It started out pretty reasonable, but quickly lost me at the wealth tax and how "the other 15 countries that tried it didn't do it right". Suuuurrrrree.
May I inquire, are you starting from this position as well?
If wealth taxes are beneficial and a good goal to work towards for a society, then it might be worth it to try for a 16th or even a 17th time until someone figures it out. Human flight took plenty of tries too, but it was something we deemed beneficial, so we figured it out.. eventually.
Anyway, Property taxes are a kind of wealth tax, as are capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes. All three of those are wide spread and well established.
You do before experimenting with the lives, livelihoods and quality of life of 350 million people.
Or, if not prove, at least provide some really compelling reasons why this time it's different.
FWIW, I think that a Georgist land value tax would be better than a straight wealth tax.
What qualifies as "really compelling" is subjective, but sure, I didn't mean to suggest that you should just try the same thing again and again.
> You do before experimenting with the lives, livelihoods and quality of life of 350 million people.
The way I see it, if an experiment fails, it does limited damage which you can recover from. Of course, the greater the possible damage the more careful you have to be and the higher the threshold to start the experiment should be. But if it succeeds, you permanently improve your society and learn what works.
When the possible loss is limited and temporary while the possible gain may last until the end of civilization, I don't think you should be too conservative. Though running experiments on 350 million is kind of overkill when there are smaller countries. Maybe it's a better policy for large countries to ask smaller ones to experiment, promising to help them recover if they fail.
> FWIW, I think that a Georgist land value tax would be better than a straight wealth tax.
Sure, but what non-pigovian tax isn't worse than an LVT?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional...
I think the article actually mentioned that when it wrote of 'soaking the rich.' That's the real point I think: envy.
I'm very open to the idea of some form of asset tax; I think that they can make a lot of sense. But the reason shouldn't be to drag a few lucky folks down: it should be to try to make a better economy and world for everyone.
*There may be tax treaties that may reduce total tax liability.
This is just the same as many countries. All income earned is subject to tax in the country you live in, regardless of where in the world it was earned. However, this only applies when you are tax resident. So I can't see any reason why a wealth tax in other countries couldn't also apply to global wealth. There's a precedent set by their income tax already applying to global income.
The almost-unique difference in the case of the US is that it taxes its citizens even when resident outside the US (I realise there's a deduction for taxes you've paid overseas).
Sort of. It depends on which country you live in and if that country has a tax treaty, which applies to 68 [1] of the world's 195 countries. If you're living in a tax treaty country then you pay the greater of the US tax or the local tax. If you're living in a non-treaty country you pay taxes to both countries on all your income. The US excludes the first ~100K of foreign income.
Complications arise when you start a business abroad as a US citizen because then you're the proud owner of a controlled foreign corporation and that's its own special brand of disappointment.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/unit...