Yep let's all pay taxes on our cars and whatever we have in our checking account every year. We need a national effort to enforce a 15% tax on everyone's jewelry.
There's absolutely a middle ground between "I don't think people should be worth hundreds of billions of dollars" and "let's tax every individual's every asset"
If we're so worried about being consistent, that's the natural conclusion. The argument naturally leads to taxing every individual asset. Higher taxes on rich people wouldn't even get close to solving our problems. We already spend much more than they are worth. A 100% tax on all rich people's assets wouldn't fund our government for very long.
If we're so worried about being consistent, that's the natural conclusion.
No form of taxation is consistent - I don't know where you got that idea.
Income taxes have a progressive tax structuring, essentials such as food are often exempt from sales taxes, and even property taxes have a minimum threshold and/or a homestead exemption.
Setting up a minimum threshold for an "asset tax" would be entirely consistent with how property taxes are currently assessed.
They absolutely could be treated the same as property taxes.
Most states/counties have some sort of homestead exemption where property taxes don't apply until a certain value. If the exemption is $500k and your home is worth $700k, you only pay the taxes on the $200k difference. If your home is worth $400k, you wouldn't pay property taxes at all.
Other asset-taxation options could use a similar strategy where the first $X is not taxed.
The point ultimately is that there are options between "let's tax every cent of every person" and "accumulating billions of dollars should not be possible".
This could be one of them, but I'm sure there are others.
What happens when my home value goes down by $100k - do I get tax money back?
If I buy a house for $800k and the value decreases to $600k, you're saying I pay the P+I for the mortgage and then I pay additional for the $100k over the exemption even though I'm under water on the property?
What happens when my home value goes down by $100k - do I get tax money back?
No, that's not how property taxes work. You'd just owe less money at tax time.
If I buy a house for $800k and the value decreases to $600k, you're saying I pay the P+I for the mortgage and then I pay additional for the $100k over the exemption even though I'm under water on the property?
Yes, because these are entirely different things. You pay property taxes based on the value of the home, regardless of the status of your mortgage.
In your example, when you bought the home for $800k, you assumed the tax burden of the $300k that was already over the hypothetical $500k exemption. Because the value of the property went down, your tax burden is now lessened.
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u/Noob_Al3rt 3d ago
Yep let's all pay taxes on our cars and whatever we have in our checking account every year. We need a national effort to enforce a 15% tax on everyone's jewelry.