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Progressives Unveil OLIGARCH Act to Combat 'Existential Threat' of Extreme Wealth
(www.commondreams.org)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Wealth taxes are super easy to avoid, so I'd much rather see something like cap gains+"luxury" sales/income taxes and such, but it's a step in the right direction
Now raise taxes on everyone making over 100k and we're really cooking with gas
$100k aint that much and those people already have a heafty tax burden. Plus luxury taxes are easily avoided when yachts and planes are purchased in the Bahamas. What we need are 50% taxes on the money they borrow against their assets. Want to buy another mansion? Cool 50% tax on the money Goldman Sachs lends you against your Amazon stock. If I have to pay a tax to borrow against my 401k so should these assholes.
$100k is 150% of median household income, and I'm talking about individual income. It is the boundary between 3rd and 4th quintiles of household income.
People are not overtaxed. They are dramatically undertaxed. I say this as a person earning over $100k - it's not some weird snub. It's just correct
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percentiles/
Rich people do pay taxes on money removed early from 401(k)s, which is why they don't do that.
I do strongly support raising taxes on money borrowed against assets over $150k or so
Warren Buffett doesn't pay income tax because he doesn't earn income.
The billionaires don't have a billion in cash, they don't earn a billion dollars a year. They hold assets worth that much.
Taxing wealth is the only way to combat the wealth gap.
First off you'll need to define "combat the wealth gap." Difference between high and low isn't really a relevant thing.
$100k is a bad metric because somebody making $100k in the Bay Are or New York is basically in poverty. I make over $100k and I'm not well off at all. Not even close. And I'm not bad with money, have zero debt, save 15% in the 401k no kids and still things are tight.
Yeah federal taxation doesn't work based on "I should be able to put 15% into my 401(k) and live where I want."
$100k is not basically poverty in LA/NY or everyone making under $100k would be below poverty and that's considerably more than half the population (median household income - that is, generally 2 working adults - of 68k in NYC, and NYC is more expensive than LA).
But income tax on paper is already higher for the $100k tax bracket than what the ultra rich pay. The ultra rich do everything in their power to not have an "income". Hence why there's this effort of taxing wealth instead.
You should check out cap gains taxes
The cap gains tax that the richest people in the world never end up paying?
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
From 2014-2018 Warren Buffet alone grew his personal wealth by 24.3B, reported 125M in income (0.51% of wealth), and paid 23.7M in taxes (0.1% of wealth). Over 4 years, this man paid taxes on a tenth of a percent of his income. Similar tax numbers under 5% apply for other billionaires.
The ultra rich never pay capital gains tax, loopholes allow them to have their income in portfolios, which isn't taxed. Capital gains is only for realized gains. When your portfolio is worth billions, you don't need to sell it to have spending money, you can take a loan against the value of portfolio.
Capital gains tax only affects those who don't have a bank's worth of money in their portfolio.
My post was specifically that we should increase amount paid via cap gains so I'm not sure where you're going here
These are laws we've written, not magic. We can change them
Edit: also wealth taxes, historically, are among the easiest to avoid via accounting, and the hardest to "fix" as laws
My point is that increasing the amount paid via cap gains does absolutely nothing if the mega rich don't need to pay it in the first place.
If you increase the amount paid, you are inevitably closing loopholes they use to avoid cap gains.
The two best ways to tax money are money in nnd money out because all of that is significantly harder to hide than wealth taxes.
Here's an in-depth look at why:
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wealth-and-taxes-part-iv.html?m=1
And a good, more generalized piece, on cap gains surging:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/26/why-capital-gains-tax-reform-should-be-top-of-rishi-sunak-list-budget