7 ms·

Quite funny that half of the team who wrote this hail from Switzerland, a country where there are no taxes on realized capital gains, much less unrealized ones.

by ur-whale 11mo ago

greyw 11mo ago
Switzerland has a wealth tax. That is a tax on unrealized gains fyi.
- Pooge 11mo ago
  No, because they are not exactly correlated with your gains. For what it's worth, you could have an unrealized deficit but still owe taxes. That's why it's a wealth tax and not unrealized gains tax. Real estate is included in that wealth, of course. And it has a different tax treatment than "usual" stock market gains.
- ur-whale 11mo ago
  > Switzerland has a wealth tax. If the wealth tax rate is close to zero, who the hell cares? The wealth tax in e.g. Kanton Zürich is 0.025% (not the cheapest Kanton). If you are able to grow your capital at - say - inflation corrected 4%, which shouldn't be overly hard, and you pay no taxes whatsoever on cap gains while paying 0.025% on the total accumulated wealth. I'll let you do the math as to how good you have it there.
  - greyw 11mo ago
    The highest marginal wealth tax rate in Zurich is 0.47% and 0.9% in Geneva starting at 2-3mn CHF. It's not irrelevant at all If you now earn 4% on your capital and pay 0.9% wealth taxes that is like a 25% tax rate on your unrealized gains. Inflation is close to zero anyway and interest rates are negative. Obviously I prefer that system because we can compound essentially tax free to a couple of 100k before having to think about taxes.
lambchoppers 11mo ago
Sure but tax on wealth is a tax on the integral of gains and trying to imagine a tax only on realized wealth seems like it would interest Switzerland but is difficult with real estate and stock markets.
- ur-whale 11mo ago
  > Sure but tax on wealth is a tax on the integral of gains If the wealth tax rate is close to zero, who cares? The wealth tax in e.g. Kanton Zürich is 0.025% I'd say that is close to nil when compared to the fact that there is no cap gain tax.
  - lambchoppers 11mo ago
    The tax rarely exceeds 1% because kantons wouldn't rather derive a larger portion of taxes from wealth tax or because any higher rate still flat across all wealth would cause assets that don't have yearly income to be regularly sold to avoid complexity in holding them?

Quite funny that half of the team who wrote this hail from Switzerland, a country where there are no taxes on realized capital gains, much less unrealized ones.

greyw 11mo ago

Switzerland has a wealth tax. That is a tax on unrealized gains fyi.

Pooge 11mo ago
No, because they are not exactly correlated with your gains. For what it's worth, you could have an unrealized deficit but still owe taxes. That's why it's a wealth tax and not unrealized gains tax. Real estate is included in that wealth, of course. And it has a different tax treatment than "usual" stock market gains.
ur-whale 11mo ago
> Switzerland has a wealth tax. If the wealth tax rate is close to zero, who the hell cares? The wealth tax in e.g. Kanton Zürich is 0.025% (not the cheapest Kanton). If you are able to grow your capital at - say - inflation corrected 4%, which shouldn't be overly hard, and you pay no taxes whatsoever on cap gains while paying 0.025% on the total accumulated wealth. I'll let you do the math as to how good you have it there.
- greyw 11mo ago
  The highest marginal wealth tax rate in Zurich is 0.47% and 0.9% in Geneva starting at 2-3mn CHF. It's not irrelevant at all If you now earn 4% on your capital and pay 0.9% wealth taxes that is like a 25% tax rate on your unrealized gains. Inflation is close to zero anyway and interest rates are negative. Obviously I prefer that system because we can compound essentially tax free to a couple of 100k before having to think about taxes.

lambchoppers 11mo ago

Sure but tax on wealth is a tax on the integral of gains and trying to imagine a tax only on realized wealth seems like it would interest Switzerland but is difficult with real estate and stock markets.

ur-whale 11mo ago
> Sure but tax on wealth is a tax on the integral of gains If the wealth tax rate is close to zero, who cares? The wealth tax in e.g. Kanton Zürich is 0.025% I'd say that is close to nil when compared to the fact that there is no cap gain tax.
- lambchoppers 11mo ago
  The tax rarely exceeds 1% because kantons wouldn't rather derive a larger portion of taxes from wealth tax or because any higher rate still flat across all wealth would cause assets that don't have yearly income to be regularly sold to avoid complexity in holding them?