Posted on 02/18/2024 5:12:41 AM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
Wealth taxes are like a specter in search of a host, and an already overtaxed New England state may be the first to succumb. Vermont lawmakers want to tax residents’ unrealized gains, hoping to finally break the barrier that’s kept them from draining asset values year after year.
The state’s top tax legislator has spent recent weeks pushing bills that would dial up taxes on high earners. The biggest reach is a proposal to tax the paper gains from assets above $10 million. The plan would slap Vermont’s 8.75% top income-tax rate on half of those gains. That means a family whose business gains $3 million in value could owe $131,000, even if they don’t take out a single dollar of cash.
Like levies on capital gains, the new tax would cut into investment returns and leave well-off Vermonters less reason to deploy their money in wealth-producing investments. Unlike a capital-gains tax, the wealth tax would create a mess of confusing estate appraisals and endless disputes with the revenue department. This is why no state currently taxes unrealized gains, but the author of the Vermont plan says the novelty is the point. “Given the state of our national politics, it really is up to states to be moving these things along,” said Ways and Means Committee Chair Emilie Kornheiser last year. Lawmakers in 10 states are working on wealth taxes this year, and she wants the progressive Green Mountain State to be first to enact one.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The smart wealthy folks do not wait until the wealth tax is passed.
They move their wealth first—when the ideas are under discussion.
Why take a chance?
“life goes on”
My well-off Democratic neighbors never talk income and wealth equality with relatively poor me.
Do government retirees really need $130,000/year?
What happens if your assets lose value? Bingo!
A refund from the state.
***********
LOL.... Yep, let the gov’t rule in all things.
Great point—renting and leasing assets is an excellent way to avoid a wealth tax.
Any owned assets could be kept where there is no wealth tax.
Why $10M? Is Bernie worth $9.8M?
EC
No wonder my slumlord never fixed anything when I complained. I shoulda sued...
-PJ
-PJ
There are a few things that could trigger CWII......this is one of them.
Do government retirees really need $130,000/year?
Good question. But that is the rules that are in place.
Now who made them, who allow them to make the
rules must live with the consequences.
You have one vote. My three score an ten is about up
and I’ve enjoyed most of it. Take care and try to make
change as best you can. Your vote and support helps. jmo
California has a solution for that. They’ll tax you even if you move out of the state. Or if you moved out a year ago.
“Any owned assets could be kept where there is no wealth tax.”
What they’re proposing in California would tax anything you own anywhere in the world. Even if you leave the state....or have already left.
At some point the legislation gets so silly as to be unenforceable—the wealthy will make sure of that.
My example: Cuban cigars have been illegal since 1962—meanwhile I have a lifetime stash of them that miraculously arrived at my doorstep a few years ago....
I have no idea how they got here.
Lol.
At some point the legislation gets so silly as to be unenforceable—the wealthy will make sure of that.
My example: Cuban cigars have been illegal since 1962—meanwhile I have a lifetime stash of them that miraculously arrived at my doorstep a few years ago....
I have no idea how they got here.
Lol.
Here is what happens when you try to enforce unenforceable laws—with Cuban cigars—this US government video is from 2010—kinda reminds me of the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wYTT9dlsuc
The vendors changed the packaging and within a few months the flow continued on even stronger than before....
How about "Flemish" and "software coding?"
Regards,
Spoken like a true Fed govt hack.
That’s peanuts.
Wealth tax would bring in billions, they would be extremely diligent at enforcing it, with big jail times.
The reason I gave that example is that enforcement takes real work and a large bureaucracy.
Seriously enforcing a wealth tax would mean ten times the number of revenue agents in any jurisdiction—that is not realistic.
Btw the wealthy will be a hundred times more clever than the relatively small number of Cuban cigar vendors and hobbyists.
I have written before about my wealthy relative who is an art collector. He has tax attorneys who live to figure out schemes to avoid taxation—and they are off the charts brilliant folks—when they are not helping to write the tax code to create loopholes they are ten steps ahead of any proposed legislation in any relevant jurisdiction.
Governments are way outmatched in this area.
A friend of mine immigrated from Holland. Did it the legal way. Took 14 years and a lot of money. He came here because of Holland’s wealth tax. His retired dad was slowly drained of all his assets due to taxes on those assets. A wealth tax. The old man died broke with a tax debt.
“Seriously enforcing a wealth tax would mean ten times the number of revenue agents in any jurisdiction—that is not realistic.”
Really?
They look for any excuse to increase the bureaucracies, and the prospect of collecting hundreds of billions of new taxes is downright irresistable.
That’s why you’re reading more and more about it. And the way they plan to sell it is that it’s just for the evil rich... just like the original income tax was only for the rich.
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