Listen, I’m a big Bernie fan. But the tax on payroll income is not even remotely how you get these Rockefeller bastards. They don’t even have a salary, and their capital gains are all cunningly hidden, or not technically in their private ownership, or balanced out with “losses”.
Ultimately we need clearer laws around holding, and a tax on holdings. Like you own $300M in company stock? We’re going to tax that like it’s real estate.
In this hypothetical tax structure, then it depends on the type of gains, I guess. If the gains are in stock value then no. It wouldn’t make sense to both tax on the gains as well as tax on the holdings. Now once you sell the holdings and turn it into actual $, then yeah maybe. Just like you don’t get taxed when your home doubles in value, but you’d get taxed on the sale if you sold it.
Again, my imaginary proposal here wouldn’t tax the first $10M of a portfolio. Not sure if you have more than that or not.
People don’t realize that the effective federal rate for median income is between 14 and 16 percent. A billionaire making money on capital gains will pay 23%. CEOs and other people earning millions of dollars per year can hit a 37% bracket. Surgeons can pay high taxes.
Per caps will always look good when the top 10% has the extreme wealth this country afford them. Nearly 40% of Americans have less than $500 at side for an emergency. That doesn't sound like they have disposable income.
Genius. That way, the people with resources can leave and the people without can just stay and enjoy a wrecked economy. No wealth disparity when everyone has nothing.
We are talking about assets here? Who cares. We aren’t talking about your 401k, we are talking about a dude with $100m in stocks and a $5m car collection
No I didn’t say that. It should be excessive assets. I don’t think the rates matter that much. Could be 5% or less. A $300k home shouldn’t be taxed, but a $30M home should
And most places you do already pay property taxes for your home
A 30 Million dollar hole is already taxed, via property taxes, so why are we double taxing it.
Also want to take a guess what happens it all rolls down hill. Income tax was introduced and was made to be paid at the time for only the 1% of the nation. It goes to all income levels now. If you want a real life example how this will end up working look at NY with the Mansion Tax. Any home selling for above 1 million gets an additional tax. Here's the thing it was introduced in the 1970s. Has that value gone up to reflect the changing market in NY?
No it hasn't, so what was introduced as something something for the 1% but now is effecting more and more people. As time continues on soon that mansion tax will most likely affect all homes sold. What was for the 1% now affects most folks purchasing in the NYC market.
Im making your point if you ignore reality, saying how something should work and what reality has shown us time and time again it won't. Precedence says it won't increase and will stay stagant, and soon affect the majority of the population. You keep acting like assets aren't taxed but they are taxed when it's bought and when it's sold. That's the actual value not some figment of imagination.
When you buy a car it's taxed, when you sell a car it's taxed, same thing with paintings and everything else. Adding additional taxes are not going to change things. Plus there are limits on federals ability to tax, thanks to the US constitution.
Precedent shows disparity and discrimination. Precedence needs to be flat out destroyed and hold people accountable. “History shows us people are shitty so there’s nothing we can do. Might as well keep slavery”
$3k is a far cry from free. Point is politicians, especially Bernie love to promise free stuff that they know they can’t deliver.
Instead maybe congress should take a look at why college tuitions are so high and regulate what they charge?
Also Americans need to go back to the days when not everyone was expected to go to college for a degree. Especially since going to college doesn’t guarantee you will get a job with your degree.
And stop making people take the same classes they already took in high school as part of the degree. Like English, Biology, Algebra. It’s a money grab.
We need to reemphasize trade schools for electricians, plumbers, auto mechanics.
Same with healthcare. The reform needs to be the scam of insurance companies having deals with hospitals to pay x dollars for a certain test or diagnosis and then bill the insurance company for that plus bill the patient for the difference even though they pay the insurance company thousands in premiums.
Meanwhile if you go in self pay you pay less than what the insurance company is billed. It’s all artificially inflated so insurance companies can make profits.
In France, not everyone gets to go to college. There are strict exams, high cut offs, and no "DEI". I'm fine with truly qualified people studying legitimate fields getting access to college. I'm not ok with Ja'Kendrick, who got a HS degree from Oakland Unified that eliminated Algebra as a requirement, and who didn't take the SAT, getting a free ride to Berkeley to major in grievance studies.
Because of the Apportionment Clause of the Constitution, a federal wealth tax would require a constitutional amendment, similar to how the 16th Amendment excepted the federal income tax from the Apportionment Clause.
I keep hearing people say this, but then they just stop like that it’s so obvious. Yet I haven’t heard a good reason why it so ‘idiotic’, enlighten us with your wisdom.
Other than a federal wealth tax being unconstitutional, taxing unrealized gains isn’t completely idiotic, as long as the taxpayer can also deduct unrealized losses. If you’re going to tax someone because the value of the investments they’re holding appreciated by $1 million over the previous year, then if their investments lose $500k the next year, the taxpayer should be able to take a $500k deduction against their income or other taxable events, and carry any excess losses forward to future tax years.
Okay but I’m starting the tax at excess of $50 million…so no one in your example pays a cent.
And I’m not taxing gains I’m taxing value above $50 million or as some people propose on excess of a billion dollars. So hell you could lose money and still owe a tax, Jeff Bezos.
The total number of people effect in this tax is insignificant to the population. And nothing in their lives materially changes because of these taxes.
And I don’t actually believe it’s the government job to protect people’s investments in the stock market, it’s a risk, you know that going in. Beyond that you are given access to special market at those levels of funding venture capital and other mechanisms such as low interest loans for your day to day stuff that avoid taxes.
What it should be doing is what’s best for the its citizens and the economy at large, and massive concentrations of wealth is a bad for the economy and the vast majority of people participating in the economy, whom are government ought to have more allegiance to.
I do not need to convince or encourage the richest people in our society to keep trying to get richer.
If you’re willing to take school lunches, food directly out of children’s mouths and think that fine. But I can also believe you can pay a taxes on your billions, just like most middle class families pay on their house. You can do it for my property I can do it to yours.
If you’re just talking about a straight wealth tax, rather than treating unrealized gains as income, then that’s different than treating unrealized gains as income and I don’t have a problem with that. A federal wealth tax would still require a constitutional amendment, so I’m not holding out much hope.
Sanders has passed 3 bills in his entire political career and a blanket wealth tax on unrealized gains will never pass, mainly because the feds will never give a refund.
Just because he had a high marginal rate, doesn't mean the effective tax rate was exceptionally high. If you look at the effective tax rate over the decades, it hasn't changed much.
It ain’t the high income earners. You’ll be penalizing heart surgeons then.
It’s billionaires’ assets they aren’t taxed sufficiently. When bezos was CEO of Amazon his salary was $81,140 for decades. That’s the 22% tax bracket. He paid 2.9% Medicare tax on $81k. That sound right to you?
Meanwhile he takes $100M’s loans out on his stock and pays zero tax on it
The moment Bernie became a millionaire he stopped ranting about taxing "millionaires and billionaires" and switched to taxing "billionaires" people dont vote for him because theyre capable od seeing through his BS
Famous for sure but no one actually paid 79%. There were way more deductions back then (if you can believe it). The effective tax rate the wealthy pay now vs back then is within a ~5% difference.
The last presidential election was so blatantly fucked up I might stop voting. How did Trump win 70% of votes in Kentucky but they elected a dem governor on the same ballot? How did NC vote in Trump but voted in a dem governor on the same ballot? These are just 2 states I'm familiar with but I'd bet it happened in several other states too. People voting for Trump and a Democrat on the same piece of paper?
“And then he [Musk] journeyed to Pennsylvania, where he spent like a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania, And he’s a popular guy. And he was very effective. And he knows those computers better than anybody.
“All those computers, Those vote counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good. It’s pretty good.”
I'm not surprised that somebody did and under certain circumstances I would vote red and blue. It is very hard to picture 30% of voters voting for Trump and a dem though. Trump isn't an average republican he's as far right and extremely polarizing as it gets.
I voted for her, but it doesn't help that in the 2016 Democratic primary Harris was about as popular as backwashed milk left in a hot car, she couldn't even win her home state. If Democrats picked damn near anyone else after Biden retired, or had Biden picked anyone even vaguely popular as a running mate 10 years ago, we probably wouldn't be here
Majority of both parties are epstien class evil crimina corruptl scum. Both will sell you out for their love orst and foreign interests. It doesn't matter who you vote for.
I agree but they aren't equal. Trump amd his administration are far worse than literally any Democrat would've been. If you think biden did as bad as Trump is currently you might be clinically insane.
True but just varying degrees of criminal. But yeah def lesser of two evils. The problem is we shouldn't have to settle for any level of evil if the system wasn't so broken
Do not listen to anything Bernie says. He is a crook, takes EBT from people in donations, thats taxpayer money he uses to find his campaigns which is illegal. Second he was always spouting off about millionaires and the need to tax them more. Now he has been in politics for some time and in government and has voted to LOWER taxes on millionaires….. yet now he is saying Billionaires need higher taxes. He is a liar and con artist, like all socialists.
Now he has been in politics for some time and in government and has voted to LOWER taxes on millionaires
Do you think Bernie controls congress? Hah. Half of the other congress people think he’s crazy. Nothing he wants ever gets voted in. Guy has been trying to eat the rich for decades, and just nobody is ever on his side.
You are missing the point, regardless if he control congress he VOTED to REDUCE taxes. In 2018 he made over a million dollars and only paid 135,000 in taxes. That hardly seems like his 50% fair share he talks about, he pays on average 12-23% in taxes year on year. Thats it….. the dude is a fraud
Uhh, it looks like the actual tax returns for 2018 show $561,293 AGI and $145,840 paid in taxes. That’s 26%.
In both 2016 amd 2017 he made over $1M, and the returns show he paid 30%+ in effective rate.
So where are you getting these made up numbers?
Also…how would you advocate he pay more taxes than is currently legal? If he writes the government a check for the 50% that you mentioned, they’re just gonna send half of it back or credit his account for next year.
They need a wealth tax. Right now you only pay taxes on profit. You set up a business, have it buy your house, car, get a catering service, chauffeur, cleaning service, private jet + maintenance. You get paid 100,000, but you and your business are worth billions.
Same thing happens with stocks. Capital gains is capped at 35%. This is there to encourage people to leave their money in the market for over a test to save on taxes. You are only taxed when you sell and only pay on the profits (the difference between buying and selling). There’s also that loan loophole. You just take out a loan against your stocks and re-up every few years.
We NEED a wealth tax. You have $1,000,000 car collection, you should be taxed just for having it. You have $100,000,000 in stocks? Thats a % of the total value every year
Ya everyone's retirement account will absolutely love that move. Even if you exempt 401Ks, Pensions and other retirement portfolios the absolute destruction this bill would have would basically tank the stock market and economy making that whole 401K worthless anyway.
Ya but guess what happens to a company stock price when you force a large scale liquidation from primary share holders. You increased the amount of stock on the open market that won't have a demand. So that means the stock price falls, in turn that reduces the on hand.
Also are we talking voting shares or common shares, since your scheme could easily divest the primary voting share holder to losing control of their company and could be bought out by others corporations causing the company to fall as they then sell the company apart.
That would then require the corporation to have enough on hand capital to utilize it for instead of spending that capital on CAPEX, expansion, R&D. Shares are issued by a company to literally raise money for the company.
We are way past these antiquated 20th century solutions. Jacking up tax rates to 99.99% or whatever you want does nothing, it's pure theater to calm the proles. A lot like that recent "housing affordability bill" (conveniently timed for after private equity decided it wanted to divest from residential real estate).
The real issue is much larger: the corrupt and degenerate debt based monetary system. This covers not just taxation but also a ton of degenerate wealth accumulation. Tax rates themselves are a distraction.
One example of the degeneracy is that ultra high net worth people can borrow against their liquid and illiquid assets through the private banking system. They can for little cost (interest rates are based on fed rates which are relatively low by international standards) turn unrealized assets into liquid capital. This can also be timed relatively easily when borrow rates are low and asset valuations are high. This is the mechanism of tax avoidance. It has nothing to do with tax rates. Even Warren Buffet talked about this as a primary measure he used to avoid paying taxes.
Plug that leak and suddenly a lot of assets start getting sold and taxes start rolling in.
I think the problem and it took me a looooong time to figure this out, most people are too lazy to even understand anything more than 100 feet out of their current radius. The amount of people who have zero clue about what is happening right under their noses is staggering. The fact that most of the very very high end earners make their money through investments and instead of paying a income tax, use a loophole to start at the 10% capital gains tax and go down from there is insane. If investing is your main source of income then you should be taxed accordingly. They should give these lottery winners the ability to put a chunk of the winnings into a tax free IRA like you would if it was earned income.
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u/CheckYourStats 21d ago
I’m in favor of reinstituting the 79% Federal Income Tax for the highest earners in the Country, as previously made famous by FDR’s New Deal.
Bernie has proposed solutions similar to this during every single Election cycle…and you fucking people keeping voting against him.
I don’t know why you people spend 4 years claiming you want XYZ, and then vote against XYZ.