Billionaire tax criticized as Biden pushes for budget deal

[TexasTowelie]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democrats' idea for a new billionaires’ tax to help pay for President Joe Biden's social services and climate change plan quickly ran into criticism as too cumbersome with some lawmakers preferring the original plan of simply raising the top tax rates on corporations and the wealthy.

Biden said Monday he’s hopeful the talks with Congress can wrap up overall agreement on the package this week. It's tallying at least $1.75 trillion, and could still be more. Biden said it would be “very, very positive to get it done” before he departs for two overseas global summits.

“That’s my hope,” the president said before leaving his home state of Delaware for a trip to New Jersey to highlight the child care proposals in the package and a related infrastructure measure. “With the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors.”

Resolving the revenue side is key as the Democrats scale back what had been a $3.5 trillion plan, insisting all the new spending will be fully paid for and not pile onto the debt. Biden vows any new taxes would hit only the wealthy, those earning more than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples.

Read more: https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/bowling-green/politics/2021/10/26/billionaire-tax-criticized-as-biden-pushes-for-budget-deal

[Sherman A1]

1. I'm all for taxing them

Into the dirt.

[CrackityJones75]

2. I am all for making it illegal

I am all for making it illegal to have billionaires. It is literally hoarding money for absolutely no good reason. It is a sickness. Not something to be celebrated and rewarded.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. They hoard stock, not money

Almost every billionaire in the US started a company which they hold majority or near majority stake in. So their wealth is defined as the price of the stock they own times the number of shares. So are we supposed to tell someone who founded a company to do a poorer job running the company so his shares have less value? Do we force people to sell shares of the companies they started?

And taxing the increase in share value is tricky too, because what if shares go down in price?

There's a lot of hating on billionaires, and some of it is deserved, but their wealth is complicated and isn't cash based. There's ways to tax them fairly, but taxing net worth is never going to work.

[CrackityJones75]

5. No matter how you measure it

No matter how you measure it their hoarding off resources gives them ab unfair amount of power over the lives if millions. Apologize for that all you want. I will not.

[sir pball]

9. That's why I'm a fan of wealth-taxing the corporations.

Jeff Bezos is values at ~$150B, Amazon is over a trillion...seems pretty obvious to me which pie I want a slice of. Something like 2% of the daily-averaged market cap of the previous year, paid in cash, from that year's earnings. For.Amazon alone that would be around $30B; taking 2% of the total cap of the NYSE would be around five hundred thirty billion dollars in tax revenue. Why on earth are people still talking about extracting a mere $2-3B from Bezos?

As a side effect it would also rein in absolutely ridiculous overvaluations like Tesla - a company with 1/10th the revenue of Toyota should not have five times the market value.

[Johnny2X2X]

10. What about when companies lose value?

Would they get a rebate?

[sir pball]

11. It's a wealth tax - it's not based on gain/loss, just value.

Last edited Tue Oct 26, 2021, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Let's say TechBroInc has an average cap this year of $1T, they pay $30B. They lose value next year, their cap drops to $750B...they still pay 3% of that, $22.5B.

ETA - think of it like the property tax on your home, it's basically the same thing.

[Clearheadsam]

3. If you made 10 thousand dollars a day

from the year 1776 you still would not have a billion.

[70sEraVet]

7. That impressed me. Whenever I hear these numbers "billions" or "trillions",

my eyes glaze over. Its beyond any frame of reference.

[niyad]

6. Billionaires should be paying their fair share. That is blindingly obvious.

[Fiendish Thingy]

8. I have two major concerns about a wealth tax:

1) it could be declared unconstitutional, or
2) there will be enough loopholes that Romney would be proven correct and billionaires would move their assets into art or offshore accounts or create other entities to shelter assets. The law would have to be written carefully, and the IRS given broad powers and a clear mandate to enforce it, which would piss off a lot of billionaires whose loyalty to their wealth is a lot stronger than their desire to preserve democracy.