[_DeadFred_]

One thing at a time. I think we both agree borrowing is happening and you are ok with it being taxed, so further discussion isn't really needed. But I specifically only addressed your interjection of:

>Similarly, what percentage of wealthy people take loans against their assets to fund their lifestyle? You should be able to quantify this if it’s happening at scale.

That is the topic being addressed, proof was shown, and you replied "I’d be fine taxing that money at the top marginal rate". To your 'but what about other loopholes' please show me 24 loopholes (dozens) providing individuals such high multiples of median income tax free?

>I don’t understand why people bring this up so often

You just agreed it is happening and you are fine with taxing it in your last message, so it really doesn't matter people bring it up or not, does it? And kind of makes further discussion moot. You agree it's fine to address/tax.

>I’d be fine taxing that money at the top marginal rate or whatever you want to do.

The mortgage interest deduction is not a loophole, it is government policy intelligently reached. A loophole would be when rich people abused the deduction by designating their yatch as a second home and deducting that. And that loophole was closed. The average person having to pay taxes on the old dresser that they bought with already taxed money and report the sale as paypal income earnings would be another loophole but in the other direction..

I look forward to your 24 stated existing examples of greater magnitude actual loopholes (and not intentional policy doing what it was intended, the opposite of an exploited loophole that is taking loans instead of selling stocks to avoid taxes but benefit from realized/current stock value). We can move to the next level but again you agreed you are fine taxing this behavior so kinda no further point.

[rayiner]

Please read @foltik's post upthread to understand the context of my statement. @foltik commented that the data on labor versus capital income share could be misleading, because it "ignores realized capital gains and loans against them, which is how the ultra-wealthy actually fund their lifestyles tax-free."

I asked whether that "meaningfully change[s] the picture"--i.e. the picture on the labor/capital income split. And I asked whether that practice is "happening at scale." I wasn't asking whether it was happening at all, but rather at sufficient scale that it would meaningfully skew the numbers on labor/capital income split.

Your data proved my point: loans against assets account for only 1-2% of unrealized gains, so even if you counted that as income, it would be a rounding error in the evaluation of the labor versus capital share of income.

[_DeadFred_]

That data is purely from self reports so isn't necessarily definitive, but is proof that it is occurring. I don't think we have public banking records that list all loans so not sure how we can get an accurate number, but if we could they would have used in that analysis, so I don't think we can definitively know the scale just what people choose to self report.

But we don't need to dig deeper. We are all in agreement and don't need further discussion. Tax it.

>I’d be fine taxing that money at the top marginal rate or whatever you want to do.

Thank you for engaging. We can try going deeper but OP might be better for that. I just had that report with at least some information and wanted to interject so we could talk to something (even though I knew their thesis counters my position, it's worth us all knowing about, and I think it's showing it does occur at least some is useful for my position). Anecdotally in another life I knew some of these people/people in their circles and they very much use these loans and were crazy excited when they learned of the strategies of them.