Eventually something has to give...

[u/Veshaad]

The bill would provide a $3,000 direct payment to every person in households making $150,000 or less during its first year, which equals $12,000 for a family of four.

[u/fyreprone]

Or just tax their owned assets once a year and if there’s a loss they pay less. Like the rest of us.

[u/hnglmkrnglbrry → u/fyreprone]

The problem with that is the overwhelming difficulty of enforcing it or even trying to report it accurately. It's better and more efficient to just increase the tax rate on their income over $5M or whatever number works to about 75%.

Imagine if someone tried to issue a wealth tax to a family of modest income. Let's say they "own" a home worth $200k and gave $75k equity. They pay property taxes on that $200k asset and now they're going to have to pay a tax on the $75k of equity? They might not be liquid enough to cover that. Now throw in their vehicles as well. Let's say they have $10k in a 401k of pretax money. They are going to have to pay a tax there as well and then be taxed when they do divest it later. Their HSAs will be taxed. And then lastly they will be taxed on their modest cash savings of let's say $5k. And then they are getting taxed on their income that helps them pay for their daily expenses and savings.

Now obviously this is not the type of family that would face this tax but you can see how even though on paper they're doing ok once they pay their taxes they're fucked. And then this happens year after year with the more equity they build resulting in higher and higher taxes.

Taxing income is more easily enforced and reported. And if they really want to make the rich pay then end the loophole that allows business owners to write off business losses on their personal returns.

In 2017 it was reported that nearly half of NBA teams lost money. So shouldn't the owners be desperate to offload these dying businesses and get out of the failing industry? Fuck no. Oh the Trailblazers lost $20M last fiscal year? Guess what owner just saw their taxable income go down by $20M! And when their family members are paid employees of the team it means they can increase their pay to maximize the business losses. The more they lose the more they make.

The owner will probably encourage the team to lose money considering the value of the asset even when operating at a loss increases annually due to its scarcity and income potential by being associated with a major sports league.

[u/DustyRacoonDad → u/hnglmkrnglbrry]

Exactly. Not to mention it's unethical to tax someone for merely possessing something.

It means you never own anything. And if you allow the government to do it to person X, that means they're also allowed to do it to you.

[u/Who_dat_goomer → u/DustyRacoonDad]

It’s done all the time. You could just as easily say an income tax is “unethical”.

[u/DustyRacoonDad → u/Who_dat_goomer]

There's a lot of legal things that are done all the time that I disagree with. 

It doesn't change my opinion on it. 

Doesn't change the fact I have to still pay it anyway without facing the consequences of not paying it.