Beyond that, every single transaction involves an exchange of things that are owned, so it’s not true that transaction taxes have nothing to do with ownership, or that the value of owned things isn’t ultimately being taxed.
It’s an indefensible position being staked out to justify the desired conclusion that wealth taxes are somehow beyond the pale.
See what I’m doing is picking apart your rebuttal. First of all, I said that taxes are generally transactional, not always transactional, so providing a counterexample doesn’t disprove anything. And since my argument is that a wealth tax would be bad or unwelcome, responding with “here’s another tax that’s not transactional that’s also bad” doesn’t really refute that.
Banzai
2755
No, you said one is a tax and the other isn’t and then you said that taxes are based on transactions. What you are doing now is called a rear guard action, or possible even moving goalposts.
Here’s austin’s tax revenue breakdown for last year - guess which one bring in the most money? How can someone pay a fee on what they own? Well, here it is Andy. Next argument?
| Property |
53.35 cents per $100 of taxable value |
| Sales |
1% of gross taxable sales |
| Hotel/Motel Occupancy |
11% of room rate |
| Motor Vehicle Rental |
5% of gross rental receipts |
| Mixed Drink |
The State of Texas assesses a 6.7% gross receipts tax and an 8.25% sales tax on mixed beverages. The City receives 10.7143% of total mixed beverage tax receipts collected in Austin. |
| Bingo |
The State of Texas assesses a 5% prize fee on bingo winnings in excess of $5. The City receives 25% of the fee collected on a prize awarded at a bingo game conducted in Austin. |
That seems a bit of a nonsensical rebuttal. I think there’s a clear difference between taxes that one must pay just because they have some wealth (property taxes) and taxes people must pay that are more transactional in nature (income taxes, sales taxes, etc).
We can delve into the psychology of why some are more palatable than others, because devising taxation schemes that don’t outrage the public is as much art as science, but at the end of the day transactional taxes are pretty clearly distinct in the minds of most people from things like wheel taxes or property taxes that just have to be paid every year to maintain the status quo.
I don’t agree. Why should my wealth be taxed just because I decided to swap some of it for something else of equal value? My wealth hasn’t changed at all!
The thing that’s missing is why is one good and one bad? The answer isn’t ‘ownership’, because ownership is implicated in both.
Banzai
2758
Andy hasn’t yet said why a wealth tax would be bad. I know why it would be unwelcome, cause for some people, all taxes are unwelcome cause they earned that money by god and nobody and nothing helped them to do so and they don’t owe anybody anything. Something of that nature.
So I’m asking again, why is a wealth tax bad? You can use big words, small words, whatever words you want to, but there must be some reason why a wealth tax is bad in order to claim that a wealth tax is bad. Please state it.
I don’t mind figuring out a way to make the wealth tax only apply to financial instrument valuations.
People who earn money pay taxes on it when it is earned. They expect to pay those taxes once, at the time the money is earned, not on an ongoing basis. People also expect to be able to own private property, without having to make ongoing payments to the government for the right to keep things that they own.
I’ve already made these arguments in multiple different ways; if you don’t understand the concept of private property, I’m not sure that asking “But why is a wealth tax bad?” will contribute anything to the discussion.
The answer will be another dodge. The tax you pay for a transaction comes from your wealth; it’s something you own, being taken from you. So the reason that a wealth tax is allegedly bad and a transaction tax is allegedly not bad can’t have anything to do with ownership.
Timex
2762
But Texas has no income taxes, right? I seem to recall that you have higher property and sales taxes as a result.
Here’s in PA, property taxes mainly fund schools, and we pay income taxes that fund other stuff.
Timex
2763
I believe that, to me, I kind of don’t like the idea that you can’t actually own property without continually paying taxes on it forever.
With something like income taxes, I could pay taxes on that income, and even with a very high tax rate, at least after I pay it, whatever is left is actually mine. I could do whatever I want with it, and know how much I had. I could just sit on it and do nothing with it, and ignoring inflation, it would stay the same.
The idea of paying taxes on the income, and then also paying taxes on whatever my share of that income is, forever, bugs me.
I’d rather we just make the income tax system more progressive, and remove loopholes that the ultra rich use to avoid paying their share.
First off, the word should is a red flag in any taxation discussion. There’s lots of emotional arguments and people feeling incensed, so let me state for the record that I’m not taking a stance for or against wealth taxes here. Just pointing out that your line of thinking seemed very contrived and misses the obvious. A wealth tax is one that a person cannot avoiding paying, or else the government seizes some property. A transactional tax is avoidable (or at least deferable) because one can avoid buying a new car or selling stocks or similar. I don’t think that makes one kind of tax inherently better or worse than the other, but it is a clear distinction that matters for the psychology of why some people get upset about certain taxes.
As I said, I’m not taking a stance on that one way or another. I disagree with people who say that all wealth taxes are bad, or all taxes are bad, or any such nonsense. But I learned a long time ago not to argue with some forms of crazy. You on the other hand I generally respect, so I thought I should point out that your argument seemed way out of left field.
You’d know the answer if you unblocked me.
Again, the tax on a transaction takes place when the money is exchanged, during an active transaction. My company gives me $100, and the government says “I’ll take $10 of that, thanks” at the time the exchange occurs (conceptually at least). I’m still getting $90 out of the deal, so I’m happy.
A wealth tax means that I have $90 in my home, and every year the government comes by (again, conceptually) and says, “Oh, you still have that $90? I’ll take $9 of that, thanks again.”
If you can’t grasp that conceptual difference, then there’s nowhere else this can go. Either you’re intentionally ignoring the idea of people wanting to keep things they own, or you think that your idea of “but people shouldn’t want to have things” should supercede people’s natural inclination towards owning things.
Houngan
2766
Lemme be a bit of a Devil’s Advocate here, because I simultaneously appreciate why taxes are necessary but also appreciate why the underlying “justification” for taxes is more nebulous.
Transactional, property, and income taxes have an underlying justification of “you are doing this in the middle of a society that is providing you the opportunity to have or earn or transact this wealth because of the infrastructure taxes provide.”
Wealth taxes feel different, because of “You are being taxed for having this thing that theoretically needs no upkeep from your fellow women and men in society.”
To be clear, I am NOT arguing that point, just laying out what I see as the different ways to approach the idea. A wealth tax is not immediately justifiable at the exact moment it’s levied, but that wealth still exists inside a broader social construct that may or may not have been starved of funding due to the difference in taxation on wealth or unrealized gains. The rubbing point is whether it is valid to extend taxation out of the immediate benefit (I bought this thing that lives in this store that traveled on these roads with a person that was educated by this society etc. etc.) to the broader benefit looking forward for the entire society. There’s certainly a case for it.
Weird how this thread got really fucking stupid all of a sudden. Couldn’t have seen that one coming.
I think within the context of this topic, no one is really arguing that your ninety dollars of wealth should be taxed over and over. A wealth tax shouldn’t just be applied across the board, and I don’t think anyone here would argue that it should. A wealth tax should specifically be used to extract wealth from people who have such insane amounts of wealth that it’s self-propagating. This should be done because putting that wealth into programs that benefit society is morally preferable to letting it sit there so some billionaires can have a dick-measuring contest.
Personally, if I’m opposed to someone coming into my house and taking 10% of my wealth every year (even if it’s only $90), I don’t suddenly agree with it just because the target is someone else.
But I don’t understand what wealth you think is just “sitting there.” If someone has $10 billion in company stock, that just means that they have shares that are worth that amount on paper. They don’t actually have $10 billion dollars sitting in a shoebox or something. If they wanted to sell those shares, the money to buy those shares would have to come from someone else (millions of someones) around the world.
This is well said. I think the idea that wealth exists without societal support preserving it is, well, absurd, but I know you’re not defending that idea, just articulating it.
I don’t think most people find transaction taxes deferrable, because they have to buy food and clothing and pay for transportation and so on. These things are highly regressive and largely mandatory and the tax rates applied are generally much higher than any proposed wealth tax rate.
Generally, what I’m hearing is that if you’re doing nothing but sitting on your hoard, taking any of your wealth in taxes is bad; but if you’re engaging in commerce, taking some of your wealth is good; and that the reason is one is a tax on wealth and the other is not. But this is manifestly not true. You pay your gas taxes out of your wealth. You pay sales taxes out of your wealth. For many people, your income taxes come from your wealth, because your income is the only wealth you have.
The feeling is mutual and I appreciate the pushback.
Houngan
2772
Exactly, and thank you for reading it as such. Hard to lay out one-side/other-side discussions without someone latching on and going ham on you.
