Do you support it? I just find it ridiculous that we tax people who add value to society as calculated by their income, and ignore the trust fund babies who just inherited their wealth! TY Dolla $igns
Do you support it? I just find it ridiculous that we tax people who add value to society as calculated by their income, and ignore the trust fund babies who just inherited their wealth! TY Dolla $igns
Who would get hit hardest by a wealth tax? Probably the wealthiest people. Let’s see:
1 - Jeff Bezos
2 - Bill Gates
3 - Warren Buffett
4 - Mark Zuckerburg
5 - Larry Ellison
6, 7 - Larry Page & Sergey Brin
8 - Michael Bloomberg
9. Steve Ballmer
10, 11, 12 - Walton kids (inherited)
13,14 - Charles Koch and David Koch’s widow
15 - Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife
Which of these people have “added value to society”? And which ones have “just inherited their wealth”? Remember–a wealth tax will impact all of them.
Fair point! But the question still stands why tax income only, why not wealth as well. Seems to me we are missing a whole other equation here. Supposedly the net worth in the us is about 100 trillion. A 1 percent tax would generate a trillion in govt rev, easily plugging up normalized deficits. In my opinion of you have have money, then you should grow it. If you cannot grow it faster than the tax, then you don’t deserve it. Use it or lose it. I think there was a biblical reference about this. 1 guy investing it successfully, another guy trying to invest it and losing it, and another guy who just buried it and was punished for not even trying. Well call it the god wills it tax.
Ah! Let’s assume Jeff Bezos is worth $100 billion, and the wealth tax is a flat 1% of that, which is $1 billion.
Do you think that Jeff Bezos has $1 billion of cash laying around? Under his mattress? In a savings account earning 0.0% interest?
im sure he can borrow against it. or he can liquidate. at the end of the day, we have a deficit. taxes need to be paid. to try new forms of taxation is probably a better idea than ramping up current income tax.
Ah. He can sell part of his company, yes, since it’s a publicly-traded stock.
What about the Koch brothers? How can they liquidate Koch industries? It’s not publicly-traded.
one of them is dead. so lets remove the plural. amazing people btw. i read a summary of their books.
he can still borrow against it. lots of banks are willing to lend profitable companies like those.
but even if they were a money loser, then that will force him to ipo and share the wealth with others, via ipo, vc, etc etc. i dont see the negative in that. hell the private valuation will be pretty public as well via funding. haha. so no need to hire accountants to appriase.
Indeed! One of them is dead! But his wife lives on. So let’s NOT remove the plural and understand that the brother’s estate and heirs are still alive and well and will pay the tax.
Why in the world would a bank loan somebody money to pay tax? Just think about it from the bank’s perspective. If their business isn’t creating enough cash to pay the tax, why should the bank stick its neck out? I mean–if they can’t come up with the cash to pay the tax, what makes you think they would have the cash to pay the bank?
And it’s not a money loser, so there’s no reason to IPO. Why would you share the wealth with others?
No need to hire an appraiser to appraise his wealth? You’ll have to explain that one to me.
Here’s the deal: the vast majority of our tax dollars go to fund the government. The IRS is owned by the government. The IRS is only taxing us to pay for the cost taxing us (office supplies, paper, staples, etc.). It is a vicious cycle. Just tax everyone a lot once, give everyone a raise, pay off the national debt and ban the IRS and farming forever. You know I’m right.
many banks loan money to pay tax. all they care about is your collaterall or ability to pay.
i know its not a money loser. i am saying it were. wealth taxes will force the ipo to a money loser.
ppl constantly hire appraisers to appraise their wealth to determine the basis. but i was mostly referring to the irs appraising your property. that owuld not be necessary, since if you do ipo, the market, or funder will do it for you.
thats not true. roughly 2 trillion or half is ss and medicare alone. those things are dynamic. imo a balance budget is the way to go. so either cut ss and medicare for the old people. or raise taxes by any means possible. dont pass it along future billionaires. tax them here and now to finance their problems which is their old people.
it shjouldnt be the young payinf for hte old.
it should the old rich paying for the old poor. that makes sense to me.
So if your business doesn’t generate enough cash to pay the tax, just call your bank. I’m sure they won’t ask, “If you can’t pay your taxes, what makes us think that you will pay us back?” Got it.
Indeed. This is objective and clearly understood by all.
Koch Industries is not a public company. Quit talking about it as if it were. Answer the question as it happens in real life, not in some strange alternative reality that you have imagined in your own brain.
koch industries can afford to pay the tax bill. they are profitable.
kocch can easily distibute to the estate or the shareholders to pay it off.
matter of fact it might promote profitability in companies going forward.
i am saying if they werent.
for debt. banks are willing to lend for whatever reason. do you know how much corporate debt is out there? specifically in energy.
Yes. But this tax is assessed on the individual–not on the company. Koch Industries would have to pay its owner $1.31 billion so he could pay his $1b tax. Does Koch Industries have $1.31 billion in cash laying around?
Banks are willing to lend to people who can pay them back–with interest. But if you can’t pay your tax, you can’t pay your bank. It’s not some kind of investment with a positive return, like an energy company. These are two totally different things.
If a person comes to me and says, “I want to start a business. Can I borrow money? I will pay you back once the business is profitable.”, that’s something I would consider.
If a person comes to me and says “I owe a lot of tax, but I don’t have the cash. Can I borrow your cash to pay the IRS?”, the answer is no. If you won’t pay the IRS, you won’t pay me, either.
edit - yes–sometimes a bank will loan somebody money to pay taxes intermittently. IE - I have a $100k tax bill, but I have $200k in receivables that I will collect in the next couple of months. But again–there’s some collateral, or some other reason to believe that I’ll have money very soon. If a person says, “I don’t have enough cash to pay my tax–and there’s no reason to believe that I ever WILL have the cash,” that’s a different story altogether.
supposedly they make 10 b pre tax. so lets call it 7b net. if they cant distribute 1b to shareholders. then let the koch brothers ipo and have them sell their shares.
if you cant afford the wealth tax. then liquidate a portion of your business.
Since I don’t have the figures, I’ll assume you’re correct. (Quite a hasty assumption, indeed.)
Why do you think Koch Industries makes $7b per year? Answer - because they use their available cash to make profitable investments. If you just magically suck away $1.3 billion dollars of their cash every year, that would probably bankrupt the company. I don’t have the details in front of me, but I bet that a 1% net worth tax would probably turn a $100b company into a $100m company pretty darn quick.
not at all. if you look at shillers data. earnings growth and price growth is about 7 to 10% per year. you can easily afford a 1% tax. not to mention dividend yields have varied from 1% to 14% per year. anyways i dont see how a company will go from from 100b to 100m. if they are generating 7b and only require 1b to distribute. they are still netting 6b per year.
Or, to put it another way–Koch Industries has revenues of $110b. That might mean that they made one $110b sale.
Or maybe they made 110 $1b sales. And if you take away their $1b, they have no cash. They have no inventory. They have nothing left to sell. They are now worthless.
And once the company becomes worthless, the Koch brothers are now worthless. And all their employees are now worthless. And the banks that loaned them the money are all worthless. Equality achieved!!!
Koch Industries pays a $14b dividend? (The Koch Brothers are worth 84 billion, and they own 84% of the company, which means it’s worth $100b.) $100b x 14% = $14 billion per year? With only $7b after tax?
Oh, I get it. They make sales, and then they put the net profits into some sort of corporate vault, and never touch that money again. They don’t buy new equipment or repair old equipment or expand their operations with that money.