Re:Billionaires Build
by canofbars on Friday December 04, 2020 @04:28PM
(#25308287)
Do you think billionaires would just stop and let the system collect their money? My first thought is they would just donate all ownership over the cap to family members. They could probably continue this forever before every family member gains $1B
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Seems perfectly fine to me. Gifts are taxed in the US. If it causes resulting problems, deal with it then. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
Re:Billionaires Build
by buzzerbetrayed on Friday December 04, 2020 @05:05PM
(#25308806)
How is this considered "good" in this scenario? Income is taxed anyway. So how to rerouting money away from "taxed income" to "taxed gifts" help anything?
It would mean that income is taxed twice or equivalent to it being taxed higher. Under a core assumption here that the tax revenue is used to help, this is better than it not happening.
More importantly though, it's not a precise tax plan it's intended to show the absurdity of the outcome we currently have rather than show a particular way out. That the answers are often "but there would be loopholes" rather than "having people amass much more wealth is inherently good for us all" is telling.
This wealth might not be accumulated through income, and thus not taxed as income?
Perhaps missed the end of the comment there.
Edit - though, they do. They already do. Not at the same level but they do let the government take their money.
And also, how else would they increase their score on the next level?
That's still a better outcome though? The result is that wealth is distributed to more people
Re:Billionaires Build
by mcintyre1994 on Friday December 04, 2020 @04:53PM
(#25308637)
Couldn’t you just cap non-charitable gifts to something like $1 million lifetime per recipient in that case? I doubt that’d be particularly controversial with anyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire, unless I’m missing something.