The Super-Wealthy sit atop a mountain of wealth. TAX Accumulated super-wealth

[Union Yes]

The wealthiest 15% of our population own 85-90% of ALL of this nations vast wealth.

The wealthy are hoarding and removing this wealth from our economy. Arguably the prime reason that we are crashing into a deep recession.

The purchase power of the people of this nation has been thoroughly compromised and nearly destroyed.
Our economy will never recover until this system of extreme corruption is reversed.

We CAN fund single payer universal health care for all by taxing accumulated wealth. YES WE CAN!

We can stop the genocide on the sick by providing affordable access to HC for all. YES WE CAN!

We can reinvest in America. Our schools, highway, rail, and other infrastructure. YES WE CAN!

We could create millions of good paying jobs by reinvesting in our crumbling infrastructure. YES WE CAN!

We could create an entire new economy based on green energy. YES WE CAN!

We can make a decision right here and now. Invest in education for all. The best poverty buster known. YES WE CAN!

We can save the social safety net created by one of my heroes, FDR. We can give senior citizens a bit of reassurance and comfort in the Social Security system. Is some comfort in their golden years too much to ask. YES WE CAN!

Taxation of accumulated super-wealth is the answer!

My own definition of super-wealth. A net worth of more than 2 million dollars. From there tax it more in progressive increments. 5 million, 10,20,50,100, 1 Billion+.

Of course on "Capital" Hill, this would take courage, a spine, ovaries, and balls. All 4 seem to be in short supply in DC. It's as if Pols are neutered once elected.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. K&R!

[Union Yes]

3. Gawd I miss Paul Wellstone!

And the green bus.

:toast:

[FiveGoodMen]

6. There weren't many like him, that's for sure!

A guy who actually fought for what he believed in.

:fistbump:

[DesertFlower]

2. K&R. nt

[tblue37]

4. The dragon always sits on and hoards its treasure.

It never spreads it around.

[Union Yes]

9. Hopefully our knight in shining armor is the dude on the left half of your sig pic!

Knights slay dragons.

I would know, I play World of Warcraft!

:hi:

[TheMightyFavog]

51. Well, unless you're Dunkelzahn.

(Kudos to anyone who gets this reference.)

[geckosfeet]

54. Yes. The dragon hoards gold and virgins. Neither of which it can use.

[MichiganVote]

5. K&R Totally Agree!!!!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. How would you propose this be done?

Most other tax the rich approaches are build on income, which his easily measured.

[Union Yes]

8. Wealth determined through individual audits.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

39. Have to be more specific...that is easily avoidable

I say that because its damn near impossible to determine a true net worth if the individual is not interested in participating openly

[ContinentalOp]

10. I don't think you can really tax wealth. It doesn't make much sense.

We should just increase taxes on income and especially capital gains and inheritance.

Trying to tax wealth creates all sorts of weird issues when it comes to defining wealth. What if I put all of my cash in a bank account overseas? What if I'm living on a fixed income but the small house I bought in an inexpensive area 40 years ago is suddenly worth $2 million? How do you assess the worth of all of an individual's possessions? Should somebody who buys fine art that increases greatly in value pay more in taxes than somebody who buys an equivalent dollar amount in worthless toys and tchotchkes that immediately depreciate? Do we then tax them again when they sell those painting at auction and make a profit? Do they get a wealth tax refund if they've already paid the wealth tax on those assets?

I can see no real logical way to approach the problem unfortunately. Taxing income when it's received is the simplest and most logical solution.

[ContinentalOp]

11. more questions...

If I own forested land and those trees have some dollar amount am I taxed on those? What if I simply cut them down and burn the wood without selling it, can I escape paying those taxes?

And most importantly when are these wealth taxes assessed? Once a year? Do I pay a wealth tax on my mansion once a year for every year that I own it, based on its current market value?

[Union Yes]

19. More answers..

If I own forested land and those trees have some dollar amount am I taxed on those? What if I simply cut them down and burn the wood without selling it, can I escape paying those taxes?

No. Typically, undeveloped forested land is assessed a property tax rate as if it were empty land. Depending on your state law. Now if it's forested land that's in a prime area with potential growth/developement in the near future driving up it's property value to an astronomical dollar amount then yes. If your chunk of forested land drove your net worth above $2 million dollars then yes it should be taxed.

And most importantly when are these wealth taxes assessed?

Annually would be ideal in my opinion.

Do I pay a wealth tax on my mansion once a year for every year that I own it, based on its current market value?

You would already be paying property tax under an assessment that you just described. Yes, you would also be assessed annually under this new wealth tax.

Again, if the wealthy don't like it they have options..

1. Find another country to call home.

2. Win an election and govern.

3. Teabag

[ContinentalOp]

22. So you're basically admitting...

that all of the super wealthy would pack up and leave the U.S. right before this law was about to pass right? That seems to be what you're saying with #1. I mean they might as well take all of their easily portable assets (jewelry, fine art, cash, whatever) overseas.

[Hannah Bell]

24. let them. productive assets = wealth, & they're generally fixed in place.

[ContinentalOp]

26. Can you clarify what you mean?

What productive assets are fixed in place other than real estate, which is already taxed?

[Hannah Bell]

28. i think the meaning is clear.

[ContinentalOp]

30. So you mean real estate?

It's already taxed? What am I missing? Why are you being obtuse?

[Hannah Bell]

32. is it? lol.

[Union Yes]

29. To what country? America has by far the lowest tax rate.

Most other industrial nations tax at least 60%.

A good tax attorney in America can lower a wealthy persons tax burden to under 30% and shamefully lower.

What country could they possibly move to that would have anywhere near our low tax rate?

Lastly if they did move. Then all assets could be frozen and assessed. If they are permanently leaving and taking there money out of the country with them then it should be assessed one last time.

And we can through legislation cap the amount of wealth that a person leaving America could take out of the country.

[ContinentalOp]

35. They wouldn't necessarily move, they would move their assets.

You can't freeze and assess assets that they moved before you pass the law, right?

But maybe I've misunderstood this whole thing. Hannah Bell seems to be saying that you're just talking about an increase in property taxes. Is that the case?

[Union Yes]

36. Ah thanks for clarifying.

Technically no we couldn't stop them from moving assets, valuables, cash, or whatever.

Once signed into law, we then assess them under the law if they underreport or hide assests for purpose of tax evasion then govt would pursue a tax evasion indictment. Hiding assets overseas included.

And no, Im not talking about an increase in existing property taxes.This has nothing to do with property taxes. This is an entirely new tax that taxes accumulated super wealth based on NET WORTH.

It starts at $2 Million in NET worth and the tax increases progressively for people with higher net worth. A person worth $10 mil would move into a higher bracket. 20 million an even higher bracket.

Similar to the progressive brackets used in our income tax system.

Can I ask that we end these back and forths with the hypotheticals, I have other posts to answer and am a slow typist.

I'll say it's been a fun debate and you asked some tough questions and made some good points, so hat's off to you in that regard.

Peace

[ContinentalOp]

38. "end this back and forth with the hypotheticals"

So you want to simply throw out a hypothetical solution "hey let's tax wealth" but you don't actually want to discuss how it would be done or think about the practical ramifications of the idea? That's fine but please recognize that your idea is never going to happen.

[Lucky Luciano]

57. Hong Kong, RUssia, Japan, UAE, Monaco, Switzerland to name a few.

[jgraz]

46. Easy fix: impose a 50% emigration tax on estates over $5 million

It's time we stopped tolerating these parasites.

[Union Yes]

15. Answers

What if I put all of my cash in a bank account overseas?

If a person uses offshore bank accounts to evade taxes then 100% of involved money should be confiscated and the person charged with felonious tax evasion.

If you fail to report your oversea's account well then that would be for purposes of evading taxes.

What if I'm living on a fixed income but the small house I bought in an inexpensive area 40 years ago is suddenly worth $2 million?

As I said in my op, $2 million in net worth would be where I'd began to tax wealth, if I were king.

If you lived in a $2 million dollar home you'd need to be quite wealthy to pay the already existing property tax bill. That property tax bill would crush anyone who wasn't wealthy. So I'm not extending any sympathies toward anyone with a 2 million dollar home. Thats a mansion anywhere in America.

They don't like it, they can find another country with a similar quality of life that has a lower tax rate. I wish them the best as they search for such a country.

How do you assess the worth of all of an individual's possessions?

That's the easy part. We determine wealth and value of possesions through individual audits of the wealthy. We know who is wealthy.

If they hide wealth or fail to report items of great value then they should be charged with tax evasion. New tax laws may need to be part of this. We need to strengthen our tax evasion laws anyway.

Should somebody who buys fine art that increases greatly in value pay more in taxes than somebody who buys an equivalent dollar amount in worthless toys and tchotchkes that immediately depreciate? Do we then tax them again when they sell those painting at auction and make a profit? Do they get a wealth tax refund if they've already paid the wealth tax on those assets?

Yes, Yes, No.

Again, I'm not king but you asked and these are my best answers.

[ContinentalOp]

21. thanks

If a person uses offshore bank accounts to evade taxes then 100% of involved money should be confiscated and the person charged with felonious tax evasion.

Agreed. We should just do that with current income & capital gains taxes though right? With a wealth tax it would be tough because prior to the passage of the wealth tax, while it was under discussion, the very wealthy would be quickly transferring everything they could overseas, and I don't think there's any legal way that we could retroactively go after them for that. Ex post facto and all of that (I'm no lawyer though).

If you lived in a $2 million dollar home you'd need to be quite wealthy to pay the already existing property tax bill. That property tax bill would crush anyone who wasn't wealthy. So I'm not extending any sympathies toward anyone with a 2 million dollar home. Thats a mansion anywhere in America.

Well, not in CA ;) You just pay based on the value when you bought it. And 2 million could easily be a very modest home on a large piece of land that may have been in the family for generations. But anyway, that's beside the point because it's just a matter of where you make the cutoff. I thought $2 million was a little low but that's just a minor detail.

That's the easy part. We determine wealth and value of possesions through individual audits of the wealthy. We know who is wealthy.

This isn't the easy part, this is the fundamentally impossible part! First of all, you would basically have to audit everyone right? How can you just audit the wealthy only if you don't know who they are yet? So for every family in America, an auditor will have to come into their home, look at ALL of their belongings and try to assess the current market value. How on earth do you do that? It's totally impossible. You can't ignore anything because that inconspicuous book on the shelf or dress in the closet may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Don't get me wrong, I support the spirit of your idea, but I just simply don't think it could ever work and it's overlooking the really obvious and simple solution which is to tax the money when the person receives it. It's what we do already! Just raise those taxes and eliminate existing loopholes.

[Hannah Bell]

17. Oh, you can't tax property? My property tax assessor doesn't know yet.

[ContinentalOp]

23. Sure, it's easy to tax limited categories of property such as real estate or cars.

Particularly when there is existing registration and recording of the ownership of such property (titles & deeds). But how on earth do you assess the value of every single tangible asset a person owns? How much tax do I pay on my socks? How is it even remotely possible for an agency to go through every home in America every year and try to assess and record the current market value of every pen, stick of chewing gum, and paperclip?

[Hannah Bell]

27. "real estate" = land, mines, timber, factories, etc. in short, = nearly all productive

assets.

you're being disingenuous.

[ContinentalOp]

33. We already tax that stuff right?

I thought the O.P. was advocating taxing other personal assets like cars or jewelry or whatever.

But if you're talking about a progressive property tax where you pay a higher rate the more property you own, now THAT makes a lot of sense. I would support a federal property tax on top of state and local property taxes with a progressive rate structure based on the total property owned.

[newtothegame]

12. Why not tax all of us? It's everybody's country, not just the rich, we all should pay.

This country doesn't just belong to them, it belongs to all of us. So we should all pay to make these things happen.

ed for sp

[tbyg52]

13. Well, one argument is

that it's bad for the country as a whole to have so much wealth concentrated in so few hands. I believe most of our founding fathers were of this opinion. And letting vast wealth be passed on generation after generation is just ridiculous. The lucky sperm club....

[Union Yes]

14. You missed the point in my OP.

The fact that so much wealth, 85% has been removed from our economy through wealth hoarding.

A leading factor in driving us straight into recession.

It's not the working class that is draining the economy dry via wealth hoarding, it's the super wealthy.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

43. Do you have sources to back you claim?

Large assets that do not produce income are rare. Wealth hoarding would indicate that 85% of the wealth is hidden in people's mattresses. That is clearly not the case.

[Hannah Bell]

16. If it's everybody's country, why does the top 1% own most of it?

[Union Yes]

20. Shhhh. the wealthy don't want us peons knowing info like that.

:hi:

[baldguy]

18. We had this once upon a time. It was called the "estate tax".

[ContinentalOp]

25. Yep, just raise the estate tax, raise capital gains taxes, and the problem is taken care of.

You need to cut the problem off at the source.

What I really don't understand about this proposal is that the wealthy heir who spends all of their money supporting the arts and amasses a large valuable art collection ends up paying more in taxes than some lazy playboy who blew all of his millions on cocaine and at the racetrack? How does the former person owe a greater debt to society than the latter?

[Hannah Bell]

31. what difference does it make if they blow it up their nose or put it in a tax shelter?

especially since their "philanthropies" are just policy making arms anyway.

we've suffered the "philanthropies" of the rich since the days of the peabody institute, & they own more of the world than ever before, control people's lives more than ever before.

how does that happen, since they donate so much of their money to "us"?

[ContinentalOp]

34. Well, I think we're talking about different things.

I now understand that you're only talking about raising property taxes. I thought the O.P. was advocating something different.

[Hannah Bell]

42. no, i'm not. philanthropies, for example, are places to shelter enormous amounts of wealth while

using it to provide high paid jobs for one's peeps & hire others to further one's private goals under the guise of "good works". up to & including manipulation of the stock market & corruption of public officials.

if every goddamn tax-sheltered "philanthropy" ended tomorrow, the world would be a good deal better off.

[Thothmes]

37. How much of that wealth is money/stocks/bonds

vs. a steel mill, factory, a construction company, an office building, farm acreage, standing timber, mines,ie the means to produce wealth.

[jgraz]

47. You'd be surprised

A major "problem" for the super-wealthy is what to do with all of their liquid assets. Many of them literally have so much money they don't know what to do with it.

A friend of mine is on the personal staff of an internet multi-millionaire (worth about 500M). Most of his time in "retirement" is spent moving his money around.

[Thothmes]

58. That was not the question

how much is tied up in liquid assets. How much is tied up in real wealth producing enterprises. If you know, fine. I do not care what your friend does
"so much mone they don't know what to do with it" is not a satifactory answer. How much of real money are we talking about.

[jgraz]

59. Not sure why you've decided to be rude, but I'm not really feeling that patient tonight

Maybe you should stick to reenacting the Battle of Dorklesburg and let the adults talk for a while.

[dysfunctional press]

40. what we need to do is stop spending so much money on the military...

that's ultimately only really there to protect and PRESERVE those mountains of wealth.

[Cresent City Kid]

41. Make it simple

I say tax all income as income. What I mean is treat any money you receive in a given year the same, no lower rate for cash inheritances, capital gains, interest, or dividends. The rates for lower and middle class taxpayers could be lowered to offset negative impacts from these measures.

Taxing net worth involves computing what that is. That may be done in time, but establishing fairness in the income tax may be easier to implement. If we're going to bleed the pig, let's start with the path of least resistance. If you got money this year, no matter how, or what country you keep it in, BAM! income tax.

[invictus]

44. K&R

[MrScorpio]

45. Eat the rich

I'll supply the BBQ sauce by the fucking truckload

[The Traveler]

48. Checks and balances

It is certainly legally permissible to do so ... Congress can certainly legislate that. And one of the reasons it should consider it is this: Wealth is power. Excessive wealth is excessive power and potentially threatens the checked and balanced system that is Constitutional government. One way of checking excessive accumulation of wealth/power is taxation. Redistribution/re-investment are just opportunities presented by doing the right thing.

I disagree with your definition of super wealth ... but that is a mere quibbling over numbers.

Trav

[_dynamicdems]

49. K&R

So true. So sad.

[handmade34]

50. links and a quiz

http://www.toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html
http://inequality.cornell.edu/

[Initech]

52. I quote the late great George Carlin:

"The rich make all the money, pay none of the taxes. The middle class pays all the taxes, does all the work. And the poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep them showing up at those jobs!!!"

[tekisui]

53. knr!~

[Reader Rabbit]

55. Hoarding behavior is usually considered a mental illness.

One of the few exceptions seems to be the hoarding of money/wealth.

[Lucky Luciano]

56. Two Million is super wealth?!???!???!

:spray: :spray: :spray: :spray: :spray: :spray: :spray: :spray: :spray:

Maybe I would start in around $40MM. $2MM will barely buy you a two bedroom in a nice building here in Manahttan.

[yodoobo]

60. I would put it a bit lower than that

And a $2MM two bedroom is hardly normal in 99% of America. While I'm sure that it is in ultra wealthy enclaves like Beverly Hills and Manhattan, it would hardly make sense to base norms off those extremes.