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115 points harambae | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.192s | source
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stock_toaster ◴[] No.46208576[source]
Wild idea... Maybe tax wealth instead of income?

Tax break on single home ownership, but significantly increased tax on multi-home-ownership?

It would be interesting to see comparisons between PE ownership in markets with property tax vs markets without.

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gjsman-1000 ◴[] No.46208673[source]
Wealth taxes don't work because wealth gets extremely fuzzy.

For example, unsold stock that I bought 15 years ago; and then got a loan against. I'm wealthy... kinda? But I didn't sell the stock; I have unrealized gains, and you shouldn't tax me beyond income tax on borrowed money? Okay, tax me on my unrealized gains then - but then 2008 repeats itself, stock goes down 40%, do I get a refund? Of course not, I only pay when stock goes up and never down, which is not exactly a fair incentive.

Now imagine artwork I bought 15 years ago from Banksy. Or imagine my video game collection I bought on eBay that contains some rare titles. Or what about my wine collection? Now imagine I'm Elon Musk, on paper worth $400B, but if I sold even 20% of my stock, that paper valuation would be shredded from an excess of liquidity driving the share price down, so you can't tax me on what is physically impossible to realize.

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EricDeb ◴[] No.46208726[source]
What about a law where you couldnt use over a million dollars (to exclude normal people) a year of any asset as collateral for a loan unless you paid capital gains on it at its current valuation?
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1. gjsman-1000 ◴[] No.46208771[source]
If I pledge $10M in stock for a $2M loan, what's the taxable event? The full $10M valuation, or my $2M loan? What if the stock is in a company worth $40M, but the sale of $10M in stock causes it to be worth $5M afterwards and the private company's value is reassessed to $20M, after I got the loan and after my pledge?