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A Global Tax on Billionaires? Janet Yellen Says ‘No’ (www.wsj.com)

submitted 5 months ago by givesomefucks@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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Treasury secretary came out against the proposed global levy, which proponents say would stop the rich from shifting wealth into countries where they can avoid paying the tax

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[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 65 points 5 months ago

Crazy how Biden's admin is full of people 70+ years old who are incredibly conservative and keep going against all of the things he keeps saying he wants to do...

Like, Imagine if you boss hired a bunch of shitty assholes, and when you complain about them he says "what am I supposed to do. They're already hired!"

Like, you can fire them Joe...

When you hire someone and they consistently do things you (supposedly) don't want them to do, you fucking fire them and hire someone who will do what you tell them.

Unless of course you don't actually want to get anything done and what you're telling them to do is what they're doing.

[-] nelly_man@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

I can't read this article due to a paywall, but I know that Janet Yellen has been leading an effort to set a minimum corporate tax rate worldwide. I don't know what her stance is on wealth taxes in general, but I wouldn't be surprised if she's just trying to ensure that a minimum corporate tax rate work is not derailed by changing the target to something more controversial.

[-] FlowVoid@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago

keep going against all of the things he keeps saying he wants to do...

When did Biden say he wants a global wealth tax?

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago

US President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget included plans for a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01%, but that proposal has since fallen by the wayside with lawmakers in Washington preoccupied with government shutdown threats and looming funding deadlines.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/business/billionaires-global-tax/index.html

In fairness, it's hard to keep track of all the times Biden says he wants to do something to appease voters and then never tries while his appointees fight the party platform.

But Biden wanted it for America, just stopped mentioning it, and now his appointees are fighting any wealth tax from anywhere.

[-] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yes, Biden has his own tax proposal for the wealthy. It's a modified income tax, not a direct tax on overall wealth.

Wanting to tax the wealthy doesn't mean he supports a wealth tax. And it definitely doesn't mean he wants a global wealth tax. Neither of those are in the party platform.

The details matter. One Democratic proposal is to tax unrealized capital gains. So if Tesla stock went up in value, Musk would owe taxes. But unlike a wealth tax, Musk would owe nothing if the stock went down.

[+] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 29 points 5 months ago

[deleted]

[-] Igotz80HDnImWinning@kbin.social 17 points 5 months ago

Legit. Sick off the bluemaga bullshit. “The other guy is terrible so I don’t have to align with the ‘leftist’ views held by 60% of constituents” is all worn out.

[-] baru@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

“both parties are sometimes the same”

The usual claim isn't that. What people object to is claiming that both parties are the same.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world -5 points 5 months ago

A wealth tax is dumb. Luckily, Biden has never advocated for a wealth tax.

You can call me a neolib if you want, but I still want a 80% marginal tax bracket, and I want capital gains taxes to be higher than payroll taxes.

[-] blazera@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

A wealth tax is dumb

riveting counterpoint

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It's almost like you intentionally missed my point because you wanted me to elaborate on something that's been well covered elsewhere.

Or you simply wanted a pithy, empty quip and would have latched onto anything you could find.

[-] blazera@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah elaborating on claims is how these discussions work.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

https://lemmy.world/comment/10185336

https://lemmy.world/comment/10183600

https://lemmy.world/comment/10183893

I don't know why you needed me to link you other comments in this post, but here you go.

A wealth tax just isn't good policy, especially when there are better alternatives, like capital gains taxes and income taxes. Those also fix deeper issues than just a wealth tax that encourages spending outside of the country.

But really this post is just about ranting against Biden and fudging any details necessary to make it fit.

[-] blazera@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Do you just not have a reason for thinking a wealth tax is dumb? The first link just...is not whatever you think it is, its someone ranting against biden and someone else saying biden didnt mean to say wealth tax. But nothing in there criticizing a wealth tax itself. The second link i also responded to, and the third link is debating whether or not it would be legally allowed.

a wealth tax that encourages spending outside of the country.

You didnt even read the second word of the title man. This is an international proposal specifically for this reason.

[-] dhork@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

The devil is in the details here. For the super-rich, wealth is an extremely hard thing to quantify. Once a true wealth tax is established, all it will do is increase billable hours for financial professionals who know how to hide wealth in tax sheltered vehicles. And that will get litigated every year, when the bill is due. If you want to go after the extremely wealthy, I think the right place to do it is with a strong inheritance tax. That only gets litigated once, and the bill is paid by people who did not accumulate that wealth themselves. It also dilutes generational wealth, which is a good thing.

Plus, the US is unique in that it taxes citizens on their worldwide holdings, anyway. While there are offshore tax havens, they work a lot differently than the tax havens a wealth tax would target.

It's easy to say "We should tax the wealthy", but hard to make good policy that can't be gamed, especially when attempting to do it across multiple wealthy countries.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago

It’s easy to say “We should tax the wealthy”, but hard to make good policy that can’t be gamed, especially when attempting to do it across multiple wealthy countries.

That's literally what Yellen is refusing to participate in...

Like, the reason we can't do it, is we're not doing it...

If that sounds confusing, it's because there isn't a logical reason not to do it, besides the wealthy may donate less money to politicians

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 1 points 5 months ago

There are very real constitutional issues with explicit wealth taxes. It took a constitutional amendment to authorize the federal government to collect an income tax, and it's quite possible that it would take another to authorize a wealth tax. Particularly with this Supreme Court, Congress probably doesn't have the legal ability to impose a wealth tax even if it wanted to, to say nothing of the general complexity and costs of collecting it. There are plenty of economists who support the general idea of taxing the wealthy more but who prefer other taxation schemes.

[-] blazera@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

wealth is an extremely hard thing to quantify.

it is very commonly quantified in net worth.

[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Wealth isn’t that hard to quantify. An assessor comes to my house every few years and quantifies what it’s worth for property tax reasons and most people’s wealth is basically their house and maybe a retirement account. Private companies almost all have a valuation. When a start up raises a round, they literally set a valuation for the round. When a traditional business gets a loan, the bank estimates what it’s worth.

But no one even wants to tax small business owners. Every wealth tax proposal is on the super wealthy who can sure as fuck value their net worth. Donald Trump just went on trial for lying about his. If we had a formal assessment system, he would have never even been able to do frauds.

[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago

There's a lot of bullshit in those numbers though including things like unrealized capital gains and real estate. Trump is in trouble for wildly misvaluing his real estate (including openly lying about factual information like square footage) but it's almost impossible to accurately value real estate outside of a sale happening - things like depreciation and local market prices fluctuations are all just guesses. Most real estate is valued as low as the owner can justify (outside dumb pride and weird tax tricks) just to dodge property taxes.

Net worth is an easy number to guess at within an order of magnitude but it's really difficult to actually calculate - even for Americans in America... guessing at the wealth of some Bhutanese millionaire who has a deep in with the local government and can bribe officials to undervalue or misassign property would be extremely difficult.

[-] blazera@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Trump is in trouble for wildly misvaluing his real estate (including openly lying about factual information like square footage)

And people lie about income for income taxes. And then they get audited. A wealth tax doesnt have to be accurate to the dollar, its about dissuading gross wealth hoarding. A billion and 40 thousand can still round to a billion and be a very effective tax estimate.

guessing at the wealth of some Bhutanese millionaire who has a deep in with the local government and can bribe officials to undervalue or misassign property would be extremely difficult.

I dont think people in small low income countries like bhutan are going to affect this tax much. I would also assume this international tax would come with some form of international auditing.

Thats the one thing working in our favor dealing with the people that have concentrated the worlds wealth into a few hands: its in a few hands. Its easy to keep track of.

[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

And people lie about income for income taxes. And then they get audited.

The difference here is that we definitively know how much income people make by collecting that number at several steps in the process - since wealth isn't transferred we only have the reporting party and estimations.

If we're okay being approximately correct that's much more reasonable though.

guessing at the wealth of some Bhutanese millionaire who has a deep in with the local government and can bribe officials to undervalue or misassign property would be extremely difficult.

I dont think people in small low income countries like bhutan are going to affect this tax much.

Bhutan was meant to be a non-controversial example let's instead consider Russia, do you think Russia will aide or hamper the ability for the international community to tax their oligarchs... please keep in mind that their government is entirely composed of oligarchs that are currently sanctioned by most western countries. What about Brazil, do you think some millionaire with close ties to the government is going to be accurately reported? Or do you think Brazil has a motivation to keep that money underreported in favor of bribes - bear in mind Brazil's long history of corruption.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

There's an actual simple solution.

Overfund the IRS and subsidize the tax agencies of other nations the same way we subsidize their militaries.

iirc every dollar invested in the IRS brings in about $300.00. That's with them avoiding the super rich because they have super lawyers.

[-] Professorozone@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

While I agree that billionaires need to start paying their way, I cannot get on board with taxing someone for dying.

I think a better way is to remove all of the mechanisms in place that made them that wealthy in the first place.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

Think of it as taxing the people getting the windfall, not the person dying.

[-] Professorozone@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

When my mother died ( not a billionaire) I sure as hell didn't think that was a valid reason for the government to collect a payment.

I stand by what I said. Tax the crap out of them when they are alive and remove all of the mechanisms that got them this insane wealth.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

One of the biggest mechanisms that people get insane wealth is through inheritance though.

[-] Iampossiblyatwork@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

Also with taxes going to the government... There is a lot of corruption designed to bring those taxes back in the form subsidies, projects, funding etc. No guarantee taxes end up where they are needed.

[+] Rapidcreek@lemmy.world -13 points 5 months ago

This type of tax would just result in wealthy people moving their money into 3rd world countries. they will not pay a dime in the end and the USA would get less tax money from them.. hence why its a no for now. come up with a better strategy for taxing these assholes, not something that will result in them paying even less and hiding their money other places. FFS, it's fairly simple yet forest/trees

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 26 points 5 months ago

Except we started this years ago and it's working...

A 2021 agreement between 140 countries will limit the scope of multinationals to reduce tax by booking profits in low-tax countries by setting a global 15% floor on corporate taxation from next year.

“Something that many people thought would be impossible, now we know can actually be done,” Zucman said. “The logical next step is to apply that logic to billionaires, and not only to multinational companies.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/business/billionaires-global-tax/index.html

Like, what you're doing is the same as when billionaires/corporations claim if they pay more tax they'll leave for a third world country with low tax...

You know what never happens?

Billionaires/corporations moving to third world countries after we raise their taxes.

[+] Rapidcreek@lemmy.world -12 points 5 months ago

There is a big difference between corporate wealth and personal wealth and there are more than 140 countries.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There's a reason they're not already hiding money in 3rd world countries with shit tier banking systems, regulations, and protections for their money...

You think some rich jerk off wants to hid millions of dollars in a country where at any moment civil war can break out, the government could seize their money, or their banking system can just go insolvent?

You don't think those 3rd world countries would want to keep the developed world happy?

There is just sooooo much obviously wrong with your train of thought.

Like you realize if this takes off and the wealthy do what you think...

Developed countries could just remove non participating countries from their market?

Putting money there would be just as "smart" as burying it in the sand somewhere and then living it there and hoping if you ever need it you can go get it and it'll still be there...

And it would be much much worse for people legitimately living there. I want going to mention that because it would be obvious...

But it feels necessary now

[+] xhieron@lemmy.world -9 points 5 months ago

Tell us then. Where are they currently hiding their money?

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Now?

Not in Panama...

https://apnews.com/article/panama-papers-odebrecht-trial-50e8e62ae2021c417e49751d7cfe0331

Because united international actions works...

[-] xhieron@lemmy.world -2 points 5 months ago

But that wasn't the question, was it? United international action works and also doesn't really exist. You think billionaires are going to just throw up their hands and give governments their tax dollars if enough nations agree they should. Doesn't work that way.

Read the article you linked. Who's going to jail in Panama? A few bankers--maybe. Panama changed its rules, and the billionaires just moved all their money elsewhere--exactly as predicted.

The solution to tax evasion isn't more tax law. That's like saying that if only everyone agreed rapists should go to jail, people would stop committing rape.

I'm in favor of a wealth tax just because any action beats no action, but it is absolutely a half measure. The real solution to this problem is not financial. It's personal.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

From the very comment chain you're commenting on:

A 2021 agreement between 140 countries will limit the scope of multinationals to reduce tax by booking profits in low-tax countries by setting a global 15% floor on corporate taxation from next year.

“Something that many people thought would be impossible, now we know can actually be done,” Zucman said. “The logical next step is to apply that logic to billionaires, and not only to multinational companies.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/23/business/billionaires-global-tax/index.html

So yeah, it does exist.

Dont expect more replies.

[-] xhieron@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

140 != all

Dont expect more replies.

Thank Christ.

[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Some moved their money. Then they got caught. Kinda silly how you’re ignoring that part.

this post was submitted on 21 May 2024

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