one big issue is everyone goes “you can’t tax stocks!” and then billionaires take a loan against the stocks with the unrealized gains as collateral. So we’d need to start classifying a loan as a realized gain of the collateral against this, with an exception for mortgages on primary domiciles, maybe also a “first million dollars are exempt,” calculated on the full debt of the borrower, not per loan. I can’t imagine anyone taking out more than $1M in debt against a properly they don’t live in is not the rich we need to be taxing.
Yeah. Virtually anything with an exception for the first million dollars will both lose almost no tax revenue (as a percentage), and never ever touch the rest of us temporarily embarrassed not-quite-yet-billionaires.
That’s an insightful point, and honestly taxing those loans as realized gains sounds entirely reasonable. It’s good for the lenders because of reduced risk, it’s good for the rich because it keeps them honest, and it’s good for the public because we gain increased tax revenue from those who can most afford it. Nice!
one big issue is everyone goes “you can’t tax stocks!” and then billionaires take a loan against the stocks with the unrealized gains as collateral. So we’d need to start classifying a loan as a realized gain of the collateral against this, with an exception for mortgages on primary domiciles, maybe also a “first million dollars are exempt,” calculated on the full debt of the borrower, not per loan. I can’t imagine anyone taking out more than $1M in debt against a properly they don’t live in is not the rich we need to be taxing.
Yeah. Virtually anything with an exception for the first million dollars will both lose almost no tax revenue (as a percentage), and never ever touch the rest of us temporarily embarrassed not-quite-yet-billionaires.
That’s an insightful point, and honestly taxing those loans as realized gains sounds entirely reasonable. It’s good for the lenders because of reduced risk, it’s good for the rich because it keeps them honest, and it’s good for the public because we gain increased tax revenue from those who can most afford it. Nice!