(TikTok screencap)

Person in a locker room looking into the camera with the caption “ mamdani made taylor swift pay taxes in nyc and now the budget is balanced and there's universal childcare and this is why "but taylor donates to food pantries" will never be good enough. billionaires not paying their taxes is WHY working class people are reliant on food pantries, dumb dumb.”
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[–] 11 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Did he figure out a way to tax the billionaires that primarily own assets?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    We desperately need a tax on securities. I don't particularly care about taxing luxury products, because those products are produced by workers, who pay taxes and buy things. But securities are the "means of production".

    Don't tax the dollar value of the security. Don't force them to liquidate their shares before they can pay a tax. Just go ahead and transfer a percentage of their shares of each security to the IRS, who can liquidate it on the open market, slowly over time.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Tbh Just taxing securities backed loans as income would close a big hole

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I don't think that would actually do anything at all. Banks would just loosen their lending requirements, and all those securities-backed loans would just become personal loans to high-net-worth individuals. The investment portfolios of the ultra-rich need to be directly targeted.

    I'd take 1% per year. This tax is only on the obscenely-wealthy. Every natural person can exempt $1 million of their total portfolio. No exemptions for artificial persons. The IRS is limited to liquidating no more than 1% of total traded volume of any issue on any given day: >99% of trades will be market trades, so the IRS shares will have minimal effect on value.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Part of the reason we call some securities liquid, vs not, is that some can't easily be divided.

    The govt can't easily take hold of 1.3% of someone's family mansion. Or a rare painting that they got hold of.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I don't think I've heard a definition of "security" that would refer to either of those examples. Perhaps "registered securities" is closer to my intended meaning?

    I would not intend for this tax to apply to personal assets or the owner's primary residence, but it is not particularly difficult to divide ownership of real property among multiple entities. Applied to investment properties, the government would basically be a lienholder.

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