zlacker

>>southe+(OP)
I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of dollars worth of taxes.

>>andy_p+ex
I feel an exchange tax that included loans would probably be a much better approach. Taxing seated/parked assets, especially on the very wealthy seems like a recipe for disaster. So you have to sell, or leverage the property to pay taxes. What would trying to sell billions in stock at once, or leverage hundreds of thousands of rental properties look like to the larger economy, and what would the effect be? Also, who is going to be able to even buy the stuff, if everyone with enough money/credit is scrambling to make huge tax layouts. Will you be able to deduct the interest on loans taken out to pay these taxes?

It's not like the money is just sitting, liquid in a vault like Scrooge McDuck.

>>tracke+PP
One solution to deciding how much an asset is worth is to let you declare any value you want for it, with the caveat that if someone is willing to pay you more than the declared value, you must sell it to them.

Now obviously things like transaction fees need to be factored in, and timing should matter - you should have the option to increase your stated value if something changes (or even to say "yes, okay, it's really worth X" and keep the item at the higher valuation).

>>alasda+ZO1
That's very open to malicious actors though. Suppose you set a fair market value on your house or car. If I'm evil it may be worth a small loss on my part to 'out-bid' you simply to take that asset away from you by force, perhaps at a very disruptive time.

It also has all the other problems with estimating the true value of an asset.