October 27, 2021

"The billionaires tax, officially unveiled early Wednesday morning, may have died before the ink was dry on its 107-page text."

"Mr. Manchin, speaking with reporters, said, 'I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people.... It’s time that we all pull together and grow together'.... The proposed tax would almost certainly face court challenges, but given the blockade on more conventional tax rate increases imposed by Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Democrats have few other options for financing their domestic agenda.... If the proposal can be enacted over Mr. Manchin’s concerns, billionaires would be taxed on the unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash, which can grow for years as vast capital stores that can be borrowed off to live virtually income tax free. The tax would be levied on anyone with more than $1 billion in assets or more than $100 million in income for three consecutive years — which applies to about 700 people in the United States..... For people like the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the Tesla founder Elon Musk, that hit would be enormous, since the initial value of their horde of stocks was zero."

From "Ahead of Meeting With White House Team, Manchin Criticizes Billionaire Tax Plan" (NYT).

64 comments:

Joe Smith said...

The stock market would tank thousands of points.

Only a idiot or a democrat (but I repeat myself), thinks this is a good idea.

Take a lesson from the original income tax or the alternate minimum tax.

Each was targeted at 'just' a few tens or hundreds of people.

Each grew like a monster to cover millions.

This scheme is just a way to start small and grow to ensnare everyone with two nickels to rub together.

Real American said...

they have other options. they just don't like them.

PB said...

It's really stupid from an economic standpoint, but serves to virtue-signal and gain the support of the stupid rubes that vote for something like this.

If the ultra rich are underpaying their taxes, wouldn't they already be on the radar of the IRS? All of them are.

It's not about the ultra-rich, it's about everyone else. The rich are merely in the way.

The big thing is the effort to monitor the inflows and outflows of everyone's bank account so as to have the computer generate assessments of unreported income and levy taxes. You'll have to contest the assessment and prove the source and destination of the funds and explain how it's not taxable.

The next big thing is central bank digital currency (CBDC) to examine how everyone is spending their money. If you spend on things that are "unapproved" or not spending on things that are "approved", they'll want to have a talk with you. Amplifying this will be a ban on cash and crypto.

Somewhere along the line, they want to nationalize personal deposit and retirement accounts, so they can easily appropriate funds for taxes they think you owe. Contesting it will take time and in the meanwhile, you'll be out your funds.

Lawyers and tax accountants will grown rich over these things.

Jeff Vader said...

Every tax payer should support this, it will only be paid by billionaires, it says so right in the name and the government never lies so what is the issue?

Ice Nine said...

Yeah, this isn't going to get off the ground. But like good little commies, they will never stop trying. And if they ever succeed, anyone who thinks it will stop at billionaires is deluded. Next, in very short order, millionaires. And then of course, every other earner/saver in the country.

rehajm said...

The family office is fretting about this today- trying to understand how it would work and looking at contingencies for various clients. How and when do they expect accountants to mark to market is a big unknown at the moment…

The stupid liberal policy makers use static scoring for all this garbage- that’s how 3.5 trillion equals zero. This is no different. It will not raise nearly as much as they will claim it will.

The Althouse theme today is people responding to incentives and liberals losing their shit over it…

gilbar said...

Democrats have few other options for financing their domestic agenda....

okay, now i'm confused; i thought that the selling point of their 3.5 Trillion dollar plan,
was that it was going to cost ZERO DOLLARS
But NOW! they're saying that they'll have to FINANCE it??
Hello!! if something costs ZERO DOLLARS, then you Don't have anything to finance!!!
Is there some sort of shenanigans going on??

rhhardin said...

Find out who has the most seed corn and distribute it as food. That'll work.

rhhardin said...

They seem to have already started taxing (i.e. 1099 reporting) original issue discount, formerly in the category de minimis non curat lex. Actually what happened is that the interest return would otherwise also fall into that category too.

Lucien said...

The Democrats seem to be in thrall of the idea that if you call a dog’s tail a leg, then the dog really does have five legs. That’s their approach to gender, and now they say that unrealized gain really is, and always was, income— so billionaires haven’t been paying their fair share. (They also haven’t been paying sales tax for stuff they didn’t buy, or property tax on land they don’t own. (Those Bastards!)).
It also turns out that not treating people based on race is racist, equality under the law is inequitable, and individual professors targeted by mobs and administrators are “punching down” because of a “power dynamic”.

“He’s got a weapon!” pretty much sums up the integrity of the Left.

Krumhorn said...

For sound economic and social policy, nothing beats disincentivizing innovation and wealth creation.

- Krumhorn

Owen said...

“… For people like the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the Tesla founder Elon Musk, that hit would be enormous, since the initial value of their horde of stocks was zero."

“Horde”? Really? I see that the NYT has been hoarding a horde of proofreaders.
As for the merits of this “eat the rich” plan, we all know that the threshold will fall over time. Congress needs all our money. The important thing is to validate the concept of taxing unrealized gains. Because that violates the entire structure of the economy and the idea of property rights. We will be allowed to own the losses and share the gains. It’s only fair!

Jake said...

How much money would it actually generate if enacted and upheld?

stlcdr said...

Are they going to continue taxing that 1 billion every year until it is below 1 billion?

Are they allowed to pay in one dollar bills?

If all of those billions is tied up in Amazon stock, I assume, instead of dollar bills it will be Amazon shares?

I'm sure there's a loophole where Amazon taxes can be paid in trees from the Amazon rainforest...

Summarily, the whole thing demonstrates how evil/ignorant/incompetent our so-called representatives and 'leaders' are.

gspencer said...

"Mr. Manchin, speaking with reporters, said, 'I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people.... It’s time that we all pull together and grow together'..

*****

Agreed. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should have to pay some income tax and be made to feel the cost of HUGE government.

Maynard said...

Having $1Billion in stock value is not the same as having $1Billion in liquid assets. The Marxists are asking to tax non-realized profits. What could go wrong?

Narayanan said...

unrealized capital gains will need a baseline valuations.

what if BILLIONAIRE does a short sale at price X on cut off date?

so no gains or smaller gains.

will that work?

Michael said...

So the Democrats believe they can marshal the experts who can oversee the fluctuating values of massive stock and bond portfolios, real estate holdings, art collections, stock grants, option holdings, livestock, rolling stock, investment autos, planes and boats. For 700 people. Annually. LOL. It has been tried repeatedly in Europe where everything is done perfectly and has been abandoned. Over and over. Way too difficult to monitor. Plus, is it possible any of the hundreds of appraisers needed to execute this plan might have an incentive and tendency to, say, overvalue holdings?

Jim Gust said...

I believe that the wealth tax is unconstitutional under Pollock, the decision that tossed the income tax. There is a decent argument that Pollock was wrongly decided, but it would have to be overturned to have a tax on unrealized capital gains, or a constitutional amendment would be needed. It could be overturned by the Roberts court, but that will take years.

The idea that a tax is more attractive the fewer people have to pay it is repellant. Manchin is right.

Scott Patton said...

"vast capital stores that can be borrowed off to live virtually income tax free."
Those loans have to be paid back somehow, almost certainly with taxed income.
How's that supposed to work?

Yancey Ward said...

This proposal is literally batshit insane. I am hoping it is being proposed precisely because it is dead in the water, but with today's political class, I am no longer certain insane ideas can be ignored.

Temujin said...

Is this the the 'pre-crime' tax we're talking about? The tax on unrealized gains?

We have leaders who think your money belongs to them. Your time belongs to them. Your gains are their gains. And you need to shut up and pay up. They actually believe that your hesitancy to turn over your money makes you suspect. Or...A suspect.

The day any of their taxes are just for one group and don't 'leak' into all groups is the day I become Trans-Temujin.

Achilles said...

Old wealth trying to stop new wealth.

This is specifically aimed at Musk.

Starlink and his new cell phone system are going to eliminate Comcast, AT&T and the other government allied Oligarchs that sit astride our information systems.

boatbuilder said...

It's been noted before, but if it costs "zero" then why do they need to raise taxes on anybody?

Also, since printing new money doesn't seem to have any consequences (sarc) just print up a whole bunch more.

Gospace said...

Taxing unrealized capital gains would collapse real estate, the stock market, and any other appreciating asset.

And to think- they'll be forcing all the people buying Hunter's obviously valuable painting to sell them at fire sale prices in order to have the money to pay the tax on their gain in value....

tim maguire said...

Nice, a government-engineered stock market crash every February.

who-knew said...

Taxing unrealized gains is fundamentally unfair. Nothing says the value of those assets can't go down. I'm sure the founders of AOL and MySpace were rich at one time and now all that stock s worthless. If they didn't sell high they got nada. And like the Alternative Minimum Tax it won't be long before it applies to a lot more that just billionaires. They are after our 401(k)s and this is just the camel's nose under the tent flap.

Paul Zrimsek said...

If it's got stocks in it, it's a hoard.
If it's got Genghis Khan in it, it's a horde.

Layers of fact-checkers and editors!

TreeJoe said...

This is the stupidest freaking tax and will create enormous economic pains + will be quickly expanded to much lower income/wealth thresholds.

It is a tax on paper assets, regardless of their real value. It fundamentally shifts tax from when money becomes liquid (i.e. income or a moveable asset) to when it is sitting in an asset. Regardless of it's value ultimately. That's a ludicrously dangerous theory to be bandied about.

How about I have a job with a commitment to pay me $100k this year and regardless of how much I do get paid, I owe the taxes upfront. And if I don't get paid that, well, i can take that as a tax deduction next year.

Tom T. said...

Notably, borrowing against unrealized assets is not tax-free. The lender will have to pay tax on the interest income it receives.

Sean Gleeson said...

I was about to remark about the glaring error of "their horde [sic] of stocks," but then I clicked through to the article and saw that the sentence has now been edited to remove the word.

Gabriel said...

"For people like the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the Tesla founder Elon Musk, that hit would be enormous, since the initial value of their horde of stocks was zero."

Thinking this through. Nobody, not even billionaires, have the kind of money on hand to pay a percentage of billions. They would have to sell the stock, and sell it at the sort of volume that would lower the price for everyone.

So one of two things would happen: people less rich than them would get to purchase their stock at a discount, or the law would have to be require that the billionaires get a "fair" price", but either way they are forced to sell something they wish to keep.

And so I think the question of "who benefits" is pretty starkly revealed. It's the ten-millionaire and hundred-millionaires, and maybe managers of funds and portfolios.

Tim said...

I am fully aware that this is a stupid policy, that will cause untold harm in the future. But then I remember that 90% of those affected fully supported Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, and I figure it might be worth the long term damage to get some payback on those assholes.

Charlie Currie said...

The Alternative Minimum Tax was targeted at 155 families. Now it affects millions of families. They do not index it to inflation on purpose. The goal is to eventually capture everyone.

Joe Smith said...

This is a perfect opportunity for Republicans to push for a consumption tax or a flat tax.

Everyone has skin in the game.

Zero deductions.

But the Rs are too stupid so it won't happen.

Jersey Fled said...

As I understand it, our government, having run out of current income to tax, now wants to reach into the future and tax income that hasn't even happened yet.

Does that about sum it up.

Howard said...

Yeah if billionaires weren't allowed to rape us, they wouldn't be motivated to steal our intellectual property.

tommyesq said...

If the problem is that billionaires evade taxes by borrowing off of their stock portfolios rather than actually selling shares and realizing capital gains, wouldn't a more logical solution be to address the tax status of this "borrowing?"

tommyesq said...

How about I have a job with a commitment to pay me $100k this year and regardless of how much I do get paid, I owe the taxes upfront. And if I don't get paid that, well, i can take that as a tax deduction next year.

If you think they intend to give you a deduction if you sell a stock below the valuation on which you previously paid taxes, you are out of your mind!

Dan from Madison said...

More than one commenter hit at the real puzzle. If you tax an unrealized gain one year, and then the holding (lets say shares of a company) goes down the following year, do you get a refund? It's a complete nightmare waiting to happen.

They want your 401k gains, plain and simple.

Yancey Ward said...

"vast capital stores that can be borrowed off to live virtually income tax free."

This argument is making the rounds everywhere in the last couple of weeks, and it is a fraudulent one. Everytime I encounter it, I ask the obvious followup question- "Who is it that is lending all this money that doesn't have to be paid back with actual income" When I do, it is always crickets. Even worse, if the loans aren't paid back in any way, they become a retroactive taxing event since the IRS treats it as income at the personal level, and the IRS doesn't give a shit if you are already dead- your estate become liable. Either these people are shockingly stupid and ignorant, or they are liars.

PM said...

I might've warmed to it if we selected donors one at a time, beginning with Tom Steyer.

Bruce Hayden said...

“The Democrats seem to be in thrall of the idea that if you call a dog’s tail a leg, then the dog really does have five legs. That’s their approach to gender, and now they say that unrealized gain really is, and always was, income— so billionaires haven’t been paying their fair share. (They also haven’t been paying sales tax for stuff they didn’t buy, or property tax on land they don’t own. (Those Bastards!)).”

There is a real problem though. Billionaires really aren’t paying much in federal income taxes because they very often have minimum income. Well, minimum in comparison to their wealth. When they want to buy something, they just sell off a tiny bit of stock, pay the tax on it, to fund their purchases, or even just borrow against the stock. And then transfer their stock to a charitable trust at some point, completely evading paying taxes on it. We saw this with Gates and Buffet, and now Bezos and Musk.

Think of Bezos, worth over $100 billion. He lives on a couple $million a year, which is fully taxed. Most of us accumulate much of our wealth after paying taxes on our income first. He is sitting on $100 billion in pretax wealth, that will, probably, never be taxed. After buying a couple big jets, maybe a luxury yacht, and several houses, what else does he need money for? It’s easy to live extravagantly on a couple $million a year, if you already have all the big toys you would ever need. After buying the jets, houses, and yachts you want, just do one-out for one-in, to keep the latest and greatest of each of these. Indeed, realistically, you don’t want excess jets, yachts, and houses just sitting around collecting dust, because they have to be maintained, and that is a pain. It’s just effort and clutter in their lives that they don’t need.

I know attorneys and surgeons who pay more in federal income taxes than Bezos, Warren, or Musk, and can’t come close to funding a single wide-body jet, or even a lowly Gulfstream. That’s because, of course, their income is for their services, and not through unrealized long term capital gains. Yes, unrealized capital gains are, essentially, paper profits, but at the level of these billionaires, they are almost as good as real profits, because they can be readily converted into cash to buy whatever they want, but accumulating tax free until then.

I don’t know the answer to this problem. I will admit that my wealth, at a much, much, lower level, is in unrealized capital gains, from a company my father started a half century ago, and I helped him do an estate freeze for some 40 years ago. So, the idea of taxing unrealized capital gains is, frankly, quite scary to me personally.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

I don't care what harm such a tax would cause in the future, because right now the US really doesn't have a future.

And 90%+ of the people who would be targeted by such a tax are the reason why. So I'm all in favor of it

MountainMan said...

If it takes 107 pages to define then it is bound to fail. That shows just what a stupid idea it is.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Financing daily living expenses by borrowing against future value of your net worth.

Why not? It is what the Feral Gummit does.

Leland said...

For people like the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the Tesla founder Elon Musk, that hit would be enormous, since the initial value of their horde of stocks was zero.

Yep, which will stifle innovation in the future. The generational wealthy that don’t innovate nor generate wealth won’t be taxed and will be incentivized to not create more capital.

Dave64 said...

Not going to happen, the 700 have 7,000,000 tax lawyers.

Original Mike said...

You guys are all wrong about how insanely stupid this is. It's supported by AOC and she has a degree in economics…

Big Mike said...

Oh, come ON people! Without billionaires like George Soros, Tom Steyer, Donald Sussman, Michael Bloomberg, and the like, there would BE no Democrat party. It’s all kabuki theater. If it wasn’t Manchin offering up objections, someone else would draw the short straw. This charade is for the benefit of the gullible and functions to keep the Progs in line.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

I saw someone defend this kind of targeted taxation by repeating Obama's "you didn't build that" theme.

I guess the idea is that "society" created the conditions that allowed these creators to build such highly valued things/services. And, therefore, the creators should pay a big portion of their wealth back to society. It's only fair.

If you ask me, they have it totally backward. If society created the conditions, those conditions are available for any of us to build something awesome, but 99.9% of us are too damn lazy or untalented. Tax the lazy and untalented leeches!

Edmund said...

@Scott
""vast capital stores that can be borrowed off to live virtually income tax free."
Those loans have to be paid back somehow, almost certainly with taxed income.
How's that supposed to work?"

The idea is to continually borrow your living expenses plus the interest each year, using stock as collateral. When you die, your estate pays off the loans, using stock that has been stepped up in value to the date of death. The loans are paid, the estate pays little or no tax, the billionaire has never paid income tax.

Josephbleau said...

The goal here is to use the tax to score the bill as revenue neutral, Democrats don’t give a shit if the tax is ruled unconstitutional by the courts. They can pass a law that says each school kid has to pay a million dollars to offset the spending, why would they care if the funding is never collected due to unconstitutionality? As Nancy said “Unconstitutional? Are you serious??”

Scott M said...

Can we please get an amendment to the Constitution that limits new laws to one page, 10pt Times New? I'll even allow minimized margins and single spacing, but... Come on already.

Maynard said...

The issue is not taxing billionaires. They are the lifeblood of the Democrat party.

The issue is the concept of taxing unrealized gains in one's portfolio. We all know that the billionaires never pay those taxes. It is the middle and upper middle classes who get hit the hardest. If they passed the law, it would be us folks who would be hit.

Nonetheless, I agree with Big Mike. It is a charade for the gullible Progressives.

Original Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hey Skipper said...

Let's assume this fictitious person, using the pronouns Me/I.

And me/I am in the 24% tax bracket. Further, due to completely uncharacteristic luck, me/i had bought into a property market (Boise) that has created for me/I $300k in unrealized 2020 unrealized capital gains — just on me's/I's house, never mind investments.

On account of all the people fleeing left coast idiocies. (And likely dragging those self-same idiocies in their wake.)

My net worth is roughly at the 93rd percentile, which means, no matter what the progs say, is well within their target zone.

That would increase me's/I's 2020 federal tax by $75k.

Which is more than 50% of my 2020 (retiree) income. Moreover, me/I might have invested prudently, and had another $60k in unrealized gains, which would put me/I on the hook for another $15k in taxes.

Do me/I have this right?

If so, I am going to have to learn to live on companion animal food.

While wondering how is it that progressives can be so relentlessly innumerate.

tim in vermont said...

Aren't they trying to stick a SALT cap repeal in there, where the benefits go almost exclusively to wealthy people? Do I have that right?

robother said...

However unrealized gains are calculated, they aren't income. This is a property tax, pure and simple and a direct tax. Absent overruling Pollack, it would take a Constitutional Amendment to permit it. And as others here have pointed out, once authorized, only a fool would assume that Congress wouldn't ultimately extend it to all property (e.g., home equity and IRAs).

Original Mike said...

Bruce said…"Yes, unrealized capital gains are, essentially, paper profits, but at the level of these billionaires, they are almost as good as real profits, because they can be readily converted into cash to buy whatever they want, " [emphasis added]

At which time they are taxed. I don't see how paper profits are a major benefit to them. You can't eat paper profits, you can't wear paper profits, paper profits won't keep the rain off your head. I'm sure all those big paper profits make them feel good, and that's essentially what the democrats want to tax. Heaven forbid that somebody, somewhere feels good.

Bruce said…"And then transfer their stock to a charitable trust at some point, completely evading paying taxes on it. We saw this with Gates and Buffet, and now Bezos and Musk. "

If they want to make charitable donations taxable, that's fine by me. I used to think charities would make better use of the money than the government, but observing the behavior of progressive foundations I no longer feel that way.

I admit to not understanding the "borrow against it" angle. I defer to Yancey's post at 2:17pm.

(reposted to fix my formatting errors)

Xmas said...

@Dan from Madison,

From what I saw, the bill allowed you to push back or carry forward any losses in value 3 years either way.

That means if you got taxed in 2022 on an asset and the value of that asset drops in 2024, you can refile your 2022 taxes based on the new value or carry that loss in your next 3 years of returns (or some combination of both).

Also, taxing unrealized gains means that when the gains are realized, you get to deduct any taxes you've already paid. So you are bound to get stories were someone paid an unrealized gain tax in 2025 and then sells a billion dollars in assets 2026 at a lower value than the 2025 taxed value and suddenly you'll see stories like "Billionaire pays $0 in taxes on sale of company".

Gahrie said...

I saw someone defend this kind of targeted taxation by repeating Obama's "you didn't build that" theme ... If you ask me, they have it totally backward. If society created the conditions, those conditions are available for any of us to build something awesome, but 99.9% of us are too damn lazy or untalented. Tax the lazy and untalented leeches!

Exactly. Take Elon Musk. He was born in south Africa, but dreamed of moving to the United States as a kid. Why? Possibilities. You could do things in the US you couldn't do anywhere else.

He eventually moved to Canada on his mother's citizenship, and them emigrated to the US as soon as possible. He went to school and dreamed. instead of attending graduate school and doing research, he threw the dice and designed software for the newly born internet. He succeeded and made millions. Most of us would have stopped there, and headed for the beers, beaches and babes. Instead he took the money and used it to create a new company, one that eventually became Paypal. His share when they sold out came to $180 million. He took a tiny bit to indulge himself and buy a supercar (this the man that has spent all of his time since trying to eliminate cars like it), the rest he used to create SpaceX and transform Tesla. As a result he is now worth several hundred billion dollars, and is predicted to become the world's first trillionaire before he dies.

Musk makes no income from either company. He would simply take it and re-invest it anyway. This bill might as well be called the "Anti-Elon Musk" bill. Because every time he sold out and moved on to re-invest his money, the government would instead take a huge chunk of it. A chunk big enough that it would have killed both SpaceX and Tesla in the cradle due to a lack of funds if the law had been in place then.

Carl said...

I just came here to say: "Hoard."

wendybar said...

Howard said...
Yeah if billionaires weren't allowed to rape us, they wouldn't be motivated to steal our intellectual property.

10/27/21, 2:01 PM

Yeah...Leave that to Tranny boys in locker rooms in Virginia...then cover it all up to protect progressive mandates....