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Assuming US: Tax is based on income. If you find a way to avoid income, you don't have any income to be taxed. There are certainly ways to game the system, but

Assuming US: Tax is based on income. If you find a way to avoid income, you don't have any income to be taxed. There are certainly ways to game the system, but those ways mean one isn't realizing income. Seems relatively fair to me. After all, the gov isn't supposed to be a welfare machine,and stealing from others is generally regarded as theft.

coldtea 3y ago
>Seems relatively fair to me. It's legal. It's hardly fair. It means the working/middle class masses get to pay the burden of taxes (including sales taxes, and others) disproportionately to their income and wealth - and of course, the money taken from them is orders of magnitude more impactful on their everyday life than if we half of Bezos income (or even half his total wealth) was taxed away. >and stealing from others is generally regarded as theft. Only as long as you're not rich. If you're its normalized and has lots of legal avenues available to you to do that, same how unfairness is codified in laws like the above, in which "if you find a way to avoid income, you don't have any income to be taxed", which was made the case precisely because the rich have ample easy means to "avoid income".
- hellojesus 3y ago
  Apart from being illegal constitutionally at the federal level, what does a wealth tax truly do? 1. Forces wealthy to liquidate assets. Impact: stock prices go down, real estate markets get excess supply floods, etc. 2. Forces income through taxable sales. 3. Theft I fail to understand how taxing wealth is not stealing. Any time a wealthy person wants to utilize wealth to consume a product, someone somewhere is paying taxes on it. The closest that gets to not being true is when wealthy use their stock as collateral for loans and then get to take interest write offs, but the bank is still going to pay income tax on the interest income they receive. Wealth means nothing until it is utilized, and all ways in which it's utilized are taxed.

coldtea 3y ago

>Seems relatively fair to me. It's legal. It's hardly fair. It means the working/middle class masses get to pay the burden of taxes (including sales taxes, and others) disproportionately to their income and wealth - and of course, the money taken from them is orders of magnitude more impactful on their everyday life than if we half of Bezos income (or even half his total wealth) was taxed away. >and stealing from others is generally regarded as theft. Only as long as you're not rich. If you're its normalized and has lots of legal avenues available to you to do that, same how unfairness is codified in laws like the above, in which "if you find a way to avoid income, you don't have any income to be taxed", which was made the case precisely because the rich have ample easy means to "avoid income".

hellojesus 3y ago
Apart from being illegal constitutionally at the federal level, what does a wealth tax truly do? 1. Forces wealthy to liquidate assets. Impact: stock prices go down, real estate markets get excess supply floods, etc. 2. Forces income through taxable sales. 3. Theft I fail to understand how taxing wealth is not stealing. Any time a wealthy person wants to utilize wealth to consume a product, someone somewhere is paying taxes on it. The closest that gets to not being true is when wealthy use their stock as collateral for loans and then get to take interest write offs, but the bank is still going to pay income tax on the interest income they receive. Wealth means nothing until it is utilized, and all ways in which it's utilized are taxed.