Calm down professor. The US is one of the only countries in the world to tax worldwide income, even if they are a nonresident of the US. That is NOT how it works in every country.

Here’s a pretty good article about it from the WSJ if you want to educate yourself on the subject: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-34630

It’s somewhat accurate to say “every penny they make is taxABLE to Uncle Sam” which is different from saying 100% tax rate. Americans living outside the US still need to file a tax return and report all their income, and pay tax on it to the US, even if it is from a foreign source. That said they could claim the foreign tax credit if they paid tax to a foreign regime on that income already, or the foreign income exclusion under some circumstances which would reduce their taxable income to the US.

Well thank god we don’t have any Death Panels from Obamacare though!

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

Are you a bot? Wealth tax is not the same as income tax. You can’t compare 24% to 4%. It just doesn’t work that way. I don’t know how to be more clear.

Suppose you take one of your remaining dollars after paying 24% tax on your gross income. You buy a penny stock and it skyrockets to the moon and you are now worth 100 billion on paper, and you stay at your 100k/yr white collar desk job. Your only income is your 100k salary. You haven’t actually earned any income yet or triggered any taxable events. Income happens when you sell, not when values fluctuate. Your fair share is 24,000 now and then capital gains tax whenever you sell your share of that stock. This wealth tax is absurd because it’s literally just a timing difference between now and whenever you sell, or whenever you die, whichever happens first. That tax is going to get paid one way or another.

You guys are getting your panties all twisted up over a temporary timing difference. And the worst part is you just don’t even know what you’re talking about, or how chaotic it would be implementing such a thing, which would never work in practice, or even the fact that it’s unconstitutional and would require an amendment to be legal. This whole thing is just idiotic.

That’s actually a really good point I hadn’t even thought of. Is there even enough actual currency in circulation to pay the tax people are talking about, or is it all locked up in hypothetical future income priced in to the current FMV? Great post.

People will always act in their own rational self interest. Idk where people get this idea from that you can legislate market forces. It’s like legislating the tides or the seasons. The commies around here walking around bitching about all these mean rich people are so naive it’s really incredible.

This is a super basic apples and oranges concept, please try and keep up.

Your original comment was bitching about 4% not being a fair share when you are paying 24%. Wealth tax is not the same as income tax.

I think everyone is subject to income tax in the US when the income is taxable to them, yes. Eventually all of these big bad mean rich people will pay tax on their unrealized gains one way or another. No need to create a wealth tax because eventually the income tax will kick in, I promise you. There’s no need to fuck with the tax code even more, and by doing so totally breaking accounting and tax concepts in a way that only government can, just out of this populist notion that they aren’t paying their fair share, whatever that means.

My post was in response to someone bitching about borrowing against property with unrealized gains to avoid tax, try and keep up.

Wouldn’t a wealth tax increase risk of assets being stored and hidden outside the US?

Americans are already taxed on worldwide income. If there’s a wealth tax and they tried to get around it by storing assets outside the US, wouldn’t hiding it be much the same as attempting to hide non-US income?

Any comments on whether a wealth tax is even constitutional, since the 16th amendment only authorizes an income tax and not a wealth tax?

Do they get a deduction when they repay the loan on the back end, if they had to pick up income for the loan when it was received?

Wouldn’t it be disruptive to cap executive pay during lean years, or startup years, or recession years etc? Wouldn’t that create even more incentive than there already is to aggressively pump up income in order to meet arbitrary quarterly/annual earnings goals to keep executive comp high? What if there was a lot of income last year, little income this year, and a lot of income next year, etc. Should everyone’s income seesaw up and down or could we maybe plan around cash flow a little bit?

“Yearly audits of accounts held by wealth management firms to ensure that no one is fiddling with the books” is such a loaded sentence full of ignorance and naivete I really can’t begin to respond to it besides telling you that it instantly identifies you as someone who doesn’t know wtf they’re talking about and shouldn’t be commenting on such things.

Finally, Bezos is still the executive chair of Amazon and still holds 990 million shares as of November 2023 so idk what you’re talking about with that last sentence. Link to the SEC Form 4 Proxy Statement, a primary source document despite the shady url: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001018724/0978cda1-fd60-4d80-bdc4-e6911372e1a3.pdf or you can find it here dated November 1 2023: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/sec-filings/default.aspx

Yeah and then they pay interest on that loan, which is income to the lender for them to pay tax on; then when the original loan comes due the billionaire either refinances and pays even more interest, or pays back the loan by selling their appreciated assets and then - yes - pays tax on the income. So either way the tax is getting paid, now or later, and you have no idea how frustrating it is to see people parroting this over and over and over, and downvoting you for pointing it out.

Maybe there’s a difference between wealth and income, but nobody around here would care about such things.

I agree with you but the culture around here is exceptionally infuriating for anyone who understands a thing about finance/accounting/tax/money in general so good luck.

They call it “Lincoln’s Tax War” in the South.

Fuck your stupid pink and blue hair lol that’s how I came up with that

Personally I feel like it’s less about exposure to extreme gore and porn and stuff like that. It’s more about the constant barrage of awful shit happening all over the world. Some stupid thing some politician said, police brutality, an asshole on a plane, etc. Our brains just weren’t designed to handle so much stimulus overload. I’m not a psychologist or whatever but that’s my opinion.

I just told the truth. Personal time off, health and wellness, weight loss, surfing, travel, and yes vibing doing nothing.

It went over well. Most interviewers were more interested in that than my professional experience. Most people can’t do that and want to know what it’s like.

For my part, I don’t want to work for/with people who look down on that sort of thing.

Warning: my resume is extremely strong so I have a lot of leverage. YMMV

There was a lot of speculation about that but I’m not sure if there’s any consensus. Individual tax returns only show income, and business returns only show book values (not fair market value which would help determine wealth). He had pretty big net operating loss carryovers from previous years which essentially zeroed out his income for a few years, so it’s hard to say. I feel like I remember looking for foreign account disclosures but didn’t see them in the returns, which would be at least one set of FMV numbers to go with. It’s been a while since I looked though. Overall I walked away being disappointed so I’ll stick with my original assessment, maybe I take another look later today though.

What makes you think I don’t already wear a crime fighting suit to work? There was a documentary about it and everything, The Accountant. I specialize in espionage, intrusion/counter intrusion, taking some CPE next week for long range assault weaponry, the usual.

The funny thing is, his tax returns were fairly unremarkable. I’m a cpa and my background is largely with high and ultra high net worth individuals and their businesses, so people like trump are my bread and butter. I reviewed his returns when they first leaked and honestly nothing jumped out at me as particularly noteworthy or interesting at all. All I can speculate is that he’s just a stubborn asshole and simply didn’t want to release them.