Ugh I really don’t want to do this. But ok. Both of these taxes need to establish current value of things in time for them to work. If calculating value doesn’t work, then these taxes don’t work.
And how do you calculate value? Liquid stocks? Just take the last transaction price before closing, right? OK but think about it, how good of a measure is it to just multiply some random price by the number of outstanding shares and conclude that this is the market cap?
Then you have illiquid stock, private stock. Things that don’t trade on a daily basis.
Then you have real estate. Something that doesn’t trade for decades. How do you calculate the value of that? You use some hedonistic blabla methods. It’s all faulty and prone to unfairness.
And then you get art, jewelry, collectibles. This is where you can make some nice write offs to balance out your gains if you’re really rich. Gaming the system becomes a profession.
To finish off, tax is a punishment. It has a chilling effect. What wealth tax is communicating is that wealth is bad. Gains tax → gains are bad. Income tax → income is bad. Don’t work extra hours, don’t save, don’t invest, then no tax for you.
I hate that I have to lay this out to a person in a FIRE forum. But life taught me as much already. Two people can be highly intelligent, argue for hours, and they will not come to an agreement.
But this is how I feel about this particular issue. I will give you the courtesy of not pretending that I don’t. I mean, I realize that it is counter-productive. Taking a deep breath and dialing down is definitely smart. I don’t know, maybe lashing out or being sarcastic is an admission of defeat?
I wonder if you had to deal with situations where you felt like your values are being attacked by legislation and then someone defends them in a polite way. It’s hard to stay calm. Because you know if you do nothing, they will come with worse ideas in the future. And if say something, it probably won’t change anything.