Biden to Propose New “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” of 20 Percent

Oh goodness, so its the end of the world, all entrepreneurs will leave the US and go elsewhere, we are all doomed, the world ends. All the wealthy will go bankrupt. This is the same mantra that is echoed in the halls of Washington DC every single time by satanic lobbyists. May God help us, we will all become Venezuela. LOL.

Let those who abused the system and created loopholes for themselves PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE for God's sake.

Taxing on unrealized gains causes a huge chained impact on the whole economy regardless of it seems to be designed for just only super rich persons. It is equivalent to Mark-to-Market accounting. Think of the big trouble caused by Enron scandal. MTM played a major role in that scandal.
100m is not a big number for many startup founders. Many of them will surely be hit hard to force to either go bankrupt or give up their majority of stocks or options assume their company not yet going public or the price is not going up enough to cover their unrealized gains after IPO.
Does unrealized appreciation including home equity? If so, will be fun to see how many more households to be taxed more. Stilll paying the regular property tax?
How about their net value is down? Do they also get 3000 dollars limit for the loss adjustment. That will be fun to see it will take probably thousands years to deduct all that loss amount in their tax report. If super rich gets more amount to adjust their taxable income from the unrealized loss per year, all other people also should be treated the same, so this is a good news for all to ask IRS to remove the 3000 dollar loss limit in your tax return. Besides, the wash sale rules should also be removed because technically it is the same to tax the future unrealized gains.
The market is not going up every year. The net value increase for billionaires will not rise every year. What if the market is down for a year or years to come. The government probably still won't get a penny from billionaires. ..... Not fair for billionaires and actually not good the whole population. The poor and the middle class will suffer more when billionaires and start-up founders are penalized when investing in growing businesses.
Biden's new tax is too bad to US today and to the future.

I believe they specified the tax on unrealized gains is on liquid assets, so probably houses, publicly traded stocks.[/QUOTE]
 
The tax structure needs revision. We don't have enough information about the new proposal yet to properly evaluate it, but it would seem there may a much better way to go about revision than what the administration is proposing, which it seems may be a form of MTM accounting for those in certain income categories. If so, I am against it on the grounds I don't like introducing any more complexity into our tax code. It is too complex as it is. There must be more to this new proposal than meets the eye.

I have thought for some time that more brackets are needed up to 50% at least, and possibly higher -- this has to be determined by putting pencil to paper and not by guessing. What this would do is restore much of the pre-1981 progressiveness that has disappeared from the tax structure and resulted in acceleration of the effect of return on capital exceeding the economic growth rate. The result of our post 1981 tax bracketing and inheritance rules has been a lessening of opportunity among the lower economic classes and a piling up of capital resources at the top end of the economic ladder.

Revisions to the stepped-up-basis rules for inheritance may be a better, less disruptive and fair way to tax unrealized appreciation. The long range goal over the current century should be to reverse the affect of accelerated lopsidedness in wealth distribution while reducing, but not eliminating, the inevitable effect of the mean returns on capital exceeding the mean growth in GDP. The goal should be to ameliorate the harmful long term effects of what is now a constantly accelerating wealth disparity leading to an increasing loss of opportunity for economic advancement among the lower economic classes, and ultimately to a failed economy, and destructive social and political instability.

A long-range problem that has existed for many years will require a correspondingly long time to rectify. The best time to start rectifying it is now; not tomorrow.
 
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I am all in for a flat tax, without any deductions whatsoever.

But your socialized medicine comment is nonsense. You guys always avoid looking at the working examples. Japan has socialized medicine. It works perfectly well. So does Germany. So does Switzerland. And I can name you 10 other countries. Why you never look at the examples that made it work? Always compare with failures. It's as if your benchmark is deliberately set low.

You'll never see a flat tax here in the US. Same with term limits. It would require politicians to give up too much power.

Can't compare US to Japan or even Germany or Switzerland.

Nearly 40% of American adults aged 20 and over are obese. 71.6% of adults aged 20 and over are overweight, including obesity. (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2017-2018; Harvard School of Public Health, 2020).

That's the problem. Americans are in poor health. Japanese people overall have high longevity and tend to eat healthy. Only issue they have is smoking where they are a few percentage worse than Americans. Doesn't matter how good the health care system is, if people don't care about their own health, you'll get poor results.

https://observatoireprevention.org/...have-the-highest-life-expectancy-in-the-world
 
I don't think a tax on appreciated assets could work. It's easy to calculate the value of stocks, but what about other appreciated assets such as land or art or collectibles. However, the fact that mega-rich guys like Jeff Bezos who has paid zero federal taxes for years should be addressed. Bezos has even twice filed for an Earned Income Tax Credit intended for low income filers, because his stated "income" was so low. They guys finance their lifestyles by borrowing against their appreciated assets, and even get a deduction on the interest they pay on these loans. This is a slap in the face to those of us who are paying their share of the government for them. I think the solution is to tax loans against appreciated assets as if it was regular income.
 
So how are those borrowed funds, used for consumption/lifestyle, repaid in its current form? At some point they need to cash in some of their options such as Elon Musk has done. That is when the tax man should be ringing the door bell.

I don't think a tax on appreciated assets could work. It's easy to calculate the value of stocks, but what about other appreciated assets such as land or art or collectibles. However, the fact that mega-rich guys like Jeff Bezos who has paid zero federal taxes for years should be addressed. Bezos has even twice filed for an Earned Income Tax Credit intended for low income filers, because his stated "income" was so low. They guys finance their lifestyles by borrowing against their appreciated assets, and even get a deduction on the interest they pay on these loans. This is a slap in the face to those of us who are paying their share of the government for them. I think the solution is to tax loans against appreciated assets as if it was regular income.
 
So how are those borrowed funds, used for consumption/lifestyle, repaid in its current form? At some point they need to cash in some of their options such as Elon Musk has done. That is when the tax man should be ringing the door bell.

The loan is not repaid in their lifetimes. After the billionaire dies, some stock is sold to repay the loan. Why do you think billionaires spend so much money trying to influence politicians to get rid of estate taxes?

Elon Musk had to sell stock in order to purchase vested options, not because he needed money to live on.
 
So, as said those are the real issues. It's not the current tax rates. It's that there is no taxable income/capital. It should not matter when the loan is repaid,whether the guy died or not. The second the loan is repaid the tax should be charged,regardless of whether it will be paid, cash flow wise, by an heir or an estate.


There should not he any estate tax whatsoever. The moment the guy passes any wealth that is passed on gets taxed. Donations or philanthropy should be allowed tax free up to a few hundred dollars. Problem solved.

What you said about Musk is only partially correct. He did not have to pay taxes when the options vested. He had to pay on the exercising of the options to convert them to stocks. And he sold stocks to pay the tax bill.

The
loan is not repaid in their lifetimes. After the billionaire dies, some stock is sold to repay the loan. Why do you think billionaires spend so much money trying to influence politicians to get rid of estate taxes?

Elon Musk had to sell stock in order to purchase vested options, not because he needed money to live on.
 
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