re: #118 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

I’m still a proponent of a wealth tax. Unrealized gains are a bit tricky because the entire premise of “unrealized” implies things about the future.

Simple wealth tax: (1) have each person add up their assets (at present value.) (2) Then subtract liabilities (at present value.) (3) Annually tax the net assets at 1%.

If necessary, allow an individual to define their own fiscal year, and have them pay this tax quarterly.

Options, derivatives, and other abstract instruments are simply valued at their current market price.

To make this palatable to the average home owner, one can exempt one’s primary residence below a certain value (say a million dollars.) Family farms (i.e., residence and employment are the same) perhaps have a larger exception.

A wealth tax like this has no where for a very rich person to hide. If they try to inflate their liabilities, they will just pay more whenever the liability comes to an end. If someone tries to rig the system by lowering the present value of their assets, then they will pay a larger amount via capital gains taxes (by requiring the capital gains calculations to use the same valuations as the wealth tax.)

sorry, it’ll never happen

we have a hard enough time defining what is and isn’t taxable income

there’s a lot of very valuable assets that are not marketable - how do they get valued and by who? annual appraisals?
one example: interests in non public companies / closely held / unincorporated businesses

then who verifies these valuations?

and isnt this what TFG is in all kinds of trouble for? look how long it took for anyone to notice his different valuations for tax vs insurance vs securing loans purposes

an important aspect of a taxation system should be objectivity - that different people following the same rules should arrive at similar results