Did I say mandatory? I meant optional! You’re “free” to die in a cardboard box under a freeway as a market capitalist scarecrow warning to the other ants so they keep showing up to make us more!

  • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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    Ummm I didn’t know they could be used as collateral. I’ll have to research that. It doesn’t sound right to me for the same reason they definitely should NOT be taxed. How does that even work? You buy stocks and you hold them, then, what the government taxes you every year until there ARE no gains. Or perhaps the stock plummeted and you have a loss, but it’s ok, you lost money on the investment AND to the government. Until you sell an investment you haven’t made any money on it and it should NOT be taxed. If you have a 401k this would affect you too, not just rich people.

    • padge@lemmy.zip
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      33 minutes ago

      Ultra net worth individuals, especially ones like Jeff Bezos with a lot of his net worth tied up in one company, can take a personal loan using his stock as collateral to keep up his lifestyle without needing to sell (and be taxed on) anything. It’s only really available for the 1%

      • Rediphile@lemmy.ca
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        20 minutes ago

        I’ve never made 6 figures before, but was asked to show my investment portfolio value when applying for a mortgage as it was part of my assets. Assets the bank could seize if I didn’t pay my bill.

        TIL I’m the 1%.

      • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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        And you can do the same thing. He got a loan using his stock as collateral. The stock has value. The bank can use that value to issue the loan as they see fit within federal regulations. They can do the same with your less than $100m portfolio.

        How about we just make things fair so that the ultra rich pay their share? This is not the way. It literally makes no sense.

    • celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      It’s how billionaires can buy things while allowing their sycophantic boot licking fanboys to cry “their wealth isn’t liquid!” anytime anyone proposes common sense tax reform.

    • tee9000@lemmy.world
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      There has to be hedging requirements right? If you have 100 million of growth stocks for example, surely you’d need to have put option contracts for that loaning insitution to accept the risk of unrealized assets to secure a loan of that size?

      Anyone know how that works? Im sure each loan is reviewed thoroughly for its risk at that level.

      • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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        19 minutes ago

        Put options are a specific investment vehicle. The OP is just making a blanket statement about unrealized gains. Many, many NOT rich people have unrealized gains. And there literally is NO value to tax. The investment could go bust and there is a loss, no gain at all. At what point in a long term investment is the tax assessed?

        • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          I’d say, when it is used as a vehicle for any financial transaction. If an employee exercising stock options pre-IPO has to pay tax on something that they are unable to get any financial value out of for at least 6-12 months, there is no legitimate reason that unrealized gains used as collateral should not be taxed. It’s just another way to shift tax burden onto people who actually work.

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    I don’t agree with unrealized gains taxes in general, but the instant they are used as collateral, or if value in any way is extracted from them (even loan value), they become realized gains, and should be taxed.

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      How does this actually make any sense though? All collateral is, is a safety net to mitigate loss for a lender who lends to someone who then defaults on the loan. If the loan is not defaulted on, literally nothing happens to the collateral.

      How then does it make any sense to consider the mere act of the loan being given as a realization of the collateral, in other words, equivalent to having sold the collateral, when literally nothing has happened to it?

      This feels completely arbitrary. Using an asset as collateral is nothing like realizing it.

      • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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        23 minutes ago

        And WHAT gain exactly is being taxed? So you have a $1000 investment. The government decides, what, that you are a good investor and can make 20% so they’ll tax you on $200? So if you sell it at a loss, you get screwed. If you sell it for a 50% gain the government loses tax revenue? You know what, I’ll take that deal. I’ll invest money, pay the taxes on my unknown gain immediately, keep it for 20 years and boom, tax free, because I’ve already paid the taxes on the gain. You know I’m totally on board with this whole rich people suck idea, but this is just stupid.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      I don’t agree with unrealized gains taxes in general, but the instant they are used as collateral, or if value in any way is extracted from them (even loan value), they become realized gains, and should be taxed.

      What you’re suggesting would also mean you’re advocating for middle class homeowners to be taxed on a full value of a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) even if they haven’t spent a dime of it yet. Was that your intention?

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          I believe you’re referring to rules on sale of a home where there is a capital gain, meaning you bought the house for $100k and sell it for $350k, no cap gains taxes. We’re in uncharted waters with what @bastion@feddit.nl is proposing. That user (possibly) suggesting it for HELOCs too.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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    The top 10% own 67% of the wealth in the U.S.

    The tax rate during the New Deal (which corresponded with the largest jump in GDP and middle class growth) on people earning $200k and over (now would be like earning $2.5 million/year) was 95%.

    During the 50’s through the early 80’s, that tax on the wealthiest was at 70%.

    Now it’s at 37%, less than half of what it was during the best years of growth our country ever experienced.

    This Unrealized gains tax would only impact people worth more than $100 million who do not pay at least a 25% tax rate on their income.

    Additionally, you’d only pay taxes on unrealized capital gains if at least 80% of your wealth is in tradeable assets (i.e., not shares of private startups or real estate). One caveat is that there would be a deferred tax of up to 10% on unrealized capital gains upon exit.

    In short, it would not apply to most startup founders or investors, but would impact top hedge fund managers.

    They can afford it. TAX THEM.

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      Anyone seriously talking about the 95% rate can be safely ignored as a liar by omission.

      The amount of stuff you could deduct was very different back then. Nobody actually paid 95%, regardless of what the law literally said.

      There is a reason this person is not showing you per capita tax revenue over the same time period.

  • spongebue@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    How is “collateral in major purchases” and “secure billions in loans” supposed to be any different?

  • thewebroach@lemmy.world
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    So with a 401k loan, which is kind of this, you are limited to borrowing against it by like only up to 50% of its face value due to factors such as market volatility. And then all payments made to that loan are with alreaey taxed income, so you aren’t securing money in any way that dodges taxation.

    Also using shareholdings is no different from using a house or property as collateral… property equity has unrealized value until it is sold too. One might argue you pay property taxes on that equity, but ideally, the company behind the stocks you own pays property taxes for its ownings annually, so that’s still happening. So the real problem is large companies dodging taxes due to exploiting broken tax code loopholes.

    • thewebroach@lemmy.world
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      Also, i think income tax is double taxation. Businesses are the key market players in an economy so why not orient all taxation around them? Do away with personal income tax and property tax. Keep/increase sales tax, luxury tax, sin tax. And clamp the largest salary in a company to be allowed no more than 20x the average salary in the company to address wage disparities. If the CEO deserves a 1 mil bonus, the average employee deserves at least a 50k bonus. Also, no worker’s rate can be paid less than 1/20th the salary than the average employee. The more spread out the dollars are, the better it is for the economy.

  • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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    8 hours ago

    Yea this is a bad idea. All this will do is force small investors-think people that have made maybe a million dollars in their life and are retiring at 70-to pay taxes they don’t have cash to pay.

    • gnomadic@lemmy.world
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      The Harris proposal kicks in at 100 million dollars lol if you have over 100 million dollars in unrealized gains you are not a small investor and should pay your taxes.

        • gnomadic@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Yeah and most people like to pretend someday they could have that much money too, not realizing it’s strictly generational and they’d already have it.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        The Harris proposal kicks in at 100 million dollars lol

        The snark is uncalled for, this tweet doesn’t mention any proposal specifically, so don’t act like they’re saying something incorrect.

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        Like how the Revenue Act of 1913 only applied the new “income tax” to $3000/year ($90k/year in today’s dollars) and up.

        • gnomadic@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          ? Sure yeah ?

          And just like how federal income tax rates have been and are adjusted constantly over the years due to inflation since 1913, it’s safe to assume these tax brackets will be updated also

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    14 hours ago

    That’s how the rich get richer. They never gamble with their own money. They gamble with other people’s money, secured (hah) by their assets.

    Yes a minority of us peons who are privileged enough to own property or lots of stocks can play-act like they’re rich by taking out reverse mortgages or doing options trading, but it’s nothing like what the actual rich can get away with.

  • Rakudjo@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    You’re “free” to die in a cardboard box under a freeway

    Actually… They made that illegal. You’re free to rot in prison for being homeless, though!

    • gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      If it’s one homeless guy dieing under the bridge it’s a capitalist scarecrow sothat other people work harder.

      If it’s a hundred homeless guys dieing under bridges the people understand that the problem is not them, but capitalism. That’s illegal.

      • pemptago@lemmy.ml
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        Capitalist Scarecrow is such an effective term. It feels like enshittification in the way that I see it everywhere, and now I finally have a word for it.

        edit: wording

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      Sitting here, watching every town council around my area pass a homeless ban after that SCOTUS ruling. Even the newspaper suddenly switched and said popular opinion swung 180 degrees in the last six months.

      What the fuck does one do at that point? It’s obviously manufactured consent. It’s blatantly unconstitutional to tell people they can’t exist on public land. It’s a human rights violation to be stuffed into a shelter that demands you be a better human than people who already have housing in order to get house money. At this point we’re just turning the homeless into the new scary minority.

      • bamfic@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        The goal is extermination and genocide. There is nowhere for the homeless to go except into the ground as dead bones, where they won’t bother the privileged and rich anymore.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          I don’t know if we’re there, but that’s definitely one way Automation has been theorized to go.

  • Copernican@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    So how does taxing unrealized gains work. If I purchase stock X at a specific price. If the stock goes up and I now am holding 150% of my original value. Let’s say it hovers there for 3 more years. After 3 years it tanks and is now worth only 50% of my original purchases. Are people suggesting that I pay taxes on the unrealized gain of 50%, even though I end up selling at loss and have realized negative value. Doesn’t that mean I am being taxed on losing money? How does that make sense?

    • Godnroc@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Unironically, isn’t that exactly how property taxes work on land and housing?

      • CompassRed
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        5 hours ago

        Housing is taxed at the value of the property, not the difference between the value of the property and the purchase price.

    • kyle@lemm.ee
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      14 hours ago

      Frankly I feel like the better option is to just not let people borrow based on stocks at all. Even if you paid in at X price, there’s no guarantee it’ll still be at X price or greater when the loan comes due, so to speak.

      • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        I mean, in the UK, we see the “loan against unrealised, paid off to a zero tax position” trick as the disguised remuneration package that it is.

        In fact, it only America, out of the western nations, that allows that.

        You took payment of a sum of money, specifically related to unrealised gain. Therefore, the gains are realised.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          You took payment of a sum of money, specifically related to unrealised gain. Therefore, the gains are realised.

          I don’t think this is accurate. I’ll break down what I mean.

          You took payment of a sum of money

          Yes.

          specifically related to unrealised gain

          Yes.

          Therefore, the gains are realised.

          No. Gains realized would be an unambiguous outcome with zero question to the providence or final outcome. That isn’t what a loan against assets are. There is a third step you’re skipping.

          A lender is making a business decision to absorb the risk of giving you money where they may not get their money back even with the asset you gave them. The value of the assets can change both positively (which would be immaterial to the lender) or negatively (which would absolutely be material to the lender).

          In today’s rules it means that the lender would lose out if the borrower defaults, and the collateral asset sells for less than the loan amount. The only loser is the lender, and they are choosing to take that risk. The worst case scenario to the lender is losing 100% of the loaned amount (plus whatever trivial costs of administrative overhead for servicing the loan) because the asset is worthless.

          In the rules you’re proposing (the worst case scenario) if the borrower defaults, the lender loses 100% of the loaned amount, the borrower loses 25%-33% of the value of the loan, and the government would gain 25%-33% of taxes on money that never existed because the asset is worthless.

          • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            Don’t you worry. I know very familiar with what you mean.

            I’m not suggesting that Americas tax rules haven’t been utterly compromised by billionaires. I’m saying that, in other countries, that’s tax evasion.

            They would have to release the loss and declare it to claim the tax relief. The other alternative is that billionaires never pay tax on their capital gains and that would be a bat shit crazy way to run an economy.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      The moment you use them as a collateral, they should be taxed as money.

      You took a 10 billions loan with the actions you have as collateral? You pay taxes on these 10 billions.

      Right now, the system is rigged because the richs get to transform their collateral into liquidity while paying 0 taxes on that, and they can even write off the interest on the interest incurred.

      • Copernican@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        I guess that’s whats lost in the meme. Just because you “can” use something as collateral doesn’t mean you “are” using something as collateral. The language should be more accurate to describe actual use vs hypothetical.

    • BaldManGoomba@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      No…see you bought the stock. You don’t have enough of a hoard for us to worry about not to mention the value of that stock will be used in the economy more than likely when You retire or need it.

      How it will work is you are an early owner or investor and your hoard pile is over $100 million. Now when your hoard pile goes up 7% you have $107 million. We tax you on your wealth over $ 100 million. Let’s say 25% tax on that $7 million if you choose to hold onto it. Your wealth tax bill will be $1,750,000 that year (plus minus other factors). You can choose to sell your $7 million and it is currently taxed at 18% for realized tax gains if you held onto the stock for over a year or income % tax rate if short term trade.

      What this does is increase the public ownership in companies as there is more stock for everyone and decreases the hoarding of companies by the wealthy. It also makes stock prices more honest so people don’t hoard the stock count to inflate prices.

      Let’s say you own other assets. A house. It is just like property tax if you can’t afford the tax bill you don’t own the house or…your house isn’t worth that much. If you have tons of homes you may have to sell it to the people rather than rent. And if your hoard of assets is in other random collectibles you pay the tax bill to maintain your collection or share the ownership with others.

      As for private companies that will be an interesting thing. I would say when your company is worth $100 million you have to divest the ownership to others. But idk. Legalize will figure it out we can also have exceptions for things like house value or other random things

    • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
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      15 hours ago

      Why not tax on a regular basis based on the current value, just like we do with houses?

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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      It’s not. Unrealised gains is basically an item in your shelf that hasn’t been sold, you can tell other people this item worth X now and you can get a loan with that item as a guarantee, but since you haven’t sell it and turn it into money, you still have $0 and an item that worth X. These people failed basic economic.

      • Copernican@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        “can” vs “do” are different things. The meme quote describes hypothetical use, not actual use, as being something that should be taxable.

        • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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          What you mean by “hypothetical use” vs “actual use”? In your own comment you mention nothing about “hypothetical use” yet here you talk about one, OOP also failed to mention anything about hypothetical use and only talk exclusively about unrealised gain. If unrealised gain(stock, asset, etc) is used to trade for another item, then yes, it’s already a realised gain, the tax should be levied on the item purchased or the asset sold, whichever makes sense. If the unrealised gain is used to secure a loan, then no, it shouldn’t be taxed because it’s only change hand on paper, and the loan came with interest, and you have to pay back that loan. Net worth is nothing but a dick measuring contest, taxing it makes no sense.

          So no, unrealised gain shouldn’t be taxed because it’s unrealised, it’s like taxing a grocery store’s unsold item.

  • Goodie@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I think a law stating you can’t borrow against unrealized gains would be sensible.

    You can keep your unrealized gains forever, live of your dividends for all i care, and pay no tax. But realizing them, either through selling or borrowing against, triggers a taxation.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      Mhm. There’s two very good reason unrealized gains aren’t taxed: volatility and cash flow. Are you and the government expected to swap cash back and forth everyday to correct for changes in the market? No that’s silly. Should people go into debt because they don’t have the cash to pay the taxes of a baseball card they happen to own that is suddenly worth millions? Also silly.

      For that same reason, using unrealized gains as security is dangerous, just like the subprime loans market was!

      • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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        7 hours ago

        There’s a precise moment in time you take a loan. Use that moment in time to calculate worth; tax.

        • Mcdolan@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          Yeah owning a baseball card worth money sure whatever, if you pawn that card sorry, pay taxes. You use that card a to secure a loan with lower interest rates than you’d get without then sorry, you are realizing gains whether or not you want to admit it. This goes along one of the lawsuits against Trump. He lied to get favorable interest rates by overvaluing his assets to get better interest rates. If that’s against the law why the fuck is that not counted as a “gain” to use assets to secure favorable interest rates?

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        We’re talking about the stock market. And it would be quarterly or annual. Please stop exaggerating.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        There’s a very good reason they should be taxed; half a dozen people are richer than god, and basically never pay any real amount of tax.

        • SirDerpy@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          This would effectively lock out every small investor from the stock market due to the liability of both success and failure.

          • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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            I mean the stock market is literally gambling, so the risk of success and failure is already there. The proposal is whether or not we should allow people to use unrealized gains to secure loans without having to pay taxes on said gains at the point of taking the loan. This would only occur if you’re worth more than 100 million. You can afford to pay that tax.

            • SirDerpy@lemmy.world
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              I mean the stock market is literally gambling

              I’ve a better record of success than the most successful poker players. Is it ten years of good luck or the consequences of effort and skill?

              The proposal is whether or not we should allow people to use unrealized gains to secure loans without having to pay taxes on said gains at the point of taking the loan.

              Thus locking out all non-corporate investors from margin, prerequisite to options, prerequisite to risk mitigation and gains enhancement. The average investor looses the freedom to do much more than DCA a fund.

              This would only occur if you’re worth more than 100 million.

              1. It’ll never be passed in such a way. Legislation always favors the corporate and wealthy as they’re the ones that write it. It’s most perverse in finance and investment. There’s been nothing favoring human investors since the breakup of Ma Bell.

              2. It’s totally inadequate to save the republic from the nearly-unmitigated, algorithmically-optimized capitalism that exists today. The biggest fish, corporations, would simply get bigger by eating their biggest threat: humans with a lot of resources, but not the most affluent.

              The stock market is a tool. It’s not the cause.

              TL;DR:

              The neolib’s proposal is crap.

              This isn’t:

              1. legislate away most of corporate personhood

              2. restore the Glass-Steagall Act

              3. repeal the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act

              • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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                4 hours ago

                In no part of your response did you make any sense or a rational point, demonstrating a clear lack of understanding and a wanton disregard for good-faith arguing. Troll gonna troll I guess.

          • Goodie@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            How so?

            “Oh no, I made money, better put a small percentage of my gains away for tax season, just like I do with all of my income, because I’m American and lack a good PAYE system”.

              • Goodie@lemmy.world
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                18 hours ago

                Someone here has made a false assumption. In fact, I’m pretty sure we both have made several. The question is who has made a fatal false assumption? Let’s go.

                My root comment, at the top of all of this, was my idea that perhaps we should consider gains “realized” when they are sold OR used as a collateral in a loan.

                Your assertion is that it would wipe out small investors.

                I would question how many small investors are using their small investments as collateral in a loan?

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            17 hours ago

            No it wouldn’t. The proposal out there right now has a floor of something like a million dollars. Most of us will never need to worry about that.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        “Yes*”

        *As with all rules, it can vary by country. As I understand it, the US tends to double tax dividends, which is a rabbit hole of why the US market chases valuation so hard

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Dividends paid out to taxable accounts are taxed.

        Dividends that pay into non-taxable accounts can accumulate until they are withdrawn.

        So, for instance, if you own $100 of Exxon in a regular brokerage account and $100 in an IRA, the $5 dividend you get from the first account is taxable but the $5 from the second is not.

        This gets us to the idea of Trusts, Hedge Funds, and other tax-deferred vehicles. If you give $100 to a Hedge fund and it buys a stock in the fund that pays dividends, it never pays you the dividend on the stock so you never have to realize the dividend gain. You simply own “$100 worth of Citadel Investments” which becomes “$105 worth of Citadel Investments” when the dividend arrives.

        • deo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          18 hours ago

          I think dividends in a tax-exempt accounts, like a traditional IRA, are only not taxed if you reinvest the dividend or just leave it in your brokerage account. If you move money from your IRA account to, say, your checking account, that’s when you pay taxes (and there are generally fees for moving money out of tax exempt accounts without meeting certain conditions, like being of retirement age).

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            I think dividends in a tax-exempt accounts, like a traditional IRA, are only not taxed if you reinvest the dividend or just leave it in your brokerage account.

            Right. Although, with a ROTH IRA, you pay taxes before you put the money in. Then you earn tax free even after you take it out. That makes it the preferable vehicle for long-term savings (you should expect your initial investment to double every 10 years, assuming a 7% ROI which is fairly modest - so over 30-40 years you’re saving 8x on the eventual withdrawal).

            But this isn’t just limited to IRAs. Using investment funds, you can pull the same trick. Buy the fund, then allow the broker to shuffle the investments within the fund as they please. You only “earn” the money when you exit the fund, in the same way you only “earn” your retirement when you withdraw from your IRA.

            Savings accounts and trusts can then be structured to be inheritable tax-free, with your heirs having access to withdraw from the fund without ever actually owning the money (and thus needing to pay taxes on the inheritance). And to make it even more squirrelly, you can borrow against these funds, which allows you to make large purchases without ever actually spending any money. This maneuver, plus a cagey use of declared loses, means you can avoid paying any tax on any investment income virtually indefinitely.

            • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
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              37 minutes ago

              There is a big maybe on whether Roth is better than traditional IRA/401k.

              My kids are at the age where they are making those bets now. So I made a hugely complicated forecasting tool to forecast which would be better.

              I think it really comes down to your view on future tax rates.

              Your mileage may vary.

            • lunatic_lobster@lemmy.world
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              2 hours ago

              I largely agree with all the points made here however I think the overall message is a bit misleading. I would disagree that Roth investments are the preferred for long term investments. You aren’t accounting for the opportunity cost of the taxes paid in the initial investment year. Those taxes, while small compared to what you will withdraw tax free are also losing out on 8x-ing themselves (as you would have invested that amount in a traditional tax advantaged account).

              What this means is Roth is the preferable savings method if you are in a lower marginal tax rate than you expect to be in retirement. However traditional is better if you are in a higher marginal rate than you expect to be in retirement. If the marginal tax rate was the same when you invest and retire then the difference between Roth and traditional would be nil.

            • deo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 hours ago

              Thanks for expanding on the finer points! With inheritance, they also reset the cost-basis when the owner dies, which means that all the capital gains accumulated over the time that the deceased had ownership is never taxed. Like, if I bought stock for $10, die when it’s worth $100, my sister inherits it, and then sells it for $110 a while later, she only pays capital gains on $10 – not $100.

              I don’t think people fully realize how dramatically our tax code rewards capital, at the expense of labor, not just in the broad-strokes (like the tax rate for capital gains vs the rates for income tax brakets) but also in these little details that are easy to overlook. So thanks for the discussion!

        • Wwwbdd@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          Not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but if I pull a dividend I don’t pay tax initially, but when I do my income taxes it’s part of my income and I’d have to pay tax on it then

          • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            20 hours ago

            Careful with that. If you’re not making estimated tax payments on your dividends (or other capital gains) every quarter or increasing your withholdings from wages to compensate, and you owe too much at the end of the year, you can get hit with penalties and interest.

            For most people the quarterly dividends in their brokerage aren’t enough to trigger that, but as your savings grows and quarterly dividends become significant they might.

          • Goodie@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            Where I’m from, we don’t do that. All dividends come with an “imputation credit,” which basically says “this money’s already been taxed.”

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        15 hours ago

        Homes are taxed based on assessed value. They are already a form of taxing unrealized gains.

        Most of the population either has:

        1. no unrealized gains
        2. gains in a retirement account that we can’t borrow against
        3. gains in real estate that are taxed, but can be borrowed against
        4. a combo of 2 and 3

        I think it’s fair to ask that the rich play by the same rules. You can either borrow against your gains and pay taxes on them, or not pay taxes and not be able to borrow against them.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Depends on the exact implementation, but sure, you could happily write a version where an initial home loan isn’t hit, and only “top up” loans against the INCREASED value of your home is targeted.

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Or doing so, it counts the loan as income and is taxed accordingly. But seriously, the main aim itself can also be taxed. A house is…

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        You’d have to put some controls in there for that solution to work. Hitting new homeowners with an immediate tax on “earning” $1,000,000 to pay for their house seems a bit cruel.

        • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          The unrealized gains is for 100 millionaires or more. I don’t think there is anyone with 100million in unrealized home value.

          • Goodie@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            I was talking for a hypothetical world where that law isn’t a thing and simply paying capital gains in “realized” gains is.

            Nut hey, yeah, sure, 100mil works too.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      How are you going to enforce that? The Bank can cite whatever they want for giving the loan.

      If we just tax them then it’s easily enforceable and it’s done.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        It can just be flipped on it’s head;

        How are you going to enforce taxing on value, the person can just cite whatever value they want for the asset.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          No they actually can’t. In stocks the price is publicly listed by a third party. In real estate an assessor gets involved. For commodities like cars they have to be unique or nearly so before there isn’t a third party listing it’s value.

          For edge cases, especially large real estate, we could always make a second law, one that says the government can buy your building at the value you gave the IRS if it’s significantly below market rate on dollars per square foot for it’s type (office, industrial, residential, etc), or that it’s represented as a higher value in investment reports or bank loans. We’ll frame it as a bail out, helping them offload toxic assets. Then the government sells the building on the open market. That way when someone like Trump decides his buildings are suddenly worth less than all of the surrounding buildings we can keep him from going bankrupt again.

    • C126@sh.itjust.works
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      20 hours ago

      Seems more reasonable than taxing unrealized gains, although I’d prefer if the debate was on how to cut absurd amount of spending rather than trying to find new tax streams.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        I’d rather we went back to taxing the rich properly and stopped having crumbling infrastructure.

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    18 hours ago

    What’s crazy is to calculate the average US income the census folks of the US government exclude billionaires because it would skew reality so much that people would call bullshit on the average with billionaires in the mix.

    so they get to be excluded from the “average wage per family” calculations made and distributed by the government.

    • Aezora@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      I think you’re conflating average and mean. When it comes to income average is typically median, which does include billionaires but wouldn’t skew the data due to their inclusion.

      • Animated_beans@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        Average and mean are the same thing (sum of everything divided by total number of things). Median is the middle number.

        • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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          5 hours ago

          No, that’s just the arithmetic mean. There a other often more appropriate means that can be used. Arithmetic mean is just the one most commonly taught.

        • howrar@lemmy.ca
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          16 hours ago

          Colloquially, average is the mean. Mathematically, average can be either mean, median, or mode.

    • sketelon@eviltoast.org
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      18 hours ago

      I’ve never heard that, would be wild if that’s truly how they do it, I wonder what the average would be if they included the billionaire family’s.

  • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    I think the real solution is not to lend on fake money. Tax or no tax, it wasn’t taxes that caused the market crash in 2008.

  • OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    I wouldn’t be a huge fan of taxing unrealized gains if we hadn’t been cutting taxes for the rich for 50 years. How else are we ever going to recover from that? These guys COULD have done the right thing and supported sensible taxation policies, but they didn’t, so fuck 'em. At this point it’s either this or the guillotine.