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 lefties will try to do it—but they will be outgunned by the wealthy.
I encourage you to meet some high flying tax attorneys and tax accountants—those folks are not playing.
They only know one way—win.
They don’t just talk about winning. They do it—every day.
Yep! Ask Trump, Musk, Mark Steyn... how well that’s worked for them.
That is the New Stalinism:
“Show me the man and I will show you the crime”.
That is what many of these laws are really about....
An Ayn Rand quote is also relevant here:
“There’s no way to rule innocent men.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them.
One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
“That is the New Stalinism:”
Yep, that’s what we’re living.
Have you seen Mark Steyn’s latest column?
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4218277/posts
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