My personal first step in increasing income from capital gains is to tax any stock-buyback at 50%... If company has money to buyback stock it might as well be heavily taxed...<p>This would direct cash to dividends which then could get taxed as individual gains...
This kind of assumes liquidity... A lot of wealth is tied up in stocks and physical assets. Imagine having to orchestrate selling 2% of everything you own every year. And why over a billion, why not put it at over a million, or ten?<p>You could seize the full assets of every US Billionaire and it wouldn't cover a single year of the federal budget or dent the debt. There's no way to tax out of this hole... spending cuts need to happen, and restructuring as well. Taxes should focus on points of exchange.
I had no idea there were so many billionaires on HN - billionaires who cannot possibly for any reason think of a way to pay taxes because as it is explained in comments here, it is simply not possible, and if it was possible they shouldn't pay because federal spending.
Billionaire wealth in the US totals $5.5T dollars.<p>In 2024, the Federal government is projected to borrow $1.9T.<p>And remember: billionaire wealth is mostly paper wealth. The deficit is real dollars.<p>We have a spending problem. Not a rich people problem.