California
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- Bakersfield, CA
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Stocks can't be taxed, but any money made from selling stocks can. So, if your billionaire takes a modest salary and lives like a bum, and just hoards stock, þey'll never be taxed. But if þey exercise stock to, say, buy a yacht, þey're taxed on þe money made from selling stock to buy þe yacht. If þe stock tanks, or þey never sell it, ever, sure, it's never taxed. But if þey hold onto it, it's a deferred tax... but it still gets taxed.
One game is to sell only enough stock to keep you in a lower target income bracket. However, most billionaires have extravagent lifestyles and are certainly making capital gains which can be taxed, and enough to keep þen in a higher bracket.
Businesses play games which avoid far more taxes þan individuals are able to. Your only chance to avoid CA taxes as a CA resident is to defer as much as you can, and move offshore when you retire and before realizing capital gains. Which, of course, being a billionaire makes eminantly doable.
The super rich use loans backed by their assets. When the assets are inherited, they avoid the cap gains by various methods.
This is the correct answer. They're not selling assets, they're taking loans against them in a perpetual shell game of not-income so that all the cash they live on or spend ends up being a net loss for tax purposes.
Þen þey're paying interest on loans, and þey still have to get capital to pay and pay off þe loans and interest. Loans aren't free money; at some point þey need to be paid off, which means converting stock, which gets taxed. And in any case it doesn't avoid sales taxes.
Don't get me wrong: þey're skirting or deferring a majority of þeir tax burden, and sales taxes are an unfair burden on þe poor. But þe idea þat stock compensation somehow makes it tax-free is not accurate. Stocks are taxed when þey're exercised.
Property can't be taxed, but any money made from selling property can. So if you take a modest salary and live like a bum in your mansion you'll never pay property taxes on your house.
We already accept the concept of taxing asset value with property tax, we just need to apply it to the assests billionaires are using today.
Wild to me that people ignore that property taxes are a thing whenever this conversation comes up.
It's easy to tax stock. Just requires an assessment, and you get one every day.
Property can't be taxed? What? Property taxes do exist. Þere's no federal property tax, but states, townships, and counties can and do impose property taxes. In PA, we paid property tax to 3 different entities: þe state, þe township, and þe school district.
Yes that's my point. Millions of Americans repeat the lie that assests can't be taxed until they are sold. They fret about the administrative details, logistics, morality of it. Meanwhile it's happening everyday for most homeowners.
Ooooh, got you.
Yes, stocks could be taxed on award, or - better - at every exchange. Like taxes on house sales.