No Stupid Questions

You have a special division of the IRS whose job is to identify the top few hundred wealthiest individuals and then tax them. These people wouldn't have to self report like the rest of us.

Two prongs. One, tax loans against stock options and publicly traded shares. Two tax foreign investment dividends that constitute more than 10% of the total value of a publicly traded company. Step one makes them live off of dividends and realized assets. They can't live off other loans of other people's money and just keep hording assets, two pins them down and keeps them from trying to take their money and run to a tax haven.

They will eventually find a way around those, and you will have to adjust the tax code to accomodate, but that's going to be true regardless. It's a bit like digital hygene and cyber security. An endless arms race between states trying to build more effective risk management tools and people trying to exploit and the system and thus the people living within the system.

Tax them? Nationalize their assets

The biggest loophole they use is taking out loans and using stock as collateral. Stock is supposed to be unrealized so if it is used as part of ANY transaction it should instantly become taxable.

That’s the thing. If you pay people to figure it out, they will. It’s only through massive defunding that the IRS has become completely incompetent. They used to be quite good at their jobs.

I guess you tax assets more and salaries less - and work internationally to make tax avoidance harder and less profitable by taxing capital flows and by cracking down on tax havens.

Unless you can get a political consensus on it, I don't think an inheritance tax will be very effective. Tax planners will find a way to transfer the wealth before it gets inherited, helped by certain kinds of politicians whenever they have power.

Wealth caps

Worldwide wealth caps

Start at 100 million..after a decade, lower that to 10 million

Anything, income, gift, whatever, over that goes 100% to taxes

Nobody had the right or need to be worth over 10 million dollars

Wealth caps are also an extremely simple solution, a very simple rule to add to the current system to fix so maby issues.

Governments will get so much more Income that they can immediately do free healthcare, free education, etc.

Nobody will have a huge amount of money, and as such, a huge amount of power anymore which will lower the chance of wars. With that we can significantly lower expenses to killing materials and instead focus on life

We can solve poverty, which, in addition to free mental health care, will also solve most crimes (yeah, crimes of passion will remain)

We can finally spend a huge amount of resources on climate change and fixing the environment around us!

We can make government funded non profit investment foundations for infrastructure projects, for independent journalism, etc so that we have great independent news and great infrastructure

A simple rule with so many great consequences...

But it would would require the rich allowing us to implement that simple rule. World wide. So it won't ever happen

Listen the IRS has routinely made clear that every time it's forensic accountants get to sink their teeth into a billionaires financials, the return on that effort is enormous. Don't ask "how are going to tax billionaires," first demand that they actually BE taxed.

We'll figure it out later, man. Realistically, just have a team of specialists that focuses solely on the ultra-wealthy, and then let "unrealized gains" be taxed if they were ever used as collateral for a loan.

In several different ways. The trick is to attack the problem of excessive wealth accumulation by making the system feed more aggressively on accumulated wealth.

A wealth tax is important to prevent the excess accumulation of capital. Money is only really working if it's in motion. Once it stops moving it stops adding value to the economy which is fine sometimes and in small amounts.

Tax disuse. Vacant real estate should be taxed extra. If they don't want it taxed it should be actively used in a non-extractive way. This means low impact agriculture, preservation, or occupancy not mining, dumping or logging.

Tax non-resident ownership. You can own as many houses as you want but each additional one beyond your primary residence is going to incur a scaling tax penalty. Two probably would be manageable Three would be difficult once you get to four and five houses you're going to find it extremely difficult to make any money. And the scaling tax penalty would apply to the most expensive one first.

If they're extracting resources from it or doing heavy agriculture they should be paying a premium and not externalizing wastes. They could be taxed to ensure compliance and enforcement is adequate. They should also be taxed in advance to fund potential cleanup of any toxic or environmental hazards. The money can be held in escrow but it needs to not be held by the same people who have a financial incentive to cut corners.

See I don't actually believe the problem is rich people or income inequality broadly it's the runaway effect of the accumulation of wealth in the absence of any kind of functional theory about how money is supposed to actually work in the economy.

There are people that are going to just work like crazy people and they will in any fair system acquire more resources than most other people.

I think in a fair system the people who are likely to end up with more resources would look very different than the people who end up with more resources in our systems.

Something people don't often understand about American dollars and American taxes is that the function of the government's tax policy is not to pay its bills. Our government doesn't need taxes to pay its bills. The function of the government collecting taxes is to delete money from the system.
They need to be deleting money from the places where there's too much of it. Otherwise that money crowds out legitimate money that is the representative of economic value produced through labor. If labor has no voice, then the economy stops functioning.

I was going to write about how an existing tax agency (the California FTB) is already aggressive at tracking down high-earning residents that leave the state -- whether in-fact or on-paper -- in order to collect precisely what the state is owed per the tax code. That is, the FTB already engages and challenges the precise amounts that these former residents write on their final California tax returns, with some more spectacular results being some incredibly detailed timelines for when someone finally stops being a resident in California, as defined in state law.

But then I noticed that because of California's proposed wealth tax (aka Billionaire Tax) on the November 2026 ballot, the SF Chronicle has already started a series of articles to answer the specific what-and-hows of the wealth tax. This is the first article, pertaining to enforcement, and it agrees that the FTB would be capable of pursuing any high-wealth individuals that the proposal would tax. https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/ca-billionaire-tax-mechanism-21330110.php

This proposed tax in California is written as a one-time tax, so the question of whether high-wealthy people could flee the state is nearly irrelevant, because either they're subject to the tax or they're beyond the reach of the US courts (eg Venus). Almost. The remaining questions are legal in nature, and don't really change how the tax would be pursued. Whether FTB simply hires a dedicated team or outsources to private investigators, the task is still straightforward: follow the money.

Unlike civil lawsuit plaintiffs, who have more limited means of chasing down a defendant's assets in order to get paid on a judgement, the California tax authorities enjoy the benefit of the subpoena power, that can be used to compel companies and banks to tell the tax authorities about where and how wealth is being held. It is, after all, a core power of a US state to administer a tax, especially when the tax is authorized directly from the sovereign power (ie the citizenry). Any other result would conflict with the very purpose of a republic: to unyieldingly serve the people.

Land value tax and unrealized capital gains tax.

Tax the total of any loans backed by speculative assets taken out in a one year period as both realized gains and income if they total more than 100x the average take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners (currently around $16k).

If they want higher loans without taxes, people have to be paid more.

There are two loopholes to close:

1. Capital gains taxes - income is income, not one guy pays 50% less tax than another based on how the money is defined. ie. plumber pays 45% taxes but if a guy invests in a plumbing shop, he only pays 30% or less. And for no good reason, hedge fund managers only pay CGT. Get rid of CGT and make lower income taxes.

2. Borrowing money against stock values -this is a huge form of tax evasion.

3, heavily tax any money taken offshore.

100% inheritance tax on any value over 5 million, and slam shut any loopholes that get found.

Force them to either spend it stimulating the economy or give it up to society directly.

Taxing the ultra rich is easy. Taxing them without screwing over someone else in the process is hard. They can afford the best lawyers and accountants to find loopholes and still consider it cheap.

Demand full proof of ownership from any company and asset. If they provide strawman, tax those.

If they don't provide verifiable information, seize the companies and assets and put them into public hands, or if that's not possible (digital services for example) deny them to operate in your country. The actual owners will reveil themselves quickly. Then tax them.

With a large bladed machine.

100% of what they make over $1B.

Super simple. Inheritance tax is enormous. You have the right to pass on as many "upper middle class trust funds for life" as you would like, but no other wealth of any kind is inherited.

America used to tax billionaires already in the 1900s. Nothing new to invent here.

almost forgot... global corporation tax

there is no escape for weather hidden in companies and transferred around the world to avoid taxation

the current global corporation tax just the first step of destroying tax havens

outlaw wealth at 10x median, same way they have civil forfeiture for drug crimes in the US.

Tax things they can't move like land and only things they pay for like jets, yachts, art...