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Comment by Scarblac | Hacker News Reader

It's not hard. Tax the amount the stocks are valued at at january 1.

Make exceptions for investments in illiquid things.

Ok, and on the 2nd the price crashes, company goes bankrupt, stock is worth zero. You were taxes on theoretical value that you can't sell at to pay that tax.

What then?

For me, a lot of these issues become immaterial if the threshold is high enough. If the threshold for a particular tax is assets over $100 million, or a billion, then the answer can just be "you are totally screwed" and I'm basically fine with that. If you don't want that risk, just don't get that rich.

This would destroy every retirement investment vehicle for the middle class more than it would affect the 1%

That can be mitigated by setting high thresholds on the whole process (e.g., the tax doesn't apply if your total net worth is under $10 million).

Now no one has a billion dollars but they have 100 companies they control each worth 10 million.

These lawsuits have to be designed with the idea that the people with the most resources will try to exploit them, and the people with the least resources will be unable to.

I said tax it on the total net worth. Splitting your wealth among different companies shouldn't affect anything.

> These lawsuits have to be designed with the idea that the people with the most resources will try to exploit them, and the people with the least resources will be unable to.

Agreed! That is why the goal needs to be to just directly and explicitly reduce the wealth of those with the most.

That doesn't sound like it could be gamed, at all.

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