Yes there is a wealth tax in Switzerland, but... it would have to be much higher to make a difference. Raising it will not pass a referendum, which it practically has to in Switzerland. It has one big advantage, though: official numbers about wealth distribution.

I think micro taxation on all transactions (including at ATMs) would work better. Easier to explain, harder to avoid since you tax both sides of each transaction.

Aren’t these taxations generally regressive given poor people spend ~100% of their income and ultra rich people spend <1%. So you’re taxing the poor person on all of their money but barely taxing the rich person.

This is what a GST/VAT is, but far less disruptive. Taxing transactions that don't actually exchange ownership would be bonkers.

Makes sense to me. We already have a wealth tax of sorts. It’s called “property tax” which is mostly a house tax. We can tax other property too, including virtual assets such as shares.

This is a scheme to tax capital gains, not wealth. The point of this prescription isn't that "the rich have too much money," it is that we have gotten to the point where some of the largest capital gains go untaxed, period.

The idea that a gain isn't a gain until the asset is sold is nonsense. That'd literally be like saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett never made a dime on any of their stock that they are giving the charity. It's a ludicrous conception of capital gains, but it's exactly the one we use.

I answered the way I did cause you wrote "if we wanted to tax this wealth".

Which is the point, really, cause nobody cares about the small person who got a 1000% return on 50$ of Bitcoin, we care about massive assets owned by a tiny minority who is able to dodge capital gains tax even if their asset growth is only 4% per year.

Let's say you have $1,000,000, and you by a share of Bershire or whatever that increases to $3,000,000.

A capital gains tax taxes the $2,000,000 unrealized -- but eventually effective -- gain.

A wealth tax taxes the $3,000,000 estimated net worth.

There is a real distinction. A real reason to incentivize productive capital, and that is you get to keep what you've earned. The point I'm trying to make is only that people should pay taxes, and an unrealized capital gain from literally 40 years ago isn't some unknowable investment outcome... it's a capital gain.

Our system would make sense if it was the case that the literal only way to turn and asset into money was to sell it. But, because assets can instead be used as collateral for loans, asset owners (overwhelmingly the wealthy in the U.S.) get to have their cake and eat it too.

I’ve never understood this reasoning. Loans need to be repaid at some point, so one must realize some income to pay them back, at which point they will owe tax.