This seems sensible to me, so long as I’m allowed to use corporate personhood to tax a company’s income under this scheme.

If your money counts as speech because you have first amendment rights, then your income counts as income because you have IRS obligations.

I’m 100% over letting corporations pick some of the benefits of citizens but skate away from all the obligations. If you want the rights, you get the obligations. If you don’t want the obligations, you don’t get the rights.

How about the self-sustaining farmer who doesn't need to work in society? Completely capable individual, has a certain way of life, and suddenly they don't need to contribute?

How about the person who has so much wealth that they will never need to work in their life?

Government is labor that benefits the people. The only way an individual can escape the duty is if they are incapable or if society deems that they deserve a break.

Taxing only income misses the mark by a bunch.

Indeed. Which is the reason why my conclusion was opposite to the opinion. The real world gets in the way of it being practical.

But in my ideal world inheritance is considered income and is taxed as such. And on a logistical curve a billionaire inheritance is taxed really close to 100%. Anybody that has earned so much money they no longer need to work has paid as much in taxes (and continue to do so as interest is taxed as income). Additionally on a logistical curve it is almost impossible anyway to earn this much since a huge earning is taxed close to 100%. For example, someone making 5 standard deviations above the mean pays 99.33% tax on it, so they will probably end up with less after taxes then someone earning 2 standard deviations below the mean (11.92% tax).

As for the farmer who is self sustaining. I guess they are not using up much of the shared infrastructure anyway, I see no need for them to be paying taxes.

Wow, that's some pretty dystopian stuff.

Dystopian only to the wealthy class. Utopian for those of us who will never see an income (inherited or otherwise) above the average income.

They would pay property taxes at the city level and other fees still.

Capital gains is much lower in the US compared to other countries, your idea floats the value at your current tax bracket.

It could work but where do royalities fit in? Estate taxes?

This is incorrect, capital gains rates in the US are currently similar to or higher than many European countries. Federal (20%) + NIIT (3.8%) + State (up to 13.3%) puts you firmly in the middle of the pack for European countries. The proposed changes would make them the highest in the developed world, by a large margin.

The elephant in the room is that the main difference between US and European tax rates is that the middle-class tax rates in the US are much lower than their European counterparts. If you are in the top tax bracket in California, the income taxes aren’t that much different than in most of Europe and the capital gains taxes are typically lower.

The full amount of a short-term capital gain (property held for less than 1 year) is taxed as regular income. Long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than regular income, but the amount depends on your tax bracket. Long-term capital gains in the 10% and 15% tax bracket aren’t taxed at all, those in the highest tax bracket are taxed at 20%, and everything in between is 15%.

In the US, capital losses can reduce capital gains and up to $3000 of regular income. If losses are $3000 more than gains, you can carry them forward to future years.

If you make 90,000 in Florida City, Florida. You purchase a home for 100,000 sold for 200,000 your capital gains is: $15,000 15% federal 0% state 0% local

In VermountVille New York State 21409 15% federal 6.41% state 0 local

In Sf 24,500 21,000 if you are married.

In order to pay 36% you have to be earning over 500,000 to pay that rate and single.