The issue is the step-up in basis, not borrowing against assets. The step-up in basis really is a giveaway. I think that it would make a ton of sense to transfer the basis rather than step it up.
Or the issue is the money printing that tends to be going on. This strategy should be too risky to work. They'd be losing interest on the money each month and they'd go bankrupt in the long term due to eventually borrowing money into a market downturn.
If interest rates are too low though then they wouldn't pay interest each month and the market will keep inflating - so the strategy will work.
Basically, this looks like a tax-effective strategy to stand in front of the money hose. If the money hose wasn't there it would be a tax-effective path to near certain ruin and much less attractive.
One of the best things when you are rich, you can buy when everyone wants to sell, and sell when everyone wants to buy.
At one level of money you are not impacted by a market downturn or crisis.
Many very rich people in Germany became very rich during or after WW2 - but they already were rich. Normal people just get poor in a crisis or market downturn.
A. Yes. Plus selling to the Wehrmacht ("war is a racket"), often with forced labour - or both, first stealing from Jews then selling to the Wehrmacht (like the current owners of BMW, ancestors sold to the Wehrmacht, profited from forced laber and additionally stole from Jews [1]). In communist East Germany Jews even couldn't get back their assets after the war, because Jews where "capitalists".
B. The vast majority of Germans profited from stealing from Jews (see book "Hitlers Volksstaat"), e.g. Germany was out of money before Kristallnacht and Jews had to pay 1 billion Reichsmark after the progroms, which helped the German state. Also jewish furniture etc. was auctioned off to all Germans - people too often only talk about arts and houses.
[1] The Quandts already were rich selling to the Prussian army, then during hyper-inflation of the economic crisis bought struggling companies, then "bought" companies from Jews who were forced to sell, then used forced labour in their companies, sold to the Wehrmacht, after WW2 got everything back and the debt they accumulated to buy all of that had evaporated because of the war. Today they own large chunks of BMW for example.
> One of the best things when you are rich, you can buy when everyone wants to sell, and sell when everyone wants to buy.
Generally untrue, since most rich people hold their assets in what's being sold. There are a handful value investors left, who bother holding cash equivalents when PE ratios get absurd, but they are few and far between. Tech billionaires, in particular, are very unlikely to be sitting on much cash.
If I buy something for $10 and it's worth $10,000 when you inherit it, you should (obviously?) be taxed on the increase in value from $10 -> $10,000 if/when you sell. The purchase price shouldn't be "reset" to $10k.
It'sutterly insane to me that the step-up basis exists in the US, it's such an obvious loophole that can fairly easily be closed without many adverse effects.
In my country (Sweden) if you don't know the purchase price, you can use an approximate purchasing price (e.g. for equities you are allowed to assume that it was acquired for 20% of the current value, so you'd be taxed on 80%).
> If I buy something for $10 and it's worth $10,000 when you inherit it, you should (obviously?) be taxed on the increase in value from $10 -> $10,000 if/when you sell. The purchase price shouldn't be "reset" to $10k.
There’s nothing “obvious” about tax policy. It’s an arbitrary determination of what’s in and what’s out.
Taxing capital gains at all is not “obvious”.
Taxing transfers of assets to your children, whether it’s while you’re alive or after you die is not “obvious”.
> It'sutterly insane to me that the step-up basis exists in the US, it's such an obvious loophole that can fairly easily be closed without many adverse effects.
The same law is the one that lets the surviving spouse or children to continue to live in a home rather than be forced to sell due to a sudden realized capital gain. You can argue that you don’t care about keeping multi millionaires in their childhood homes after their parents die, but it’s hardly “obvious” that it should be taxed.
Getting rid of the stepped up basis doesn’t require that we realize the gain at death. Just transfer the basis to the heirs, and if/when they sell, then realize the gain.
Yes. As a Swede, I don't even think of individual ownership of assets.
I see a line of descent as the unit which holds property, rather than individuals from that line, and from that PoV inheritance tax of course makes no sense, but similarly, disinheriting somebody, and some other notions, don't make sense either, so it's a different perspective.
I think the Swedish state actually takes my perspective on this, because in Swedish inheritance law you can't disinherit somebody, and we don't have inheritance tax.
I think you've misunderstood what they're suggesting - they're considering the transfer from parent to child to not be a realization, so there's no taxes, and no change in basis.
The child who sells the house, then has to pay gains from when the house was first purchase, rather than against the value when they inherited it
> The same law is the one that lets the surviving spouse or children to continue to live in a home rather than be forced to sell due to a sudden realized capital gain. You can argue that you don’t care about keeping multi millionaires in their childhood homes after their parents die, but it’s hardly “obvious” that it should be taxed.
Well, "homestead" exemptions are usually already a thing in most countries' inheritance laws. There is no need to draw stocks into the mix.
> Taxing transfers of assets to your children, whether it’s while you’re alive or after you die is not “obvious”.
It actually is obvious, at least if you want to prevent a return of feudalist eras.
Most parents don’t want meritocracy. They want their children to have an advantage over the children of others. They just have not squared this instinct with political ideology.
This is a kind of odd framing. I have children and I don’t see it as zero sum, as in your description. I want my children to do well. I don’t want other children to do worse, necessarily. I don’t care about other people’s children because I don’t know them and I’m not raising them. I want my kids to do well because I have put huge amounts of labor and love into them. The great beauty of most western systems is that they don’t have to be zero sum and they empower individuals and families.
You have projected your bias onto my comment. I do not advocate for an estate tax and don't necessarily support it. And claiming that opposition to an estate tax is an opposition to the success of other people's children is also definitely not anything I believe or claim. Our economy is not zero sum. Everyone can win. Also, redistributive policies almost always fail and waste vast sums while failing.
> Most parents don’t want meritocracy. They want their children to have an advantage over the children of others.
Thing is, "meritocracy" doesn't exist on its own either. Even if a poor person's child is among the more intellectually gifted in school, it's hard to compete against the children of those who are blessed in money. And that extends to adult life as well: those born to academic parents are much more likely to go into higher education themselves and have an easier time there (both due to connections as well as the simple opportunity of having parents to ask how to best format a paper or to proofread one), those born to rich parents can simply afford to "try themselves out" - for someone with millions to burn, they can easily afford to seed-fund whatever scheme their kid comes up while most other potential founders depend on sheer luck meeting someone in a random elevator.
And the importance of children being "advantaged" ruthlessly is a recent trend too. Up until 30, 40 years ago, most kids worked in farms or the trades and they were happy with it. But ever since employers demanded higher education and everything else became decried as "something for immigrants" aka low economic lifetime perspective, that shifted... funny, cities would drown in garbage in a matter of weeks when there would be no garbage haulers, but they would continue to be livable if Wall Street went up in flames.
> The same law is the one that lets the surviving spouse or children to continue to live in a home rather than be forced to sell due to a sudden realized capital gain. You can argue that you don’t care about keeping multi millionaires in their childhood homes after their parents die, but it’s hardly “obvious” that it should be taxed.
So make an exception for a single home the inheritor personally lives in and tax everything else.
> It's utterly insane to me that the step-up basis exists in the US, it's such an obvious loophole that can fairly easily be closed without many adverse effects.
Who do you think writes the laws and the tax code?
Yup, here in Japan inheritors have to pay 10-55% (progressive based on the amount) of the value of all inherited property globally within 10 months.
As an American, knowing that I could have gotten away without this tax had I decided not to live in Japan long-term, and knowing that I will have considerable inheritance when my parents pass is a bit of a downer; but logically speaking, the step-up basis loophole is BS and it probably ought to be this way, or some variant of it, everywhere.
If you exceed the inheritance tax exemption then you are taxed on the $10k so LTCG would be double taxing. You could argue that the inheritance tax should have a much lower exemption but double taxation is harder to justify.
Bullshit. "Double taxation" is such a weak argument to me.
When I buy gas at the pump it's taxed multiple times. State sales tax. City sales tax. Federal gas taxes. State gas taxes. Quadruple tax on me there.
My wage income has several taxes. FICA taxes. Payroll taxes. Federal income taxes. Potentially state income taxes. Potentially city income taxes.
When I pay for a hotel there's often a bevy of different taxes on that. When I pay my phone bill there's a bunch of different taxes on that. Even getting a drink at a bar there's a sales tax and a liquor tax.
And all of that is on money I've already paid all those several income taxes on, so it's really all just stacking there.
Oh but boo hoo ultra wealthy get their massive inheritance "double taxed". Get bent crying over your "double taxed", I'm quadruple taxed and more all the damn time. Weak argument.
But like, why? It's a worthless point. If there were five taxes of one percent each versus one tax of 20% how is the one tax somehow better? Which one would you choose, getting taxed five times or once?
It doesn't really matter that there's a FICA and an income tax and a payroll tax in the end, what really matters is the overall tax rate and if that's fair given some moral decision of fairness of sharing costs of society.
If a city chooses to levy sales taxes and hotel taxes to capture more revenue from visitors because their town is a tourist destination and want to collect from tourists more than locals that's fine. I won't weep a tear for those getting "double taxed" on their vacations.
Local and state taxes generally actually help you. Your local infrastructure is maintained, and your kids go to schools funded by your taxes.
Federal taxes, however, are largely transfer payments from the productive to the unproductive, as well as funding wars in areas that have absolutely nothing to do with you.
It's pretty easy to make the distinction between "good" and "bad" taxes.
>> If there were five taxes of one percent each versus one tax of 20% how is the one tax somehow better?
Would you rather pay five different tax authorities a 1% tax each or a single tax authority 20%? Not asking about the morality of those five tax authorities, in this example they're all the same.
The argument is against this idea "double taxation" is something inherently wrong. In the end it's not a matter of how many different taxes actually apply to a given transaction, what matters is the tax amounts and where those taxes are going to.
I'm generally helped by my federal taxes going to help feed students in poor areas. Both from a feel good standpoint and that those students have a better chance at becoming more productive, which means they can buy stuff from me.
I also benefit from those foreign wars because they keep the US empire of cheap shipping open, so I can buy stuff for cheap from countries who've specialized in manufacturing
Payroll tax is a problem because it’s not accounted for in your overall tax rate, it’s accounted for via lower wages. So you have no idea what your actual income would be if not for all the taxes your employer is paying.
> So you have no idea what your actual income would be
Payroll taxes aren't some secret things which are impossible for an employee to calculate on their own. You're right, it's not usually directly shown to an employee on their paystub, but it's pretty trivial to do the math and see what your employer paid (or was at least originally liable before any weird tax handouts, but typically rare) for your salary.
I do think payroll taxes should be required to include on paystubs if even just as an informational aspect to people. People should have a real understanding of how much labor is taxed compared to capital. People see "capital gains is 15%? Gosh that seems high..." without realizing how much of their W2 income was taxed. Most people I talk to can't even ballpark what their effective income tax rate was, I often hear "oh I had to pay like $800 in taxes this year, that sucked!" No, you paid a lot more than that, you just didn't pay attention.
You're right, its pretty common for the wealthy to try and trick poor people into feeling sorry for the wealthy actually paying taxes on things.
As my other post pointed out, tons of things have multiple layers of taxes. But the things people suddenly have some big moral issue with "double taxation" are things like estate taxes and corporate earnings and dividends and capital gains.
Few people bat an eye at us double taxing the low income nicotine addict. Everyone seems to want me to shed tears for the billionaire having to pay "double taxation" on their third vacation mansion they're inheriting.
Argue the rates are too low or too high for a given transaction. I can get behind that. But just crying because there's two different taxes being applied to a given transaction? Really?
> People get plenty mad about sales taxes double taxing taxed income, too.
Yeah, and it's a dumb position to take. Like what, we can only apply one tax from one source to a given dollar bill's serial number after it leaves the fed, and after that point that dollar can never be taxed again? Otherwise, gasp, double taxation!
The company shouldn't pay payroll taxes, they charged sales taxes to get that income to pay the salaries. I shouldn't pay any income taxes, the company paid payroll taxes on the money that had sales taxes on it. I shouldn't pay sales taxes, I paid income taxes on the money that had already had payroll taxes that had already had sales taxes that had...
Suddenly nobody pays any taxes anywhere because somewhere up the chain someone else already paid taxes on that dollar!
What you tax is not really relevant as long as it doesn't disrupt some activity you want to continue happening. If it was up to me I'd tax spending not income. Regardless of what you are spending on. Bread? Sure! Employee? Yes! 10% of Tesla? Same!
> If it was up to me I'd tax spending not income. Regardless of what you are spending on
Under this system the poor who spend the majority of their income just to survive pay the highest effective tax rate while the wealthier who save most of their income have the smallest effective tax rate. That sounds like a fair and equitable system to you?
You're just moving the point a little along the scale though. So now instead of the super poor paying a higher rate, now it's the slightly less poor. And the slightly less poor as you keep moving that transfer cutoff point. You're still going to have some point where the wealthier are paying a significantly lower rate than those who make a good bit less than them.
I absolutely agree on this point, and that curve adjustment would just continue into people we'd definitely agree are wealthy. But in the end those millionaires are paying a higher tax rate than those wealthier than them. Is that fair?
And yet the rich spend vastly more money than poor. You can see it trivially by noticing that the poor have all their money from the work that they do for the rich.
Taxing spending would be way more equitable than whatever we are now doing.
We are already doing some taxation of spending. VAT, sales tax, social security fees. All of those are paid by buyers of goods, services and labor. If we did the same for investments government would have so much more money to deal with the problems instead of borrowing it from commercial banks at interest.
> And yet the rich spend vastly more money than poor
You're just totally ignoring the effect of effective tax rates.
Sure, the billionaire spent way more money than the poor person. But who spent a higher percentage of their income? And who had vastly more opportunity to spend that in a place outside of that sales tax jurisdiction? Are the poor people flying to other countries to buy their luxury goods?
To you, is society fairer for poor person and the billionaire to pay the same nominal amount or the same tax rate? Is it even fair/good for the poor and the wealthy to pay the same for either of these values?
> But who spent a higher percentage of their income?
Everybody knows. That's because we tax income. And income, unlike spending is easier to muddle. You can always fabricate a loss or at least a temporary loss to avoid paying taxes on your income. It's harder to hide spending.
> And who had vastly more opportunity to spend that in a place outside of that sales tax jurisdiction?
It's just as easy today to move your profits to another country if you are rich.
If you tax spending, you can just tax money transfers to other countries as spending. Rich can fly wherever they like but they still had to pay taxes on the plane they bought, fuel they put in and all the money they spent on their trip.They could buy crypto, but guess what, on crypto purchase, also a spending tax. They can even move to live in another country till they die, but still their money transfered outside of their home country into their new one, taxed on exit.
You brought the money into the country because you are in the business of exports? Great, here's a tax credit. You may deduct it from the tax you pay on your excursions abroad.
The problem is not what is the moral thing to tax. The problem is how to do it efficiently with no loopholes without affecting desirable behaviors negatively and promoting undesirable ones.
Taxing spending would also help with vast empires that cosist of inherited money. Income was already done, century ago so there's nothing to tax. If you try to tax wealth, so many people would equate it to theft. But if you tax spending ...
> Taxing spending would also help with vast empires that cosist of inherited money
Or we just finally actually tax inherited wealth like other kinds of income instead of giving wealthy many many millions of handouts and tax subsidies.
> with no loopholes
We've both shared examples of lots of ways one can have loopholes on spending money. If the standard is to find a way of "no loopholes", well, spending money outside of the tax jurisdiction away from the knowledge of the tax jurisdiction is a loophole. One wealthier people will have a far easier time exploiting than the poor. Expecting the wealthy are going to report their sales taxes on goods purchased overseas is as hopeful as back in the day states hoping people would report their online purchases. We both agree there's countless ways to obscure your income, if they can obscure their income why is it now impossible for them to obscure their purchases?
> You brought the money into the country because you are in the business of exports? Great, here's a tax credit. You may deduct it from the tax you pay on your excursions abroad.
So those who make money on exports pay even lower tax rates than those working domestically, by design? And who in that "business of exports" actually gets that benefit? The shift worker in the factory making the widgets, the marketing director making the campaign for the widget overseas, the salesperson making the actual sale to the foreign distributor, or the owner of the corporation? Me thinks that benefit isn't going to the shift worker or the marketing person or the salesperson. Cool, even more handouts for the wealthy here. Great ideas. They'll get a tax break on their expensive foreign vacation while us plebs here pay full tax rates.
I'm not trying to make the argument that what we have today is good. There's so much wrong with it. But thinking that throwing it all away and just taxing spending is somehow itself a good and just way of doing it also doesn't make much sense to me. Having poorer people pay more effective tax rates than wealthier people doesn't strike me as fair.
> spending money outside of the tax jurisdiction away from the knowledge of the tax jurisdiction is a loophole.
Yeah, but how? How do you carry it or send it across the border? Cash? Gold? Good luck with that. You'd basically have to set up a smuggling operation for cash like people now do for drugs. With the risk of cash going missing and every step of the road. Becasue it's not hot and whoever steals it can use it as they please immediately.
> Expecting the wealthy are going to report their sales taxes on goods purchased overseas is as hopeful as back in the day states hoping people would report their online purchases.
I'm not expecting anyone to report that they bought something abroad. I expect their bank to to report they made a transfer abroad and deduct spending tax automatically.
> So those who make money on exports pay even lower tax rates than those working domestically, by design?
Yes, because exports are desirable for building wealth of a country. There's a single country on Earth that benefits from exporting not goods or services but dollars. That's because they are printing them for free and the world for one reason or another wants them. Any other country benefits from exports and it's an activity every government tries hard to promote to get purchasing power in the global economy for the stuff the country can't make themselves.
> And who in that "business of exports" actually gets that benefit?
That's the question. In case of VAT burden is transferred along the chain. In spending tax, tax credit could be similarily propagated. Everyone could have tax credit on their sales and tax to pay on their purchases. This already works for companies for purposes of VAT. All transactions between companies are tracked so purchases could be taxed and sellers can be taxcredited (the opposite of VAT). In case of individual people, they make many transactions that are not specifically linked to them (and we want to keep it that way for privacy). Their spending tax can be collected and paid by the companies that sell stuff directly to consumers. The tax credit for individuals could take a form of direct cash transfer from the governement budget to supplement their salary. There's of course incentive for this companies to not report their sales to customers and not pass the tax paid them by the consumers to the country budget. But that's the same thing as we have now that companies have incentive to hide sales income to not pay income tax on it so exisitng solutions to combat that should perform no worse than they do now (mystery customers, recipt lottery, comparing income+financing with spending).
Tax credit wouldn't be 100% of sales (because companies on average earn more than spend so they would never pay tax while operating normally) and transfers to individuals could be shaped freely. They could be associated with their salaries or not or a mixture of two. This way governement could very effectively promote specific economic activities with tax credits to companies and keep the poorest out of poverty with direct money transfers but also promote job seeking and career advancement by paying some addtional money to workers, less as their salary level approaches societally desired "middle class".
I don't have all the kinks ironed out. It's just an idea that I had about a month ago. I haven't written my own tax code. Yet. ;-)
> They'll get a tax break on their expensive foreign vacation while us plebs here pay full tax rates.
Well, if somebody operates a successful company, especially an exporter they should be rewarded. But the reward should be transparent and controlled and not up to their weaseling, tax dodging tax and fabricalting fictional losses. As you know they are already getting the handouts. If the system is tight and clean we can decide how much of a reward they actually deserve through a political process. I am aware that our political system is terrible for that, but it's terrible for what we have now too so that's beside the point.
The point of my idea is mostly to introduce transparency and control and vastly simplify and integrate the myriad of tax systems we use in parallel in one country. Income taxes, VAT, duty, social security, health premiums, captial gains tax, fuel tax, excise. All of that could be replaced with one framework of taxes on spending. This would also be good for migrating to economy that's not reliant on infinite growth because doing more with less would be promoted by the tax structure. You are taxed on what you use, you are 100% taxed on what you waste or consume.
> Having poorer people pay more effective tax rates than wealthier people doesn't strike me as fair.
That's not at all what I'm advocating for. Poor people mostly don't matter from tax perspective. If tax credit for them is set up in a way that they pay effectively very little or zero tax or even get money for nothing it wouldn't matter for the govermenet budget and there would be strong, popular opposition to lowering their tax credit as that would be direct hard cash on their accounts recieved every month. In modern system it's vastly easier to give tax cuts for the rich than for the poor and nearly impossible to give anything to the totally destitute.
> I expect their bank to to report they made a transfer abroad and deduct spending tax automatically
So we're not taxing spending, we're taxing bank transfers as well. Maybe they just put it in a savings account overseas. Maybe they're paying off a loan for money sitting elsewhere. Who says it was a sale? Prove they bought something.
>> Having poorer people pay more effective tax rates than wealthier people doesn't strike me as fair.
> That's not at all what I'm advocating for.
But that is what you're advocating for, by pushing it to just an extremely complicated sales tax and complicated system of fractically more complicated credits for exports and subsidies for the poor to hopefully reduce their tax burdern and what not. Inherently the wealthy will spend a smaller percentage of their income. The wealthiest practically can't spend it as fast as they get it even flying private jets around the world, but tons of middle-class people seem to barely have anything in savings. You just keep ignoring it and offering half measures to address it.
> So we're not taxing spending, we're taxing bank transfers as well
No. We are taxing spending. Transfering money abroad counts as speding. Transfering within the country doesn't.
> Maybe they just put it in a savings account overseas.
Doesn't matter. Once it leaves the system it's treated as spending.
> Maybe they're paying off a loan for money sitting elsewhere.
Paying off a loan is spending. Both abroad (as everything else abroad) and within the country too.
> Prove they bought something.
No need. Spending is something defined not something natural that needs proving. What I'm proposing is defining spending as reduction in amount of owned currency due to either transfer abroad or due to any agreements between companies or companies and customers.
> But that is what you're advocating for, by pushing it to just an extremely complicated sales tax and complicated system of fractically more complicated credits for exports
If you think that's complicated don't ever read on current taxes, fees and procedures.
My idea is comparably simple. General rule is that spending gets taxed. Tax credits are awarded to promote certain activities (like exporting or living). Nothing else. No need for income tax, corporate tax, VAT, sales tax, social security fees, health premiums, import tariffs, excise taxes and so on.
> Inherently the wealthy will spend a smaller percentage of their income.
At this point I don't think you can imagine it being any other way. I think you are fixating that we all have same stomachs and since poor people earn less feeding ones stomach will always be a larger percentage of money that available for them to spend (so higher percentage of tax).
But the rich don't spend money on what they eat alone. They spend it on cars, yahts, luxury, and what's way more impactful real estate, companies, assets, investments in general, even lobbying ... things that they must do because those are the things that bring them money ... those are the things purchasing which made rich rich in the first place and make them keep getting richer ... all of those would be taxed. I don't think you can say the same for any other proposed or real system for taxing the rich that relies on accounting for income or wealth.
Musk buying Twitter would be taxed on this purchase.
If giving the poor tax credits so that they have negative tax doesn't solve the conundrum for you I don't think anything ever will.
Talk about "double taxation" and wealthy being able to avoid taxes. I need a loan to buy a car. Taxes at the purchase, taxes as I pay back the loan. I take out a mortgage. Taxes on the sale, taxes on the mortgage payment. Meanwhile someone able to drop several hundred thousand in cash pay taxes once.
Paying back a loan is spending but taking a loan is income and taken as individual might award you tax credit.
But yes, if you use a service, you pay for tax. Even a service of renting some capital.
Again, as a poor person you can get tax credits on your income or just because you are alive that offsets that if the government thinks poor people buying things with loans is societally beneficial or not. Today government does this by raising or lowering the rates which affect so many other things in the economy.
Fine grained control is better.
And what's wrong with double taxation? If you earn money today, you pay income tax, and use it to buy fuel then you also pay VAT and excuse tax. That's triple tax on the same money. Spend your money in societally undesired ways and you are getting it taxed multiple times even today. But just with a myriad opaque systems that don't play nice with each other and are full of loopholes.
