Simon’s five excellent tax proposals summary:
- A “Sin Tax” on video games and apps.
- A Graduated Excise Tax on second homes.
- A Property Tax on all Assets.
- An Extra Bathroom Tax.
- Sell Freway Access Rights
All together all if these proposals would raise near a trillion dollars in new revenue annually for the Federal Government. Which is just about enough to balance the budget. There is no chance that any of them would pass. It is easy to voice concern for the homeless or the underprivileged but it is impossible to tax the people who have the money. All you need to do is study the history of “Carried Interest” to understand.
Carried Interest allows Hedge Funds to avoid billions in taxes. Both President’s Obama and Trump said they were going to change the rules that allow carried interest when they were campaigning both backed down when they were running the government.
I asked a Biden supporter the other day if he was in favor of the Democrat platform proposal to tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. His response was: “It will never happen. It was just a campaign promise.”
So there you have it the wealth of this country (and the world) is mostly held by a small percentage of the population and that small percentage is not willing to give more of it to government.
My solution is to grow the size of the economy and not worry to much about the distribution.