Posted on 11/15/2019 7:45:50 AM PST by karpov
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Name a tax and there’s a way to reduce it, delay it or not ever really pay it, if you have the right adviser.
Upset that the 2017 tax act took away your deduction for state and local taxes in New York? Change your residence to Florida, as President Trump recently did, and those taxes are gone.
Don’t want to pay capital gains tax? Well, you can decide when to sell those investments. If you need the money, you could borrow against the account and leave the capital gains taxes for another day. And if you die still holding those securities, your heirs get them with any tax on the capital gains erased.
If it’s a big income year and your tax bill is going to be huge, you can always put years’ worth of charitable giving into a donor-advised fund: The tax write-off is yours today, but you can make donations whenever you feel like it — or leave it to your children to decide.
The list of ways the wealthy can reduce their taxes goes on. The tax most similar to a wealth tax is the estate tax, which values your entire estate and taxes it. Few people pay the estate tax these days because the exemption level is more than $22 million for a couple. But for those who do, reducing the value of what might one day be taxed is like a game of chess, with the financial adviser as grandmaster and the tax auditor as novice player.
Would an annual tax on wealth, targeted at the same people who use the best tax advisers to reduce their estate tax, somehow be free of loopholes?
“With the wealth tax, there are plenty of people who can access top-tier advisers"
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Just go to a low percentage flat tax on income, that EVERYONE pays.
HUH? I thought princess screeching owl said the funds would come from “buh-zillionaires”. Now they’re lowering the threshold? That’s messed up.
It’s not a tax. They take a percentage of your assets every year. It’s done on your tax form, so as to fool the public into thinking that this is a tax.
I kinda feel like I already pay a wealth tax. My property taxes, and they keep going up.
This is why there’s no distinction between military and civilian arms in the second amendment.
Rich folks need to be able to build their own army with tanks, etc. to fight off these screeching mobs of pillagers.
It is also a lie. Most optimistic assessment is it raises $635 billion over 10 years. That will not cover current deficit spending must less pay for the $67 trillion in new spending the Democrat Facist Party is promising
They only ever think about their own actions, and never think about people's reactions.
What’s funny is the left is all about “sustainability” but never thinks if their tax proposals are sustainable. Start taxing wealth and soon the wealth disappears and there is no wealth left to tax. Plus, once the wealth is gone, that means your capital is gone, so property taxes, income taxes, and sales taxes will also evaporate.
Liberals think like children. They operate on emotion. They think their college degrees in basket weaving makes them the smartest people in the room.
Liberals think rich people have cash to be taxed. They don’t know they are only rich on paper but they cannot liquidate their business holdings into cash. Liberals are morons.
1. Wealth tax is unconstitutional. Congress needed a constitutional amendment to get the income tax - and only the income tax - legal.
2. Wealth tax is effectively a high - even exceeding 100% - income tax. As a recent FR post noted: Most wealth is positively invested; a mundane 6% return will be hit with a 30-50% income tax (under Warren’s plans), AND that which produced that return will be wealth-taxed at 6% wiping out the gain. Exact numbers will vary wildly based on situation, but upshot is: no reason for large investments when you’ll have to earn >10% just to break even. (Hello, Red Queen.)
3. There are so many ways to route that wealth elsewhere. Buying value-durable goods is one; I predict a sudden interest in very large collections of extremely expensive cars & art. Route one’s money into wholly-owned businesses, where one gets a mundane (and very comfortable) salary, while “renting” high-value goods/services for low cost as the sole client. (Note that, apparently, Trump merely rents a few rooms in Trump Tower - he doesn’t officially own the place, yet for all practical purposes he does. That’s why NY is going after his tax returns.)
4. $2.5T disappearing from the markets practically overnight is a very bad situation. Building a suitable safe to put one’s cash in has its problems, but physical thieves are easier to dissuade than gov’t ability to tax large-scale wealth. Scrooge McDuck may have had the right idea after all.
DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THAT THE LEFTIST SAY! IT ALL LIES AND THE MIDDLE CLASS TAXPAYERS WILL GET SCREWED YET AGAIN!
Just so...not only would seizing all the billionairs cash and holdings not produce enough for "income equality" but the government seizure of investment holdings would greatly accelerate the economic destruction of the republic, faster even than Venezuela. Global apocalypse...
Open secret: one can legally buy d@mn near any weapon legally, hindered only by paperwork and a $200 tax - not something that deters the rich. Moreso, that annoyance can be mitigated by registering as a manufacturer/dealer (just money, hire a guy to handle the legalese).
Eric Prince might provide some pointers on how to build & equip a private army legally.
My now-wife once had good amount (far from “rich”) of money in Canadian stocks. She was taxed on it’s on-paper value annually, and paid thousands for it. Then the company folded, the stocks crashed, and she got exactly nothing out of it - but the gov’t sure did benefit, real cash for paper value.
Enact a 6% wealth tax, and 6% becomes the new 0% baseline for investments. Sure it’s only on “billionaires”, but that ripples out to the rest of us.
Thomas Jefferson had noted that the many rich delegates to the Constitutional Convention had put their money where their mouths were by committing themselves and their rich friends to paying all operating expenses of the federal government.
“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied [emphasis added]. … Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.” —Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
H O W E V E R…
The Supreme Court in those days had clarified that Congress’s power to appropriate taxes is limited like all of its other constitutionally enumerated powers.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So why not have the rich pay all operating expenses for the federal government again, but also give the rich the job of policing federal spending to make sure that it is fully compliant with Congress’s constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers?
In fact, military issues aside, the rich need to consider that one of the few powers that the states have expressly constitutionally given the feds to tax and spend for domestic policy purposes is to run the US Mail Service (1.8.7), most other federal domestic spending based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated state revenues, state revenues stolen by means of unconstitutional federal taxes according to the Gibbons excerpt above imo.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
Remember in November 2020!
MAGA! Now KAG! (Keep America Great!)
"The “Holy Grail” of organized crime is to control government power to tax." —me
"The 16th Amendment effectively repealed the involuntary servitude aspect of the 13th Amendment imo, evidenced by unconstitutional federal taxes." —me
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"13th Amendment, Section 1:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude [emphasis added], except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
"16th Amendment:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
"The constitutionally undefined political parties are basically rival, corrupt voter unions, “union dues” paid by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.” —me
"Patriots need to support PDJT in demanding that Congress moves "April 15" tax day to the day before election day." —me
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Federal career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich and corporations in tax appropriations laws, Congress actually not having the express constitutional authority to make most appropriations laws where domestic policy is concerned. Such laws are based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated stolen state revenues." —me
There are — give or take — 600 billionaires in the US. Tax each one of them to the tune of a billion dollars and what do you get?
About 12% of the federal budget, followed closely by 600 billionaires moving the bulk of their remaining their assets overseas.
One can only conclude that the real targets of this wealth tax - as usual - are the middle class and their retirement funds.
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