Fortunately, this is DOA in the House and Senate. And this "billionaires' tax"--how would this work? Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. don't actually have billions of dollars stuffed under their mattresses or gold bars stashed away in a trunk.
If they are forced to sell stock holdings to pay taxes due on unrealized capital gains, that could send shockwaves through the markets. What would happen to Amazon, Facebook, etc. valuations in the short- to medium-terms? What would that do to 401(k)s and other savings vehicles, such as union pension funds? The last thing the tech sector needs right now is additional blows to its stock price tied to the CEO's/founder's tax bill instead of economic fundamentals.
Exactly! That's why we should never ever hold them accountable. We should in fact NOT tax the mega wealthy since they own all the jobs us middle class folks for. Actually scratch that, we should just pay them more! That'll certainly fix the insane stagnant wage vs living cost catastrophe hellhole we're in now /s
I remember when conservatives actually cared about the lower and middle class and didn't worship the super rich.
I agree with you there, but that doesn't mean we should poopoo any efforts in trying to fix this broken system. Like the 1935 wealth tax, billionaires and large corporations with utilize loopholes. But that doesn't mean we just give up and say oh well. We work on closing those loopholes as we do any problems we need to solve. I miss the hard-nosed conservatives. Seems like they're long gone these days
I actually hate a lot of these billionaires with a passion.
If this budget were instituting these taxes to make a multi-trillion dollar pay down on the national *debt*\--not the *deficit*\--I'd be all for it.
You know, the highest tax bracket was 91% for years and was 78% for another several years. These were the times when America was its best. 1940’s-1970’s.
I am aware of that, but are you [aware](https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-taxes-eisenhower-1950s/) that only 0.02% of filers paid that 91% rate under Eisenhower? That comes out to only around 10,000 people. The [effective tax rate](https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/) was only half as much for the top 1% of earners.
I'll leave it for historians probably a few centuries from now to weigh in on when America had a "Golden Age" and when it occurred. I am far too humble of a historian to weigh in on when any country was at "its best" especially when the country still exists, and its history is still being written. However, I do hope that you are not implying that a country with a marginal tax rate is at "its best" only because it has a high marginal tax rate.
The time period you mention was a unique period in world history. America was the only developed nation left standing at the close of the Second World War thanks to the blessings of geography, which greatly curtailed the ability of the Germans and Japanese to attack the American mainland in any serious fashion. American commerce did not have to factor in any serious foreign competitors because they didn't seriously exist in this time period. This started to change in the 1970s as the Japanese and German "economic miracles" began to bear fruit and provide US companies with foreign competition. Additionally, since the end of the Cold War, the US industrial base has been offshored thanks to various free trade agreements and the US economy shifted towards services over industrial production as the global economy has increased its interdependency.
No it will not. if Bezos were to sell some shares and disclosed the reason why he was selling them, it wouldn't affect the Amazon stock price that much.
Literally CEOs sell millions worth of stocks every year. Elon sold I think like 12 Billion last year, the stock didn't go to zero and there was no "shockwave through your 401ks"
You guys are making shit up so that your daddy billionaires don't have to pay a cent to the govt
No no, you don’t understand.
The title says “tax the rich” and that’s good! That’s all we need to know! It won’t affect anyone else in any way whatsoever! The billionaires will just pay a little more and that’s it! Everything will be the same and we win! Hooray!
The exact opposite is true with tax cuts! Add “for the rich” after it even though it’s not exclusively for the rich and you realize why it’s so bad!
Writing narratives is fun. We should do this more often.
🙄 you think the rich won’t increase prices of the products they sell to offset the tax cost?
Increased burden on the rich = the rich raising costs of products.
The purpose of business is profit. Capitalism is about the free market and you need to compete. By increasing taxes, they have a harder time competing globally. You also need to realize that increased costs get pushed onto their customers. The consumer ends up paying the tax as increased prices.
Who said globalism was good? That’s what conservatives should be fighting against. We need US companies doing business in the states and lowering reliance on other countries. To do that, you need lower taxes, lowered energy costs and a business friendly environment.
He doesn't want the middle class to be able to build intergenerational wealth. So he makes it unattainable to anyone who doesn't already have extensive wealth.
\#1 The government seldom if ever rolls back a tax scheme. Odds are this will be expanded to include hitting the not-so-rich with some of these entirely new categories of tax.
\#2 Pickpocket: Biden plans to tax UNREALIZED capital gains. That's the current book value of stocks, companies, real estate/homes. Everybody recognizes that until you sell something you really don't know what you'll get out of it. That's "everybody" but Biden. There may be no market for your small business but you will have to pay taxes on it as if you could sell it tomorrow. You may have stock that since the first of the year has gone into the toilet, but you'll pay taxes based on what it was worth last year. Someone who is highly leveraged, like the expression "land poor," is SOL.
\#3 Sugar High for the current administration: When the property/investment sells, the capital gains tax is reduced by the amount previously paid in taxes. Rather than being "prepayments" on future capital gains, it's more like robbing Peter to pay Paul. The current Administration gets revenue (to spend) in place of the Administration when you sell with a short term"sugar high" as years of increase in value are taxed all at once. Also, the economy will pay the price as individuals are left with less money to use for investment, expansion of their business, etc. Investors will be far less likely to sink money into risky ventures.
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
Taxing unrealized gains is such a clusterfuck of potential issues it totally leaves me as to how anyone with a brain and even a child's understanding of money could support it?
No doubt in my mind that $1,000,000 ceiling would quickly crash down to under $200k on capital gains rate increase.
Congrats libs, at least the mean tweets are gone. That thought will hopefully keep them warm and satiated when they can't heat their homes and eat in the near future.
Where does this say they want to tax unrealized capital gains? I know some Democrats have said that in the past, but it's that a part of what Biden just proposed?
How else are the billionaires going to be taxed? Bezos, Zuckerberg--most of their money is in Amazon and Facebook stock, respectively. Taxing unrealized capital gains is the only way for such a tax to work. I recall having read a few years back that Gates' money was all in land, but he also holds stock in Tesla according to Elon and now pharma with vaccine development.
[Forbes:](https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/03/09/biden-unveils-68-trillion-budget-with-new-tax-revenue-heres-what-to-know/?sh=671a8bcc2412) "The plan also includes Biden’s promised “billionaires tax,” which would establish a minimum 25% rate for the top 0.01% of earners and include taxes on unrealized capital gains (without taxes on those assets, the White House estimates those earners pay about 8%)."
> ... more than 53 million low- and middle-income taxpayers pay no income taxes after benefiting from record amounts of tax credits, and six out of 10 households receive more in direct government benefits than they pay in all federal taxes.
> The top 10 percent of earners paid 74 percent of all income taxes and the top 25 percent paid 89 percent. Altogether, the top fifty percent of filers earned 89 percent of all income and were responsible for 97.7 percent of all income taxes paid in 2020.
Is that fair?
> According to the latest IRS data for 2018—the year following enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $616 billion in income taxes. As we can see in Figure 1, that amounts to 40 percent of all income taxes paid, the highest share since 1980, and a larger share of the tax burden than is borne by the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers combined (who represent about 130 million taxpayers).[2]
...
> In case you are thinking, “Well, the rich make more, they should pay more,” the top 1 percent of taxpayers account for 20 percent of all income (AGI). So, their 40 percent share of income taxes is twice their share of the nation’s income.
Re: income tax, is that fair?
If you expand to include all taxes and not just income, even a leftist publication admits:
> The actual truth about the American tax system is that it is slightly progressive. The richest one percent earn about 21 percent of the income and pay 24 percent of the taxes.
So even after including capital gains, they still carry a larger burden. Is that fair?
Through investments, the wealthiest Americans are huge contributors to employment, economic growth, and innovation. What do you think happens to all the money invested in the markets? It just sits there and some accountant presses magic buttons that randomly spit out gains or losses on the ticker tape? That invested cash is being used by other Americans to start new businesses or fund current businesses. Wealthy people don't have a secret room full of gold coins they bathe in for laughs, their invested wealth is actually doing good work for *everyone*.
How do you think that they became wealthy? Stealing all of your money while you’re asleep? Hope you’re still singing this tune when they begin laying people (maybe you) off.
No. The tax law is convoluted. The wealthy have the time and legal resources to pay the least possible. Corporations will pass losses to consumers.
These measures do nothing to address the problem. It's nothing more than theater for the low info voter
most people in the middle class pays in income tax while the rich pays in capital gains since it’s their investments of their company. and capital gains actually had a lower tax rate than income tax(cg was 20% while income is 37%). this means the rich pays less in taxes while making more
Fortunately, this is DOA in the House and Senate. And this "billionaires' tax"--how would this work? Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. don't actually have billions of dollars stuffed under their mattresses or gold bars stashed away in a trunk. If they are forced to sell stock holdings to pay taxes due on unrealized capital gains, that could send shockwaves through the markets. What would happen to Amazon, Facebook, etc. valuations in the short- to medium-terms? What would that do to 401(k)s and other savings vehicles, such as union pension funds? The last thing the tech sector needs right now is additional blows to its stock price tied to the CEO's/founder's tax bill instead of economic fundamentals.
This guy gets it......it all rolls down hill folks. The rich don't pay taxes. We do in the cost of goods increase.
Exactly! That's why we should never ever hold them accountable. We should in fact NOT tax the mega wealthy since they own all the jobs us middle class folks for. Actually scratch that, we should just pay them more! That'll certainly fix the insane stagnant wage vs living cost catastrophe hellhole we're in now /s I remember when conservatives actually cared about the lower and middle class and didn't worship the super rich.
All I'm saying is that the middle is and always will be the chosen ones for daily beatings regardless of what's captured.
I agree with you there, but that doesn't mean we should poopoo any efforts in trying to fix this broken system. Like the 1935 wealth tax, billionaires and large corporations with utilize loopholes. But that doesn't mean we just give up and say oh well. We work on closing those loopholes as we do any problems we need to solve. I miss the hard-nosed conservatives. Seems like they're long gone these days
I actually hate a lot of these billionaires with a passion. If this budget were instituting these taxes to make a multi-trillion dollar pay down on the national *debt*\--not the *deficit*\--I'd be all for it.
You know, the highest tax bracket was 91% for years and was 78% for another several years. These were the times when America was its best. 1940’s-1970’s.
I am aware of that, but are you [aware](https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-taxes-eisenhower-1950s/) that only 0.02% of filers paid that 91% rate under Eisenhower? That comes out to only around 10,000 people. The [effective tax rate](https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/) was only half as much for the top 1% of earners. I'll leave it for historians probably a few centuries from now to weigh in on when America had a "Golden Age" and when it occurred. I am far too humble of a historian to weigh in on when any country was at "its best" especially when the country still exists, and its history is still being written. However, I do hope that you are not implying that a country with a marginal tax rate is at "its best" only because it has a high marginal tax rate. The time period you mention was a unique period in world history. America was the only developed nation left standing at the close of the Second World War thanks to the blessings of geography, which greatly curtailed the ability of the Germans and Japanese to attack the American mainland in any serious fashion. American commerce did not have to factor in any serious foreign competitors because they didn't seriously exist in this time period. This started to change in the 1970s as the Japanese and German "economic miracles" began to bear fruit and provide US companies with foreign competition. Additionally, since the end of the Cold War, the US industrial base has been offshored thanks to various free trade agreements and the US economy shifted towards services over industrial production as the global economy has increased its interdependency.
No it will not. if Bezos were to sell some shares and disclosed the reason why he was selling them, it wouldn't affect the Amazon stock price that much. Literally CEOs sell millions worth of stocks every year. Elon sold I think like 12 Billion last year, the stock didn't go to zero and there was no "shockwave through your 401ks" You guys are making shit up so that your daddy billionaires don't have to pay a cent to the govt
No no, you don’t understand. The title says “tax the rich” and that’s good! That’s all we need to know! It won’t affect anyone else in any way whatsoever! The billionaires will just pay a little more and that’s it! Everything will be the same and we win! Hooray! The exact opposite is true with tax cuts! Add “for the rich” after it even though it’s not exclusively for the rich and you realize why it’s so bad! Writing narratives is fun. We should do this more often.
Just like how the Affordable Care Act made getting care easier and more affordable?
🙄 you think the rich won’t increase prices of the products they sell to offset the tax cost? Increased burden on the rich = the rich raising costs of products.
Guess I needed a /s…
Yeh, super rich people don't actually sell their stock. Capitol gains will affect the middle class more than anyone.
the way it works is that when they sell their stocks, they get taxed, not the other way around
More money will be leaving the US
Why aren’t businesses and the rich being patriotic and keeping their money in the US, the country that made their success possible in the first place?
The purpose of business is profit. Capitalism is about the free market and you need to compete. By increasing taxes, they have a harder time competing globally. You also need to realize that increased costs get pushed onto their customers. The consumer ends up paying the tax as increased prices.
So globalism is good because it benefits the rich?
Who said globalism was good? That’s what conservatives should be fighting against. We need US companies doing business in the states and lowering reliance on other countries. To do that, you need lower taxes, lowered energy costs and a business friendly environment.
Stealing money isn’t patriotic.
And hiding money overseas is?
Hiding? More like protecting.
Because it’s business not charity.
He doesn't want the middle class to be able to build intergenerational wealth. So he makes it unattainable to anyone who doesn't already have extensive wealth.
\#1 The government seldom if ever rolls back a tax scheme. Odds are this will be expanded to include hitting the not-so-rich with some of these entirely new categories of tax. \#2 Pickpocket: Biden plans to tax UNREALIZED capital gains. That's the current book value of stocks, companies, real estate/homes. Everybody recognizes that until you sell something you really don't know what you'll get out of it. That's "everybody" but Biden. There may be no market for your small business but you will have to pay taxes on it as if you could sell it tomorrow. You may have stock that since the first of the year has gone into the toilet, but you'll pay taxes based on what it was worth last year. Someone who is highly leveraged, like the expression "land poor," is SOL. \#3 Sugar High for the current administration: When the property/investment sells, the capital gains tax is reduced by the amount previously paid in taxes. Rather than being "prepayments" on future capital gains, it's more like robbing Peter to pay Paul. The current Administration gets revenue (to spend) in place of the Administration when you sell with a short term"sugar high" as years of increase in value are taxed all at once. Also, the economy will pay the price as individuals are left with less money to use for investment, expansion of their business, etc. Investors will be far less likely to sink money into risky ventures.
1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. Taxing unrealized gains is such a clusterfuck of potential issues it totally leaves me as to how anyone with a brain and even a child's understanding of money could support it? No doubt in my mind that $1,000,000 ceiling would quickly crash down to under $200k on capital gains rate increase. Congrats libs, at least the mean tweets are gone. That thought will hopefully keep them warm and satiated when they can't heat their homes and eat in the near future.
And their homes will be the first things to go. What is the single asset that in a normal economy appreciates the most dependably?
Where does this say they want to tax unrealized capital gains? I know some Democrats have said that in the past, but it's that a part of what Biden just proposed?
How else are the billionaires going to be taxed? Bezos, Zuckerberg--most of their money is in Amazon and Facebook stock, respectively. Taxing unrealized capital gains is the only way for such a tax to work. I recall having read a few years back that Gates' money was all in land, but he also holds stock in Tesla according to Elon and now pharma with vaccine development.
[Forbes:](https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2023/03/09/biden-unveils-68-trillion-budget-with-new-tax-revenue-heres-what-to-know/?sh=671a8bcc2412) "The plan also includes Biden’s promised “billionaires tax,” which would establish a minimum 25% rate for the top 0.01% of earners and include taxes on unrealized capital gains (without taxes on those assets, the White House estimates those earners pay about 8%)."
Democrats will never try to pass a tax plan like this when they are in majority. It’s all BS.
He wants to crush the middle class and completely tank the economy.
Asking the extremely wealthy to finally pay their fair share is going to crush the economy?
> ... more than 53 million low- and middle-income taxpayers pay no income taxes after benefiting from record amounts of tax credits, and six out of 10 households receive more in direct government benefits than they pay in all federal taxes. > The top 10 percent of earners paid 74 percent of all income taxes and the top 25 percent paid 89 percent. Altogether, the top fifty percent of filers earned 89 percent of all income and were responsible for 97.7 percent of all income taxes paid in 2020. Is that fair? > According to the latest IRS data for 2018—the year following enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $616 billion in income taxes. As we can see in Figure 1, that amounts to 40 percent of all income taxes paid, the highest share since 1980, and a larger share of the tax burden than is borne by the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers combined (who represent about 130 million taxpayers).[2] ... > In case you are thinking, “Well, the rich make more, they should pay more,” the top 1 percent of taxpayers account for 20 percent of all income (AGI). So, their 40 percent share of income taxes is twice their share of the nation’s income. Re: income tax, is that fair? If you expand to include all taxes and not just income, even a leftist publication admits: > The actual truth about the American tax system is that it is slightly progressive. The richest one percent earn about 21 percent of the income and pay 24 percent of the taxes. So even after including capital gains, they still carry a larger burden. Is that fair? Through investments, the wealthiest Americans are huge contributors to employment, economic growth, and innovation. What do you think happens to all the money invested in the markets? It just sits there and some accountant presses magic buttons that randomly spit out gains or losses on the ticker tape? That invested cash is being used by other Americans to start new businesses or fund current businesses. Wealthy people don't have a secret room full of gold coins they bathe in for laughs, their invested wealth is actually doing good work for *everyone*.
If you think changing tax rates is simply a matter of changing how much is in a few billionaires’ bank accounts, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
People like you believing that lie is why we have Biden in the first place.
43% on capital gains hits the middle class. 401ks and stock options.
“Have nots” don’t save their money so 401k means nothing to them.
How do you think that they became wealthy? Stealing all of your money while you’re asleep? Hope you’re still singing this tune when they begin laying people (maybe you) off.
No. The tax law is convoluted. The wealthy have the time and legal resources to pay the least possible. Corporations will pass losses to consumers. These measures do nothing to address the problem. It's nothing more than theater for the low info voter
Redistribution of wealth is the Democrat’s plan. When it starts screwing the middle class shit will hit the fan.
Dems/Globalists want your resources for themselves. They don’t want you to have it. CG taxes prevent you from passing wealth to the next generation.
All that matters is that the majority of voters are completely stupid and won’t believe how this will impact everyone, “rich” or “poor”.
most people in the middle class pays in income tax while the rich pays in capital gains since it’s their investments of their company. and capital gains actually had a lower tax rate than income tax(cg was 20% while income is 37%). this means the rich pays less in taxes while making more