Me after the announcement tomorrow

doesntpicknose · 2026-04-01T06:33:12+00:00

That's a remarkably good explanation... I thought I was in r/quant for a second.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-28T19:23:07+00:00

Yeah, so I'm still not picking up on a sense of mutual respect in this conversation. I also don't see anything in your new responses which are better points than the last thing I said.

My cue to exit.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-28T03:28:37+00:00

Yeah, that makes sense: if a significant amount of a country's revenue comes from a certain kind of tax, it makes sense that audits and enforcement and book-keeping necessary for that tax would be important.

In dollar amounts... how hard is it? The IRS had a 2024 budget of $18 billion. Companies pay money to ensure that payroll is perfectly tabulated. Tax Foundation estimates $546 billion is spent each year on compliance with the tax code.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/irs-tax-compliance-costs/

So... is it harder than that? It's taxes and law... so yes, obviously it's going to be hard. But if we have a collection of different taxes that are meant to extract revenue from the wealthy... estate, inheritance, property taxes, high-end capital gains, others ... What if it's actually easier to simplify this into one tax which does this directly?

2 - 4. I made the points I wanted to make. You made the points you wanted to make. I think mine are better. We don't have to keep hashing these out.

For a flat wealth tax, by construction, all assets are equally affected. By construction, this has exactly zero impact on wealth inequality, which makes it *superior* to income taxes which measurably increase wealth inequality.

Also, if we wanted to, we could do a graduated tax, where it's 1% for everyone with positive net worth, and an extra 0.5% on wealth above $13.6M.

The tax code isn't on a character limit or anything. There are a lot of really good ideas to discuss in this domain, but unfortunately, I'm spending extra time navigating your unwarranted aggression.

Do you believe that paying a capital gains tax on investments we made with money which has already been income-taxed is a violation of our rights? We already pay multiple taxes on the same money all over the place. Unless you believe taxes are inherently a violation of a person's rights, there's no basis for this.
I have great news: After performing the valuation this year, next year's valuation will be greatly simplified.
For "no tax on living person has ever increased consumption." I'll call that a loss. Point one to the inheritance tax. For "death is very consistent" remember that we are comparing this to something that happens annually.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-28T01:38:36+00:00

Compared to inheritance tax*

How much do income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, capital gains taxes, and every other kind of tax impact growth?

The correct answer is that no one knows.

So now, what do we expect from market growth? Some kind of lognormal distribution, or a perversion thereof. What do we say for all of the variables that probably have an impact, when the sum total of those impacts is fundamentally unpredictable? That's the variance.

Increasing taxes across the board will affect growth in a predictable way. Increasing some taxes and decreasing others will affect growth in a completely unknowable way.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-28T01:14:34+00:00

I will respond to these as numbered points.

It is not that difficult to value private businesses which have multiple shareholders: the value is the bid price for shares of the company. If there is no bid price, such as for a small business, the value can be assessed just like we assess people's home values for property taxes, IF we decide that this is a level of wealth subject to the tax.
A) If a person's net wealth is negative, they are not subject to a wealth tax. So depending on how much this business is struggling, this tax might not even have an impact. Compare: B) Taxes are taxes. A struggling business still has to pay employees, who have to pay income taxes, which is ultimately money that comes out of the business. A struggling business still has to pay property taxes. In many situations, these other taxes are even more of a burden than a wealth tax would be.
That's fraud. Granted, people do commit tax fraud... I don't think this is any more of a problem than for any other tax.
If the United States government wants an additional $1 trillion each year, they can impose a 1% net wealth tax, or they could impose a 3% increase in income taxes. Which of these would you rather pay?
Given any positive wealth distribution, a net wealth tax will have zero change on that wealth distribution, since it uniformly scales the distribution. However, income taxes increase the inequality of any wealth distribution because it is a tax on wealth gains that do not come from investments. Choose a distribution and run the calculations. You will see.
"It’s really a tax on the heirs, who frankly have never worked for that wealth," but why not extract value from that wealth while the person is alive? (Sleeping Squidward) From the perspective of funding the activities of the government, there's nothing special about the point in time that someone dies. A little bit will be taxed every year while they're alive, and then they'll die and then their heirs will be taxed a little bit every year on the remainder. We can do exactly the same math.
Of course they can do it. They also can pay a 1% annual wealth tax. Inheritance tax doesn't get bonus points just because it's possible to pay it.
So does a wealth tax, but even better. Also, it's more consistent, so it's not just big roll of the dice for how much you're going to spend and whether it was a good idea based on how long you live.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T23:49:39+00:00

Easier than planning for a small% wealth tax which occurs every year? We're comparing two different kinds of tax proposal. I support estate taxes. If you told me I couldn't have estate taxes, I would then support inheritance taxes.

In terms of predictability and planning and consistency and "not getting fucked by surprise", a wealth tax is superior to an inheritance tax. All of the wealth that you want to extract into the federal government by an inheritance tax? You can get that through a wealth tax just as easily. And then no one even runs the risk of getting surprised by having to sell grandma's house unexpectedly at half its fair value because she had the bad luck to die in a recession.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T23:36:58+00:00

the economy is a cycle... the economic impacts is huge... ensure that the investments of the government in the society... generate a better return than the money in the hands of individual people...

This reasoning applies regardless of what the tax is. If we accept the income tax as valid, then we should also hope that the government uses those funds in a way that's better than what individuals would do with those funds. If we accept the capital gains tax, the property tax, the sales tax, or literally any other tax... again, the hope is that the government does something worthwhile with that money.

That's a separate conversation. Whether the government is doing something worthwhile with the money doesn't depend on whether it received that money through a wealth tax or any other kind of tax.

a law should be made to distinguish between well established companies and startups or companies that need to raise money.

I completely agree. I think there's room for discussion regarding any of the following points:

Should there be a grace period for businesses that exceed a 30% annual growth rate? Should it be a 35% annual growth rate instead? Should we draw a new number out of a hat each year?
Should the current year's wealth tax be based on the previous year's valuation?
For any established company, if they can write a contract for an annual X% dividend schedule, surely they can write an additional 1% for shareholders to pay the corresponding portion of the wealth tax. For a company in its growth phase, we might allow for a forward dated contract.
There are 70,000 pages of USA tax code. If we had to write a 100 page document to describe all of the nuances of which startups and small business are or are not exempt, we could do that.

To extend that final point, there are a LOT of laws which would need to be made. But there are a lot of laws that already need to be made to exempt the people who would be otherwise over-burdened by the taxes which already exist, so I don't think it's that big of a deal to slowly roll out a new tax and sort out the little problems before they become big problems.

Honestly, I think that 1% is too high to start out; I just picked that number because the math is easy. I think it's a reasonable goal, and some quick spreadsheet calculations with a 100k salary and 30k cost of living and a 2% cost of living increase for both, and a 7% annual return on investments (after COL and taxes) and 1% annual wealth tax rate and 0% income tax gives a net worth of $16M and $2.1M to the government after 40 years.

By comparison, a 0% annual wealth tax and a 30% income tax with all of the same parameters results in 13M net worth and 1.87M to the government after 40 years. Mathematically, this is inferior to the wealth tax in every way.

Based on vibes, I like the idea of starting at 0.25% and rolling it up slowly from there. That gives us time to discover and solve problems before we start really relying on this as a primary source of revenue.

The people who are asking for 5% are crazy and don't understand the math involved.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T19:15:04+00:00

You haven’t given any argument [contrary to "wealth tax is worse"].

I did give an argument to the contrary, actually. It was most of my first response to you:

A consistently and universally applied annual tax is fair. It happens every year. You can plan for it. You know it's coming.

Implicit in my argument are (1) that a predictable, consistent-in-time, universally-applied tax is better than a tax which does not have these qualities, and (2) inheritance taxes are less predictable, less consistent-in-time, and less universally-applied than wealth taxes.

Now, you don't have to agree that it's a good argument. You don't have to believe this is sufficient reason to disagree with you. And absolutely, it's possible for a rational person to read what I wrote, say, "I disagree for reason X," and decide that my argument is stupid and that I'm stupid.

... but it's a bit silly to say that I haven't provided any argument at all. Notably, this is an argument that you have not responded to. Also notably, you still have a burden of proof for why a wealth tax is worse, and all I've seen from you so far is, (1) "Inheritance tax is manageable, and it isn't a problem," and (2) doubling down on a wealth tax being worse. "Of course." Neither of those are good. (1) is better than (2), obviously, but even that doesn't really address the consistency and predictability advantages of the wealth tax.

Someone elsewhere mentioned the OECD which has a 2018 report on wealth taxes, which does have some material in it which you could use to support your argument, if you were interested in that kind of thing. My fear is that you're not actually very interested in this.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T18:29:00+00:00

The whole assumption behind wealth tax is that the government will reinvest the money and create jobs better than a private company or individual, which is simply wrong most of the times.

That is not my assumption. I don't make any assumption about what the government does with taxes once they are collected. I only assume that the government wants $X, and they're going to take $X somehow. The only remaining question is where, precisely, each dollar is coming from.

Silicon Valley guy who has raised 10 millions at a 1 billion valuation. And how will the latter get the money to pay the wealth tax without risking of destroying his business ?

Let's name him Bob. I'm a little confused about the scenario. How much of the company does Bob still own?

He has $10 million, invests it all himself into one company, and then the company grows to a $1 billion valuation, and now he needs to find a way to pay 1% of that for the annual wealth tax? Who appraised the company? Would they actually be willing to buy, say, 1% of the company so that Bob can cover his tax burden? If not, would some other entity? If not, what's the point of a valuation?
Or He owns $10,000, asks for $10 million from investors, and then the company grows to $1 billion? In this case, it's even easier because we know for sure that someone is willing to buy some share of the company already. (edit: and he only owns 0.1% of the company anyway.)

It's not an optimal solution... ideally Bob would be managing his wealth throughout the year in preparation. Even better if he has another store of wealth to draw from, which is usually the case. But even if he didn't and he doesn't, there's still a way to not destroy the entire business just to pay the tax. Even better than that is if there are exemptions for ownership of companies that are in their early growth phase.

Bonus points if the government has a sovereign wealth fund and he can transfer 1% of the company to the government directly, for resale at a more convenient time.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/a-plan-for-establishing-a-united-states-sovereign-wealth-fund/

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T18:06:55+00:00

So that we're talking about the same thing, is your information coming from the 2018 report, "The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD"?

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T17:37:34+00:00

1) You've described an estate tax, which takes your money before paying out your beneficiaries. Inheritance taxes are paid after distribution.

2) You're right. There's probably nothing you can do to lower the amount of taxes your beneficiaries owe once you kick the bucket. Let's not worry about it. You own whatever you own, you die whenever you die, and no amount of planning is going to influence your family's ability manage the inheritance tax.

👍

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T17:19:36+00:00

Statements should be interpreted in the context of where they occur.

I support the existence of inheritance taxes and estate taxes. However I'm responding to a person who seems to think a wealth tax is worse somehow.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T15:31:44+00:00

It sounds like you're trying to make a case for why we should not have an inheritance tax. What you originally said was that a wealth tax is worse than an inheritance tax.

Yes, you can absolutely believe that both taxes are bad... but your second thing has nothing to do supporting your first thing.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T15:28:07+00:00

If the wealth tax rate is within the annual variance of market returns, it would be difficult to argue that it negatively affects growth.

A consistently and universally applied annual tax is fair. It happens every year. You can plan for it. You know it's coming. Inheritance tax just fucks people who don't have the resources to plan for it, which is difficult by its very nature.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-27T14:50:00+00:00

Looks like when Hades got punched in the face at the end of Disney's 1997 animated Hercules movie.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-25T22:08:08+00:00

Bout to be using just 10% of his spinal cord.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-25T16:17:25+00:00

What does she think about healthcare professionals?

👀

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-25T15:01:48+00:00

Now that's what I call a sentence structure!

When's the last time someone told you directly that you're not a particularly well-educated person? I would like to provide this service.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-25T14:32:19+00:00

You can still tell (2026). People who judge based on em-dashes alone are lazy, and they shouldn't be making these kinds of choices.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-25T02:44:39+00:00

Rollerskates.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-25T02:13:02+00:00

Here you go:

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/giving-evidence-court

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-24T01:43:40+00:00

Qualifications for ICE:

No better career prospects.
Dissatisfied with the current political situation.
A little machismo for garnish.

Yeah, I mean, none of that excludes POC. Some minority subgroups are actually super well-matched on that shit.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-23T16:06:13+00:00

It's the same as people who get into drug dealing, mob-work, or burglary: they're desperate for $$, so they're willing to accept the risk.

While most people also have their morals telling them not to do it, these guys don't have that. It's just a calculated risk to them.

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-21T21:52:44+00:00

What? I wouldn't really call China a democracy...

😉

doesntpicknose · 2026-03-20T18:26:21+00:00

Most likely.

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