A sole proprietor landscaper making $45-50K a year in California is paying $675 a year in annual registration fees just to keep his newish pickup truck on the road. Why newish? Because the people he's servicing trust a guy with a nicer work vehicle than a beaten down 30 year old Tacoma.
A $900k developer with the same pickup is also paying $675 a year.
Extrapolate this seemingly trivial example across literally EVERYTHING in life.
We do not have marginal sales tax rates because it is not feasible.
Marginal income tax is feasible, and so it does exist in most places.
Marginal property/wealth tax is somewhere in the middle, given the difficulties in valuing thinly traded assets, and the tremendous effort required to appraise them all the time, over and over.
What's described here affects everyone, and is a reason to something something Gini coefficient.
Someone on $1k/year can't afford for their $50 smartphone to get damaged or stolen; on $10k/year they can't afford for their fridge to break and their food to spoil; most of us are close enough to $100k/year to not need an example; $1M/year I can't imagine, as despite my close (logarithmically) to $100k income, my expenses are closer to $10k but without the stress of low earnings.
LA introduced a mansion sales tax.
Anywhere else?
My main issue with a marginal property tax is that the areas with high property values already have enough taxes generally for the things property tax covers.
Not sure at least in the US how feasible it would be to have a marginal property tax and the revenue go to the state and the Fed (or even the county's general fund in most places).
My guess is there's a 0% chance the marginal property tax could go to the Fed to reduce Federal income tax, and in most states, a low chance it could even go to the state, or even in most counties that it could go to the general fund instead of mostly to the local school district and local fire department (which are usually already funded adequately).
Extrapolate this to literally anyone making less than a developer.
The big issue in my opinion is defining property/wealth (not just land and cars, but also intellectual property, art, etc), and then the feasibility of appraising all of that, and then litigating those appraisals (for the populace as a whole).
Seems like it could get into quite a bit of the country’s resources going to refereeing the game, which at some point takes away from productivity.
Or $50k to book a charter flight and just have my driver take me straight onto the tarmac, thus avoiding the airport entirely
Norway has a wealth tax of up to 1.1% of wealth, with discounts based on different types of wealth and a minimum deduction of ca. $150k. Discounts are based roughly on how liquid assets are. Houses etc. are valued at 25% of market value, so let's say you have a $600k house, the taxable value is $150k, which falls entirely within the minimum deduction, so most people pay very little wealth tax.
Do you mean tax? I think you mean a tax, on owning a car. Nothing promised in life but death and taxes.
If you want them to pay, tax the fuel and consumables like tyres, or put a tax based on how hard is to recycle the car once it hits the scrapper. Bit more complex with EVs I admit, but making someone pay just for keeping car even if they use it once a week is silly.
Yearly fee should be proportional to legalese required to keep it registered (paying wages), not much more.
Though not really for the population as a whole: the majority of people don’t have all that much in the way assets. The proposals that get floated in the US don’t kick in until your wealth is in the tens of millions.
Capital gains taxes are income taxes. Property/wealth taxes are taxes paid based on the “market” price of an asset just for owning it (presumably society provides for its security and environment in which it became valuable and will continue to be valuable).
You don’t need a special mind to be a programmer, you just need to have a willingness to do this work. Which many people don’t.
And sure they are paying double payroll tax, but they also get to deduct all their expenses associated with employment (customer dinners, internet, computer equipment, mileage to customers, etc).
I'm not saying the highly-paid developer is hurting, but the better question is why does it cost $675/year to register a vehicle in CA? Our income tax system is already highly progressive, so why do we have all these other stealth taxes that hurt low incomes the most.
But you're absolutely right - don't gatekeep writing software. It's not that hard and everyone should have access to that realm, even if they don't use it.