It is impossible to defend democratic rights or any of the social interests of working people without seizing the unearned wealth of the billionaire parasites.
Billionaires technically don’t have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.
The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don’t have much of anything, and the reason why ‘declining to take a salary’ is typically meaningless.
That feels like an easy loophole to patch- Treat loans as income. Maybe tax it at some separate progressive rate so people using small loans as intended don’t get fucked. But if Muskerberg has $100 million in loans taken out against his stock, taxing $90 million of that as income would make a difference. Especially if the top rate is like 90%.
Well if it doesn’t, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The ‘loss’ of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.
Billionaires technically don’t have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.
The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don’t have much of anything, and the reason why ‘declining to take a salary’ is typically meaningless.
That feels like an easy loophole to patch- Treat loans as income. Maybe tax it at some separate progressive rate so people using small loans as intended don’t get fucked. But if Muskerberg has $100 million in loans taken out against his stock, taxing $90 million of that as income would make a difference. Especially if the top rate is like 90%.
Buy borrow die
It does have a notable Achilles heel though, which is that the underlying portfolio has to keep appreciating in value.
Well if it doesn’t, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The ‘loss’ of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.