That’s right. If I remember right, one of the top ways that the 1% earn their wealth is by taking bank loans with things like stocks as collateral. Since they never cash in the stocks, they technically have zero income.
If you don’t directly tax assets, or otherwise broaden the definition of income to include assets (though that’ll take some serious lawerying to make ironclad), no amount of taxing the wealthy will make a serious difference. Only those that have shitty accountants.
Even then, you’ll always have to watch out for those wealthy just fleeing the country selling off any asset they can’t take with them, screwing over the entire country.
Wealth cap is actually my preferred policy. You can’t move your wealth to a lower-tax jurisdiction if you don’t have it. For the sake of simplicity I just used the most familiar approach here, though.
Income should include asset income, of course. It looks like we actually do have a lower rate for dividends than employment income right now, which is basically criminal.
Rich people don’t have “income” to tax like that.
Tax their wealth.
That’s right. If I remember right, one of the top ways that the 1% earn their wealth is by taking bank loans with things like stocks as collateral. Since they never cash in the stocks, they technically have zero income.
If you don’t directly tax assets, or otherwise broaden the definition of income to include assets (though that’ll take some serious lawerying to make ironclad), no amount of taxing the wealthy will make a serious difference. Only those that have shitty accountants.
Even then, you’ll always have to watch out for those wealthy just fleeing the country selling off any asset they can’t take with them, screwing over the entire country.
Wealth cap is actually my preferred policy. You can’t move your wealth to a lower-tax jurisdiction if you don’t have it. For the sake of simplicity I just used the most familiar approach here, though.
Income should include asset income, of course. It looks like we actually do have a lower rate for dividends than employment income right now, which is basically criminal.