100% Tax Bracket for Billionaires

Their wealth doesn't necessarily leave with them. Where else will they invest in capital markets? The chokepoint are the very capital markets that enable the ongoing preservation of wealth. Think property taxes but for securities (if income tax evasion is a consideration by leaving the jurisdiction). There are less than 730 billionaires in the US.

If you're only starting a startup to become a billionaire, we could probably do with less of that based on what results. People will still build (most startups fail, and I'm going to argue most of those folks don't believe they're going to become a billionaire), just people with different (better?) motivations.

> But that’s nothing compared to the top US rate in 1944: a whopping 94%, which was applied on all income over $200,000. That’s equivalent to $3.45 million in 2023 income.

What happens first is a lot of income restructuring to avoid paying those taxes: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nocera-tax-avoidance-...

I don't think it would really impact startup entrepreneurs much, tax rates at a billion dollars are basically not going to impact anyone: the impact would be on those in the ~100m+ range who will start trying to restructure their investments in a way to avoid the bill.

How exactly this would shake out would depend a lot on the exact specifics of what gets written down and are impossible to predict based on a high level description, e.g. few would have predicted an increased investment in oil wells due to the 91% marginal rate before.

The only thing people should be sure of is that you will definitely not raise whatever headline number you compute assuming this is a static system that does not adapt.