[fud3748]

Sure, it’s easy to tax “wealth”. Except most wealth today is of the type where Alice owns 10 million Y and Bob decided to pay $1000 for one Y. Alice cannot possibly sell her Y for near that price, but now she will be taxed on “wealth” of $10 billion.

[AaronM]

If someone takes a loan out against an unrealized gain, that should immediately trigger a tax event.

The real solution though is for the legislative branch to not be beholden to those same people and be able to quickly and effectively close tax loopholes as they are discovered.

[cluckindan]

That would instantly wipe out most leverage from the stock market, and from a casual bystander perspective, it would be a great thing.

[Terr_]

> If someone takes a loan out against an unrealized gain, that should immediately trigger a tax event.

How does that work when a house is used as collateral on a loan? Or artwork?

The loans are just a symptom, the problem is in the Estate Tax, and those loans are being used as a tool to wait out the clock and then dodge dynastic taxes entirely.

Remove the final loophole, and they'll stop playing weird games to get there all on their own. Plus it'll be way less-disruptive to everyone involves in regular loans for regular reasons.

[njarboe]

Agreed. This would get rid of borrow against gains to spend tax free. But also just get rid of the income tax, it is the worst way to tax, and do a land value tax.

[vintermann]

There's a very simple solution to that problem. Tax Alice in Y rather than in $.

[AlexandrB]

How would this work with real-estate? Probably the Y that should be taxed the most when we're talking about wealth.

[flir]

So it would fix false valuation shenanigans too? I see that as a win/win.

[LadyCailin]

Many countries have figured out a wealth tax, so this isn't an impossible problem.

[Saline9515]

France had it for a very long time, it was very costly to recover, incentivized a lot of tax-evading behaviors, and mainly benefited tax specialists. Overall it was another useless, populist measure that did more harm than good.

[croes]

Who says you need to tax the whole wealth if it in form of Ys?

We all know that 10 million Ys maybe not sold for $10 billion dollars but it gives you enough leverage to buy a social network and name it Y

[wat10000]

Oh well. Maybe if Alice doesn't want that problem she shouldn't accumulate so much of one asset that she'd crash the price trying to pay the taxes on it.

[__MatrixMan__]

Maybe we need a debt jubilee then.

[PunchyHamster]

you can tax stock without taxing inventory.

Also the term "asset" exists and is used in accounting

[worik]

> you can tax stock without taxing inventory.

How? What is the difference between "stock" and "inventory"?

[antonyh]

Only in a system where the buyer sets the price.