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by etaty 2934 days ago
Capital gain tax or income gain tax are designed to make the wealthy wealthier. Don't tax "gain", tax the "wealth". This will make it harder and harder to hoard wealth as you gain wealth. Every other "tax" can then be removed.

So with the "wealth" taxt, every year you sum all your possessions and you give X% (20%?) to the government.

This look simple enough to me, did any country try that?
2 comments
drblast 2934 days ago
Inflation is a wealth tax.

It's not necessary for the government to ever tax anyone for anything; they could just print the money and all "taxes" would come in the form of inflation instead. And that tax would be simple and unavoidable.

A very progressive tax system could be "print money and give it to everyone equally." If you're poor the guaranteed income would be a huge percentage of your wealth and since you have no savings the resulting inflation would affect you least. The wealthy with savings would essentially be taxed like you describe at the inflation rate.

This is a thought experiment rather than a suggestion for a workable system, but I think like the "ideal op-amp" it might be useful to compare tax systems to this one.

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gghhzzgghhzz 2934 days ago
not completely true that they could just print the money and demand no tax. Without demanding tax payable in the government's currency then nobody would have any reason to use that currency and the currency would have no value.
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fulafel 2934 days ago
To be equivalent to a wealth tax, it would need to affect all assets, not just money.
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wycs 2934 days ago
20% wealth tax per year? Think about what you are saying. The state would own everything after 20 years.
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Applejinx 2934 days ago
Yeah, it would work great and incentivize all the right things, but you wouldn't need anywhere NEAR that. Given that this would apply to individuals and companies (all forms of abstraction and consolidation), have it be 1 (one) percent.

Then if you're doing complicated finances to get all you can out of three different entities, you pay 3 percent wealth tax. And if you have basically nothing, you don't have any of these entities or holding companies so you pay just your personal one percent wealth tax.

Getting the corporate shield from personal liability would be well worth double dipping the one percent.

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