The Billionaire Tax: The Worst Tax Idea Ever?

[ogc163]

If you have been tracking the torturous workings of the infrastructure bills working their way through Congress, consideration is now being given to a "billionaire" tax, focused on a extraordinarily small subset of Americans, and intended to raise tens, perhaps even hundreds, of billions of dollars in revenues, to cover the costs of the bill. I am constantly amazed by the capacity of legislatures to write bad tax law, but this one takes the cake as perhaps the worst thought-through and most ineffective attempt ever, at rewriting tax code. That is a little unfair, I know, because the details are still being hashed out, and it is conceivable that the final version will be redeemable, but given that the clock is ticking, I am not hopeful!

The Billionaire Tax: History and Proposal

To get a sense of why we are discussing a billionaire tax, you have to start with a historical context, beginning with a recognition of increasing wealth inequality and the perception (real or otherwise) that the wealthiest were not paying their fair share of taxes, continuing with promises made during the most recent presidential campaign and culminating in the last few months of legislative slogging to get a passable bill.

The Rise of Populism

For much of this century, the big story in economics and politics has been increasing inequality, with the spread in income and wealth between the richest and the rest of society widening over time. The graph below, from the Pew Research Center, is a good starting point, since it highlight the shift in the share of aggregate US income flowing to upper, middle and lower income households.



While economists and politicians continue to debate the causes and consequences of this inequality, that income inequality is magnified when you look at the wealth levels different income groups, with the lowest income households falling even further behind. A rising stock market has augmented the wealth inequality, since the wealthiest hold the preponderance of equities in the market.

In conjunction with this widening inequality, the perception is building that the wealthy don't pay their fair share in taxes, even though the question of whether they are depends upon the prism you look through. If you focus just on federal tax dollars paid by each group, the wealthy are actually paying a larger share of federal taxes collected than ever before in history, undercutting the claim that they are welching on their tax responsibilities.



The pushback from progressives is that this graph misses key components, including other taxes collected by the government (payroll taxes, Medicare taxes, estate taxes etc.), and that it is the tax rate that is paid, not dollar taxes, that better measures fairness. In 2018, for instance, the federal effective tax rates paid by different income groups were as follows:



Clearly, while the richest are paying a higher percentage of income in taxes than the poorest, the argument made by some is that they are paying a lower percent of their taxes than they were 40 or 50 years ago (which is true) and that they can afford to pay more (which is debatable).

Elections and Infrastructure Legislation

To understand why the billionaire tax proposal has become one of the center pieces of the revenue side of the infrastructure bill, we have to retrace the path taken during the 2020 presidential election. During the presidential campaign, President Biden promised repeatedly that he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year in income, effectively locking out 98.2% of income tax payers from any proposed tax increase. In conjunction, he also argued that the the top 1.8% of the populace were not paying their fair share of taxes, and that corporations were also paying too little, and that any rewrite of the tax code would force them to pay their "fair share". In keeping with these two promises, the version of the big infrastructure bills that was initially promoted by the administration raised a significant portion of revenues from changes in tax rates for the wealthiest individuals (by raising the marginal tax rate from 37% to 39.6% for those in the $400,000 plus income range and by adding a surtax on capital gains for those making more than a million dollars in income) and by raising corporate tax rates from 21% to 28%. After months of back and forth between members, the House Ways and Means Committee approved tax provisions on September 15 that included many of these proposals, raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 26.5%, while putting limits on interest tax deductions, and the individual tax rate to 39.6% (for income) and 25% (for capital gains).

Breaking the Logjam?

The proposals to raise revenues, from the While House and the House committee ran aground, because of objections on raising tax rates from Senator Sinema last week, leading to a rethink of the revenue side. As higher tax rates were taken off the table, the congressional committees had to look elsewhere, and the billionaire tax proposal seems to be gaining traction, as the replacement. Since almost everything we know about the proposals comes from unofficial sources or news leaks, and talks are still continuing, everything could change in the next couple of days, but here is what the proposals look like on Monday, October 25:

1. Targeted Taxpayers: The tax will be targeted at individuals who own more than $1 billion in assets or have had income of more than $100 million for three consecutive years. That is pretty elite company, and it is estimated that less than 1000 taxpayers in the United States would be affected.
2. Taxable Items: The tax would apply to a wide array of assets, including stocks, bonds, real estate and art. I am assuming that closely held businesses are not covered by the tax, or if they are, they will be dealt with differently, but since the proposal is still in the process of being written, we just don't know.
3. The Proposal: The changes in values of these assets will be subject to tax, even though the individuals continue to hold them, making this a tax on "unrealized" capital gains. There is talk that taxpayers will be allowed to deduct "unrealized" capital losses as well, though the details remain fuzzy.
4. The Tax Rate: It is not clear what tax rate would apply on these changes in value, i.e., whether it would be an extension of the capital gains tax rate to these unrealized capital gains, or some other rate, and also whether the tax rate will be the same for all assets, irrespective of liquidity.

In conjunction, corporations will also face a corporate minimum tax rate, putting a floor (at least in theory) on how low they can make their effective tax rates. I will leave it others to discuss that aspect of the tax code, which at least has a defensible basis, but I find the billionaire tax to be problematic at multiple levels.

 

[88m3]

# Be Best

 

[ogc163]

The Worst Tax Code Change Ever

As I noted earlier, there may be changes that happen between now and when this gets voted on that help make it better, but as it stands, this is an extraordinarily bad tax proposal, and for many reasons:

1. Micro targeting: Since very few of us to like paying more in taxes, but don't seem to mind seeing others paying more, the political payoff from targeting very few taxpayers is that you minimize the backlash. I know that each of us probably has a billionaire that we hate, and may take secret pleasure in watching that billionaire pay more, but if you view the prime role of taxes as generating revenues for governments, it is dangerous to focus raising tax revenues from this small a number. As a general rule, taxes that are broad based and affect most people are more likely to deliver predicted revenues than those that affect a narrow subset of the population, and the billionaire tax is about as narrowly focused as tax law gets. You may have little sympathy for the seven hundred or so billionaires affected by these taxes, but you should also recognized that these individuals also have the most resources to find ways to minimize the impact of these laws. In fact, not only is an army of tax lawyers, accountants and investment vehicles being created while the law in being written, but I would not be surprised if they are providing input on its actual form.
2. Taxing capital gains (and losses): The basis used for computing taxes can have implications for revenues from the tax code, and that basis can range from sales (with value added and sales taxes) to salary/wage income, to capital gains. Rather than get into moralistic arguments about whether salary income is more virtuous than capital gains income (or unearned income, as its critics like to call it), I will focus on tax revenue reality. Taxes based upon revenues/sales will yield more predictable revenue for the government than taxes based upon salary income, and taxes based upon salary income will yield more stable revenues than taxes based upon capital gains. Capital gains come from stock price changes, which are far more volatile, than income earned by taxpayers, and that income, in turn, changes more on a year-to-year basis than the value of the assets they own. Without passing any judgment on which approach is better, consider tax revenues collected by California, a state that not only taxes all capital gains as ordinary income, but is also more dependent on capital gains than almost any other state, with tax revenues collected by Florida, a state without taxes on individual income: California's tax revenues are significantly more volatile than Florida's tax revenues, and capital gains are a big reason why that is the case. If you are in finance, and you were measuring the risk of different tax revenue sources, capital gains tax revenue would have a "higher beta" than "income tax revenues or sales tax revenues. It is true that prudent governments can find ways to put aside big portions of the capital gains tax revenues, in years of plenty, to cover shortfalls in years where capital gains tax collections are low, but when was the last time you saw prudent governance?
3. Including "unrealized" gains: The new feature of this law is its attempt to tax unrealized capital gains on assets. The problem with taxing "unrealized" gains or income is that since they are unrealized, and taxes have to be paid with cash, the question of how to come up with the cash becomes an issue, making it a central challenge for any plan, built around it. In fact, there are two practical problems with the proposal, at least as described in the press.
   • Liquidity questions: If the billionaire is going to apply on assets like real estate and fine art, and not just on stocks and bonds, the idea that you can sell some your holdings in the open market and get the cash you need to pay taxes does not apply as easily, since these non-traded assets are often illiquid and cannot be sold off in small parts. It will also mean that taxpayers who own non-traded assets will need appraisers to revalue these assets every year, great for the appraisal business, but almost guaranteed to create a hotbed of litigation around the appraised values.
   • Losses and Gains: After a decade of rising stock and bond prices, I guess that many have forgotten that not only can what goes up come down, but also that you can have extended periods where assets stagnate or drop in value. While there is airy talk of being allowed to claim unrealized losses as deductions, how exactly would this work? Put simply, if stocks are up 20% in 2021 and down in 2022, would taxpayers get refunds on their taxes paid in 2021? It is also not clear what the tax code writers are assuming about what the market will do over the next decade, when they estimate that this tax will deliver about $200 billion in revenues, but are they assuming that the good times will continue? Stock and bonds have a really good run, but history suggests that there will be not just bad times, but extended bad times for markets:
     There may be no revenues at all from this tax code change, if the market has a decade like the 1970-1979 or 2000-2009, and if that happens, what are the contingency plans for the expenditure that is being funded by these revenues?
4. With side effects for other tax revenues: There is another point that I still not seen a response to, and that is the effect that this billionaire tax will have on revenues from other parts of the tax code, particularly estate taxes. If paying the billionaire tax changes the tax basis for assets, as it should since they are being marked to market, and taxed, that will also mean that when these stocks are inherited, and ultimately sold, there will be less capital gains taxes collected. If all that the billionaire tax code change is doing is moving forward the collection of taxes to earlier, rather than later, there is a time value benefit to the government, but it has to be a net benefit. In other words, the lost future taxes will have to be netted out against the $200 billion that it is expected to bring in revenues over the next decade.
5. It is a wealth tax, albeit on incremental, not total wealth: For a few years, progressives led by Senator Warren have argued for a wealth tax, and its pluses and minuses have been debated widely. The administration is trying hard to avoid using the words "wealth taxes" to describe this proposal, but that is sophistry. Janet Yellen's claims notwithstanding, this is a wealth tax, albeit on incremental wealth, rather than total wealth. Put simply, this proposal is biased towards people with inherited wealth, invested in non-traded assets and mature businesses, and against people invested in publicly traded equities in growth companies, many of which they have started and built up. If that is the message that the tax law writers want to send, they should at least have the decency to be up front about that message, and to defend it.

Side Costs

If the history of tax law is that there are always unintended consequences, the problem with this law is that the consequences are entirely predictable and mostly bad, and you and I, even though we are not in the billionaire club, will face them.

1. Price Effects: If there is a billionaire tax on unrealized gains, some or even many of these billionaires will have to sell portions of their asset holdings to pay taxes dues. There is no way that an Elon Musk would have been able to pay taxes on the unrealized gains on his Tesla holdings in 2020, without selling a portion of his holding. While there may be enough liquidity in a stock like Tesla to absorb that selling, there are other assets where the liquidity effect is going to be larger and more permanent.
2. Founder/Managers: One reason that investors prefer companies that have founders with substantial stock holdings running them is because they believe that there is less of a conflict of interest in these firms, than it those run by professional managers with little or now shareholdings. If this proposal is pushed through, and especially if the tax rate is set at capital gains levels, founders will have no choice but to reduce holdings over time, both to pay taxes and to shift to less traded assets.
3. Public to Private: As I said earlier, I am not sure how privately held businesses will be treated, for computing the billionaire tax, but if there is indeed a carve out for these businesses, I will predict that there will be more companies where rich founders will choose to take the company private again.

For those who view the tax code as an instrument to deliver pain, the only consolation prize will be that punishment is being meted out to those who "deserve" it the most, but I am afraid that it is a booby prize. With the billionaire tax, the intended targets will pay far less in taxes than you think they should and now that the door to unrealized profits being taxed has been opened, how do you know that you are not next on the target list?

Conclusion

I understand that those working on these tax code changes face a tough task, given the constraints that they have on them (not raising tax rates, not taxing people who make less than $400,000), but these are constraints that they imposed on themselves, either because too much was promised on campaign trails or because they are working with paper-thin majorities, where one hold out can stop the process. The problem with the billionaire taxes is that it will be ineffective at collecting tax revenues, and I am willing to wager that a decade from now, we will find that it collected only a small fraction of its promised revenues. Good intentions about creating a better social safety net cannot excuse the writing of tax laws that are inefficient at collecting revenues, ineffective even in their punitive intent and potentially dangerous for the rest of us, in terms side costs.

aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com /2021/10/the-billionaire-tax-worst-tax-idea-ever.html

 

[DEAD7]

I definitely prefer the billionaire tax to the unrealized gains tax

 

[[Something Cool]]

Setting the precedent to tax unrealized gains sounds like a horrible idea. So in order to keep your holdings or assets, you may have to sell some every year? How does that make sense?
And it’s laughable to assume that assets always appreciate.

While it's “targeted” now these things always expand. The Alternative minimum tax was passed under the guise of taxing 155 high income households in 1970, and now it hits Middle class households.

 

[FAH1223]

According to David Gamage, a tax law professor at Indiana University who has worked with Congress on tax proposals, around three-quarters of economic income will never be reported to the IRS under current law. The only way to get at wealth inequality in the U.S. is to deal with capital income.

Most of this money comes from having money, held in income-generating assets like stocks and other securities, debt contracts, and real estate. If a billionaire never sells these assets, and instead borrows against them until they die, they can get through life without they or their heirs ever paying a penny in tax on them.

Wyden’s team specifically homed in on reversing this dynamic of “buy, borrow, die.” The senator presented a white paper late in 2019 at the Center for American Progress, with several tax experts like Lily Batchelder and David Kamin who are now serving in the Biden administration. For two years, Wyden’s staff has been converting the concept into legislative language, first at a threshold of $1 million in income, and now at the current level of $1 billion in assets, or a consistent $100 million in income for three straight years. A Senate Finance Committee aide explained that aiming this at billionaires was what made the idea politically viable.

“In a package that’s supposed to be about giving everybody a shot to get ahead, it would be a big mistake, from both a policy and political perspective, not to ask billionaires to pay a fair share,” said Wyden in a statement.

For tradable assets like securities, those eligible would pay a “mark to market” capital gains tax of 23.8 percent on all increases in value within a calendar year regardless of whether they sell the asset, or get a deduction for an on-paper loss (which would probably only be eligible to use to offset future gains). There’s also a one-time tax on “built-in gain” at the time of enactment, based on fair market value of any tradable assets in a billionaire’s portfolio.

Sen. Wyden has said that this combination would yield “hundreds of billions” of dollars over a decade.

For nontradable assets like real estate or valuables or a business interest, taxes on capital gains would only trigger when a sale is made, just like today. But an added “deferral recapture amount” would be assessed, equal to the interest on what would have been owed in unrealized capital gains tax throughout the period that the asset was held. Wyden has said that this combination would yield “hundreds of billions” of dollars over a decade; the best estimates are somewhere between $200 billion and $500 billion. The Joint Committee on Taxation has not yet provided a score.

Because the tax would come later for nontradable assets, there’s some concern that the ultra-rich would shift their asset mix to delay payment. But the Senate Finance aide dismissed that, saying that someone like an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos would not sell all the stock in their own companies and buy a bunch of diamonds to evade taxes. (As a political matter, seeing Mitt Romney road-test this argument instantly demonstrates how ridiculous it sounds. You cannot tax billionaires because they will hoard diamonds?)

Other rules would be put in place to prevent avoidance, cracking down on gifts and trusts, for example. There’s the question of how a gutted IRS would enforce this, although $80 billion is made available in the Build Back Better Act for tax enforcement, to handle things just like this.

While Gamage, the tax law professor, said no tax works 100 percent perfectly, the billionaire’s tax at least attempts to prevent gaming and make the tax owed on tradable and nontradable assets equivalent. “The Billionaires Income Tax is about fairness and showing the American people taxes aren’t mandatory for them and optional for the wealthiest people in the country,” Wyden said.

As for the minimum corporate tax, this would fall on a (as-yet undefined) subset of large corporations, and would be based on the so-called “book profits” that public companies show to shareholders. Biden’s original proposal here called for a 15 percent minimum tax on companies with earnings over $2 billion annually, though Wyden has not released either the tax rate or the threshold level.

Wyden and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) released their plan in September to tax stock buybacks and levy partnerships with the net investment tax. The buyback tax would equal 2 percent of the money spent by the corporation buying back stock, which critics say distorts markets and boosts CEO compensation. The partnership rules, expanded in Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, have largely become tax avoidance vehicles, and adding taxes to them would recoup some of that.

Will the courts agree that this is allowable? This gets very complicated. Taxes on unrealized gains and even “mark to market” taxes exist in America today. If the Supreme Court threw out the Wyden tax, it would also have to throw out large chunks of the tax code. And as Gamage notes, even if the Court made a narrow argument that only this tax was unconstitutional, all that would mean is that the tax would have to be apportioned to states with an equal share according to population. With a social-spending bill like this, you could actually do that without too much trouble, as long as you instituted fallback measures to equalize apportionment through a residual tax. You could do that through a future reconciliation or even append that to this bill.

The measures signify the extremes of liberal tax-fairness messaging. At the individual level, they focus solely on the 1,000 or so households with over a billion dollars in assets as the new definition of the wealthy ($999 million doesn’t cut it). For corporations, they employ the talking point about large companies paying no taxes rather than getting all corporations to pay a fairer share. And buybacks, which could be eliminated by rule at the Securities and Exchange Commission, are instead kept around as a source of federal revenue.

But this inverts what presumably was Sinema’s intent—with her approval, by the way, as she’s been reputed to be working with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on these matters—of shielding the wealthy and corporations from paying up. Yes, many of them will be shielded, and if the state and local tax deduction cap is repealed for two years as has been rumored, some will even see a tax cut.

But whatever got Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to agree to these measures, they’ve now committed to attack the insanity of skyrocketing inequality at the very top that has persisted for decades, going precisely where the money is. If Congress goes along—and amazingly, the two loudest holdouts are doing so as we speak—it would be an approach to taxation that we haven’t seen in America in a long, long time.

 

[Starski]

The king of valuation posted on the coli .

I’m skeptical on this proposal from an efficiency standpoint … also “unintended” consequences.

I do believe once you use an asset as collateral to borrow against (usually at near 0 rates). It should then be considered income.

 

[AquaCityBoy]

Stephanie Ruhle: Proposed Billionaires Tax is ‘Nonsense’ (mediaite.com)

Stephanie Ruhle is a literal corporate dikkrider, so she would know.

 

[Conan]

All for it.

 

[FAH1223]

 

[ORDER_66]

I mean just look at who owns these penthouses and apartments on park ave and wonder WHY they was never taxed out the ass in the first place this country's tax laws have been bullshyt and they KNOW it!!!

 

[Consigliere]

I’d imagine that whatever tax scheme is being cooked up will be circumvented by Billionaires. Closing existing loopholes would be more impactful.

 

[DEAD7]

I’d imagine that whatever tax scheme is being cooked up will be circumvented by Billionaires. Closing existing loopholes would be more impactful.

 

[[Something Cool]]

I’d imagine that whatever tax scheme is being cooked up will be circumvented by Billionaires. Closing existing loopholes would be more impactful.

shyt, its probably being written by people they can easily influence or have worked for them in some capacity.

 

[inndaskKy]

This criticism is misguided because federal taxes are not for generating revenue. That's how you know whoever came up with all these irrelevant points is only serving the billionaire agenda.