Alternative proposal. Billionaires should pay an annual 75% tax on any income and any wealth in excess of 1 billion.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
641 points (98.1% liked)
World News
39096 readers
2540 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Uh, why not 99%, and you get a framed certificate congratulating you for winning capitalism?
When you get to 1 billion your wealth resets but you get exclusive skins
So they’ll be playing on a higher difficulty?
Same difficulty everyone else plays, which yeah it's a lot higher than theirs
load more comments
(1 replies)
100% on all wealth above, say, a quarter of a billion dollars and all income that would bring you above that threshold.
Nah dude. If they hit a billion dollars, you take all their wealth, reset them back to level one, put a star next to their name and tell them to do it again. They'll appreciate the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with a second run.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Alternative alternative proposal: being billionaire shouldn't be possible. There should be a wealth cap.
A wealth cap tax...I could get behind that.
load more comments
(2 replies)
That isn't how it works though. Nobody is collecting billions in wages. They receive stock which isn't counted as taxable income until sold.
All registered securities (stocks, bonds,etc.) should be taxed at 75% per year. Natural persons are exempted from the tax on their first $16.7 million, with a progressive schedule up to the full tax rate at $1 billion in value.
Securities are not sold to pay the tax. A percentage of each security held by the ultra-wealthy taxpayer is transferred to the IRS. IRS liquidators sell off the shares in small lots over time, so that liquidated shares comprise no more than 1% of total traded volume.
load more comments
(3 replies)
If taxation were done properly there would be no billionaires. They are a symptom of a broken tax system.
So, I'm assuming you are in support of a 2% wealth tax?
Sorry if I sound paranoid, just checking. Tone is hard to convey in text.
2 percent for those who would dip below a billion.
Just make a billion dollars a hard limit. Once you achieve that wealth, you aren't allowed anymore. If it's because of stock values, then any shares after you hit a billion are distributed among employees (including "contract workers" who they pretend aren't employees).
If it's in cash money anything over a billion goes to the government.
If it's in real estate properties are seized and sold at auction according to the land use. For housing, it's only sold to individual people who will use the property as a sole homestead. For small offices it's sold to businesses with a single location.
If it's art it's donated to a museum in the art's place of origin.
load more comments
(7 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Can we be specific and say "2% of their purported assets valuation must be paid in liquid cash annually" so they can stop loopholing taxes to oblivion?
Oh look, all of the sudden corporate entities are paying taxes instead of saying "oops yeah we broke even before bonuses."
2% what the…. My income above 50k is taxed 48% i think. Wtf 2%
Edit: yes i know the difference, but still…
Wealth tax is different from income tax. Once you've received your income it becomes wealth, and it is not taxed unless you use it. Wealth tax would mean that your money in the bank is taxed periodically.
load more comments
(1 replies)
That’s your income not your net worth, 2% of your net worth would be taking the value of all your cash + stocks/investments/businesses + assets like cars/homes/land/collectibles/jewelry/etc and taxing 2% of that value.
Your income shouldn’t be your net worth unless you’re honestly spending every dime of every check
load more comments
(3 replies)
ah, but imagine if you have 128Billion dollars, more than the GDP of many countries
It’s weird to think I can be given stocks and have to pay real taxes for the value of those taxes. But somebody who starts a business and owns a large number of shares never has to pay taxes on those shares even though they got them when they were worth $0 and now are worth possibly billions.
Often times those shares can be used as leverage for a loan providing the shareholder with the quality of life of a billionaire without ever paying the taxes on earning the billions.
This feature of taxes ONLY benefits the super wealthy and everybody else just has to pay taxes for every dollar of wealth earned.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Try 90%, and they'd still have obscene wealth afterwards.
Exactly, 10% of a billion dollars is one hundred million. That's more than enough to live a cushy stress free life without ever working again if you're not an idiot blowing it all on dumb shit.
That puts you in the same net worth bracket as a lot of celebrity actors and musicians.
load more comments
(2 replies)
2% make it 80%. Eat the rich.
2% might actually be possible. 80% would collapse the nominal value of the "wealth". E.g. who is going to give Bezos 160 billion actual dollars for his stock to cover such a tax bill, especially when every other billionaire is trying to get trillions of real dollars at the same time. The aggregate nominal value of the s&p 500 is way way more than actual dollars that exist.
Should be 99% for everything above a certain threshold. Any money you make above that number is pretty much guaramteed to have come from exploiting others, so they shouldn’t get to keep that.
2?? Dont stroke em too hard you might get a rash
2% per year on all weath (not just income) above 1bn. Seems good to me.
It's infinity billion times more than 0
Two percent? Yeah fuck that, how about they pay their fair share instead?
A two percent wealth tax is actually a better idea than a lot of people here seem to think.
If you have $100B, you'd have to pay $2B every year that you hold that much wealth, and you'll have to pay it in cash.
This would produce a lot of annual recurring tax revenue, and it would incentivize billionaires to hoard less paper capital if they don't want to constantly be forking over billions in taxes.
The tax is beneficial, and so is the way around the tax.
Though we also need to tax their income more too.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Why not 20%? It's not like they need all that money.
Nope there is no reason anyone should have a billion dollars.
Such a shortsighted view. How do you expect us to get out much-needed class of Trillionaire God-Rulers if you make life so difficult for those hardworking Billionaires?
to be clear...
/s
say G20 ministers
Kind of a misleading headline. That's not the G20. That's three countries that are in the G20.
Absolutely 100% this. We need a global effort so they can't just move to some tax shelter.
2% is also cheap IMO, nobody needs to have that much money.
load more comments
(1 replies)
So I understand the ultra-rich's way of doing business now is to never realize gains but rather take loans against a percentage of their unrealized gains (backed of course, by the unrealized gains themselves) and spend that money rather than ever make any income. Does anybody know of any good ideas to handle that type of scenario?
sure, force them to realize gains by taxing unrealized gains that have gone unrealized for a certain amount of time
Forfeited shares held as collateral for a loan should require paying a capital gains tax if you default on the loan.
What about billionaires paying a 50% tax until there are no more billionaires?? I like that a lot more!!
I would add that if you are securing loans above a certain total amount or used for certain purchase types to make a purchase, that purchase is subject to a sales tax that must come out of the purchaser’s pocket. The trouble with wealth taxes is that most of the “wealth” isn’t liquid, but it is often used, for example, as collateral to purchase Twitter. In this instance, the wealth used should be treated as liquid taxable assets. I think those taxes should come either from the purchaser divesting from some amount of assets or a straight cash, not from another loan, payment.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Meanwhile every Party of the current German government, as well as the opposition former conservatives now far-right populists and the fascist party are furiously rejecting wealth taxation.
I don't buy it for Germany, because the government leading social democratic party has been focusing exclusively on income taxation and blocked any advances towards reimplementing wealth taxation over the past 26 years of which they only were 4 years not in the government.
On top of a wealth tax, there should be a fraction of a percent financial transaction tax. It would have no effect on the average consumer, but a lot of effect on the investor class.
When you see a bunch of comments suggesting ideas that make it obvious the commenters don't hold any grasp on economics or finance whatsoever.
Here is a conspiracy theory for you. This bullshit is pushed by the people not wanting meaningful reform. Just like oil companies try to distract with Carbon capture.
"We need this simple reform." "No, we need Communist revolution! Eat the rich!”
load more comments
(2 replies)
Or solve it the Vietnamese way
Billionaires should pay 100% tax over $999,999.99 of personal wealth.
Some people still get to be wealthy. Problem solved.
view more: next ›