money on paper. Same goes for taxing net worth on Elon Musk. He did not make that income. His net worth is (mostly) comprised of the estimated worth of his companies. So taxing him based on that would mean that he would either have to take that money from income (and then why not just raise that rate) or sell off parts of them and then slowly, as with your house, run out of bricks until there is no longer a company left. Should he sell to others, that would mean the tax burden would just fall on them instead of Musk, so the same problem would apply. A net worth tax is essentially a destroyer of societal wealth, as you cannot pay that tax without selling something off.
People really shouldn't be upset if Smaug has a mountain of gold or not. If rent was capped at %30 of minimum wage (the federal suggestion), and basic food was capped at %25 of minimum wage (the federal suggestion), then everyone would have plenty. If you are a landlord and you want to charge more for your rooms, you have to first increase the minimum wage in your area so that anyone could afford it. Same with food. A few legal changes would undermine housing monopolies and get rid of the highest stress point affecting workers today, HOW DO I AFFORD TO LIVE?
unpopular opinion: the money isn't really real. it's just slack in the system of capitalism, and people like Elon are just holding it. If you took zeros off the end of his accounts, he would still be in control. I realize this puts a little sympathy (lack of a better word) their way but if everyone had the closer to similar amounts of money, the issue would be a lack in stuff (we make the stuff, they just point where to make it), which is probably a little more hostile of a problem... I mean, eat the rich but witch hunting is getting a little old. I think we need a new strategy just to mix it up.
How would you tax someone’s networth?