Wealth taxes are a symptom of a broken tax system. If you let someone get to hundreds of billions in net worth and then realize they haven’t been appropriately paying back into the system, it’s already too late. Like the article says they can simply say “no” in a variety of ways, from fighting in court to simply leaving.
> If you let someone get to hundreds of billions in net worth and then realize they haven’t been appropriately paying back into the system
This is to once again mistake net worth for money. Net worth is not real. It is not a good measure of the money someone may be able to realise. They do not have hundreds of billions. There is nothing to tax until they sell some shares.
It's strange that people always make this argument for wealth taxes, but you rarely hear it about property taxes. If "net worth is not real" neither is equity in real estate.
If I sell my house, there's a reasonable expected range of money I can expect for it.
If a majority stock holder in a company sells all of their stock, the price first the first share sold is likely going to be completely different (and substantially less!) than the last share sold.
"It's difficult to accurately value" isn't an argument against taxing net worth. It's like the old (likely apocryphal) Winston Churchill joke, "We already established what type of woman you are, now we are just haggling over price". Just take whatever the proposal is, cut in half, quarter, or whatever fraction you want and you no longer have an argument against it.
Personally my favorite idea for this stuff that I have heard thrown around is to allow people to self value everything. However, that self valuation then becomes a price tag. Let a billionaire's accountants put their own evaluation on their equity in a business. But that becomes a binding offer and some other billionaire could come along and buy them out at that valuation. That creates pricing pressure in both directions, the person is prevented from underpricing their assets due to the threat of another buyer coming in and a person is prevented from overpricing because it increases their taxes. And suddenly all the problems regarding how the government appraises these things disappears.
Society has already decided that we can compel people to sell their private property for fair compensation via eminent domain. Plus getting the assets in the hands of people who value them more certainly creates utility and presumably increases the tax base via further development.
This type of forced sale happens all the time with public companies. For example, only like 60% of Twitter shareholders approved the sale to Musk, but the other 40% were forced to go along with it regardless of their preference. If Musk can do that to other people, why should some hypothetically richer person not be able to do it to Musk?
And to repeat myself for a third time, we don't need to haggle over price. If we only want this to apply to billionaires, assets worth $50 millions, or whatever, that's fine. If one of the people impacted truly doesn't want to sell, let them set the price as high as make them feels safe. I'm not going to lose any sleep over taxing the emotional desires of billionaires.
> For example, only like 60% of Twitter shareholders approved the sale to Musk, but the other 40% were forced to go along with it regardless of their preference
They signed up to that, though. Tagalonpg/dragalong rights are priced into the share price. That's not the same thing.
I always enjoy when someone takes a quote out of context to refute something I said when the context it was said in completely answers them. Like why didn't you include the sentence before that bit you quoted? Is it because me saying "this type of sale" shows that I was saying they are similar rather than identical? Or why didn't you include my first paragraph? Is it because eminent domain is also priced into everything a billionaire owns?
binlog · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
This is to once again mistake net worth for money. Net worth is not real. It is not a good measure of the money someone may be able to realise. They do not have hundreds of billions. There is nothing to tax until they sell some shares.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
x3n0ph3n3 · · focus · HN ↗
If a majority stock holder in a company sells all of their stock, the price first the first share sold is likely going to be completely different (and substantially less!) than the last share sold.
slg · · focus · HN ↗
Personally my favorite idea for this stuff that I have heard thrown around is to allow people to self value everything. However, that self valuation then becomes a price tag. Let a billionaire's accountants put their own evaluation on their equity in a business. But that becomes a binding offer and some other billionaire could come along and buy them out at that valuation. That creates pricing pressure in both directions, the person is prevented from underpricing their assets due to the threat of another buyer coming in and a person is prevented from overpricing because it increases their taxes. And suddenly all the problems regarding how the government appraises these things disappears.
kerenskiy · · focus · HN ↗
slg · · focus · HN ↗
This type of forced sale happens all the time with public companies. For example, only like 60% of Twitter shareholders approved the sale to Musk, but the other 40% were forced to go along with it regardless of their preference. If Musk can do that to other people, why should some hypothetically richer person not be able to do it to Musk?
And to repeat myself for a third time, we don't need to haggle over price. If we only want this to apply to billionaires, assets worth $50 millions, or whatever, that's fine. If one of the people impacted truly doesn't want to sell, let them set the price as high as make them feels safe. I'm not going to lose any sleep over taxing the emotional desires of billionaires.
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
They signed up to that, though. Tagalonpg/dragalong rights are priced into the share price. That's not the same thing.
slg · · focus · HN ↗