• 1 Post
  • 733 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 18th, 2023

help-circle




  • There are already large numbers of treaties in place for countries to cooperate in tracking down tax evasion. It might not be as expensive as you think. If you think of it from a practical standpoint, we have lists of the richest people in the world. That’s an excellent starting point, isn’t it?

    If some billionaire is claiming that they actually aren’t a billionaire, and that the lists are wrong, when some government is trying to tax them at an exorbitant rate, it’s likely that they will give all of their banking details to said government to prove it. Or they will hide those banking details, and they’ll be forced to pay the taxes.


  • In point of fact, mark to market taxation already does exist for various individuals and certainly for large numbers of businesses. Your long comment suggests that you don’t know what that is, and if you’re interested you could read up on it.

    The short story is that depending on the situation, a person or a business might pay taxes each year on the value of their assets, assuming said assets had been purchased on January 1st and sold on December 31st, even though in reality nothing was bought or sold. This system is already in place in various ways. It exists. There’s no theoretical problem with expanding it.



  • Why are you arguing against reality? In the world today, some states and countries tax the rich at higher or lower rates than other states and countries, and it’s certainly not true that the rich all leave the high tax rate places. The data doesn’t lie. You can argue about why they don’t all leave, but the facts are there for you to see.

    You don’t need uniformity around the United States or the world in order to tax the rich effectively. But people like to say what you said, so that you don’t even try to tax them.

    But I think it would be fun to run an experiment. Why don’t we jack up taxes on the ultra-rich across the United States. If the ultra rich move to Venezuela, then all of the savings they have in the US stock market will be taxed at an even higher rate and we will actually get more money from them. And if they were working any cushy CEO jobs, those jobs will now be open for other American citizens, and I’m sure there were plenty of people willing to apply… Of course it doesn’t have to be the US. Pick any country, try the same experiment, and get back to us.










  • It’s legally unclear if he’s able to pardon himself for state crimes. He’s the president of the United States, not the president of New York.

    But I hope he tries to pardon himself for anything, just so we can get this before the Supreme Court, because I think they would side with him but I sure want to see it play out. In reality he’s in such bad health and so old that I think he’s probably going to die before he would face any prison time, so the best we can hope for is that the Supreme Court makes greater fools of themselves, or somehow miraculously surprises us and does the right thing, which I don’t expect but you know it’s theoretically possible.