The tax would apply to married couples with net worth of at least $32 million and individuals with net worth of at least $16 million. The rate would start at 1% per year and rise to 8% for married couples with assets of least $10 billion. That 8% rate would mean that megabillionaires who don’t earn at least an 8% return would see their fortunes shrink, and Mr. Sanders said Tuesday that there should be no billionaires.
Such a change would require new rules and procedures for determining wealth each year and additional Internal Revenue Service resources to prevent tax avoidance and tax evasion. The government would have to determine whether the assets of charities controlled by wealthy people would be subject to the tax, and the decision could reshape the nonprofit sector.
A wealth tax would also have unknown effects on economic growth. The founders of successful companies would have a harder time holding onto controlling stakes as they grow. Had Mr. Sanders’s tax plan been in place since 1982, with all else equal, Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos would have a net worth of $43 billion instead of $160 billion, according to Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the economists at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on Mr. Sanders’s and Ms. Warren’s plans.
I expect the Official National Conservative Review and Official Libertarian line is: “No more taxes! The wealthy are taxed enough! We need to keep taxes low on billionaires because otherwise we won’t have as many!”
Maybe. But the Official National Conservative Review and Official Libertarian crowd gave us Mitt Romney and a bunch of gun-banning, “execute Trump” LINOs, respectively, so forgive me if I don’t take them seriously.
Bernie may be wacky, but let’s extend to him the courtesy of considering this on the merits. Would Jeff Bezos never have created Amazon if he could only end up with a net worth of $43 billion? If relative wealth is more important (especially to the ultra-rich) than absolute wealth, I’m not sure that the incentive-based argument is convincing.
If the wealth tax could be coupled with a lowering of tax rates on everyone else–note Bernie never says this, so consider it as a hypothetical–why not give it a try? Also ask yourself this: How many billionaires share Normal Americans’ politics, and how many share the politics of an out-of-touch coastal elite that loathes Normal Americans and what they stand for?
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I expect the Official National Conservative Review and Official Libertarian line is: “No more taxes! The wealthy are taxed enough! We need to keep taxes low on billionaires because otherwise we won’t have as many!”
Maybe. But the Official National Conservative Review and Official Libertarian crowd gave us Mitt Romney and a bunch of gun-banning, “execute Trump” LINOs, respectively, so forgive me if I don’t take them seriously.
Bernie may be wacky, but let’s extend to him the courtesy of considering this on the merits. Would Jeff Bezos never have created Amazon if he could only end up with a net worth of $43 billion? If relative wealth is more important (especially to the ultra-rich) than absolute wealth, I’m not sure that the incentive-based argument is convincing.
If the wealth tax could be coupled with a lowering of tax rates on everyone else–note Bernie never says this, so consider it as a hypothetical–why not give it a try? Also ask yourself this: How many billionaires share Normal Americans’ politics, and how many share the politics of an out-of-touch coastal elite that loathes Normal Americans and what they stand for?