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Which in my opinion is a transaction freely entered into by both parties, and is a taxable event. You have gained income from your capital at this point. Wealt
by lifeisstillgood 2y ago
Which in my opinion is a transaction freely entered into by both parties, and is a taxable event. You have gained income from your capital at this point.
Wealth taxes do not need to have someone guess a value of someone’s wealth. The wealthy can tell the government what they think it is at each point.
- eadmund 2y ago> You have gained income from your capital at this point. No, one has moved money from a debt account into a cash account. For every dollar the cash account increases, the debt account decreases. Income, on the other hand, is final and not paid back. Imagine that I am born with $100,000 in stock: Assets Stocks XYZ 100 shares @ $1,000/share = $100,000 Bank account $0 Liabilities $0 Income $0 Expenses $0 Equity -$100,000 My net worth is $100,000. If I borrow $50,000 against my stock, here are my accounts: Assets Stocks XYZ 100 shares @ $1,000/share = $100,000 Bank account $50,000 Liabilities Loan -$50,000 Income $0 Expenses $0 Equity -$100,000 As you can see, my net worth is still $100,000. I have $50,000 more in cash, but $50,000 less in loan. On the other hand, if worked a job instead and didn’t take out a loan, this might be the situation: Assets Stocks XYZ 100 shares @ $1,000/share = $100,000 Bank account $50,000 Liabilities $0 Income $50,000 Expenses $0 Equity -$150,000 My net worth is now $150,000. I actually had income. Same $50,000 in my bank account, but now it’s income and my net worth has increased. What if I worked the job and took out the loan? Then it would look like this: Assets Stocks XYZ 100 shares @ $1,000/share = $100,000 Bank account $100,000 Liabilities Loan -$50,000 Income $50,000 Expenses $0 Equity -$150,000 I borrowed $50,000 and worked for $50,000, and so my bank account went up $100,000, but my net worth didn’t go up $100,000 — because I owe $50,000, too.
- welcome_dragon 2y agoThis needs to be seen more
- lifeisstillgood 2y agoOk firstly how do you do the pre/ styling - been here years not worked that one out. Not answering you at first, I suggest you chnage this to be 1000x- >>> Imagine that I am born with $100,000,000 in stock That’s more the level “wealth tax” campaigns are about. Because wealth belongs eventually to all human society. Getting off this rock and surviving for another thousand years as a species is something 100% of humanity does or 0% And wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, is wealth that is not put to optimal use. Not educating the pooorest of the planet, not stopping disease and providing nutrition to the growing. This is not about borrowing and lending money. This is how do we circulate the actual wealth, the doctors and nurses and engineers and road sweepers, the excess energy and the excess knowledge of 8 billion apes. Musk is right we need to get off the planet, but is wrong if that’s something just a few of us can do. Whitey went to the moon, but he did not stay. Fix down here, else we won’t make it up there.
- lifeisstillgood 2y ago(Probably a bit late to the conversation but whatever) > You have gained income from your capital at this point. Let’s say Jeff Bezos wants to buy a yacht. He has 1 million amazon shares worth 1 cent when he started and now worth 100 dollars. So he can sell the shares to get 100 million dollars and buy the yacht. But he has to pay 10% capital gains. Or he can borrow 100 million from any bank and they will accept the shares as collateral. He does not pay capital gains at this point My take on this is that is a freely entered into contract at which Bezos values his shares at 100 million. And he gains use of the wealth of 100Million (debt balance is not relevant here) Think of it as like the Duke of SomethingShire. He can rent out his land to farmers etc and get an income. That’s fine. But if he then borrows a 100 million against the land of the shire, and buys a yacht with it, then he has gained from a chnage of the capital - I just don’t see this as a private shielded from tax decision. I think there is a further issue in that Amazonnshares do not generate much income (not much in way of dividends). This leads to the general problem of tech shares in that it’s always a greater fool valuation. But warren buffet talks much better about dangers of valuing shares without income streams than I do.
- spacebanana7 2y ago> The wealthy can tell the government what they think it is at each point. This will need to be audited by the government, at least occasionally. With all the issues that come from estimating the value of a domain names and other unusual assets someone holds. I think restricting the tax deductibility of charitable donations is a better way to start. These transactions are already usually included in tax filings.
- lifeisstillgood 2y agoSorry I mean “tell” as in make a freely entered into contract It’s next to impossible to gauge a person wealth at any point in time so any generic “wealth tax” is a non starter, but that does not mean we should not make efforts to ensure that wealth is taxed at equal amounts as income. I find it hard to see why Warren Buffet should pay 10% on his increase in wealth for one year while his maid pays 40% If Jeff Bezos borrows 500 million against some shares he is saying that the shares are worth 500m and that he has now realised some of the gains from those shares. It’s pretty easy to avoid complicating the mortgage market by putting a floor on the amount governments will tax (ie borrow 5 million or less in a fiscal year we don’t care)