• Wrench@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    High minded speeches? Seriously? There are plenty of feasible options.

    If it’s a public company, you can take the median price for the quarter. If they’re holding over $500,000 or whatever amount as calculated by the median share price, they’re taxed. You can make it tiered, and tax the shit out of anyone holding over $500m or whatever. If they want to avoid that tax, they can sell, and pay the capital gain.

    Or they could tie it to % over median employee shares granted per year. So if you have lopsided profit sharing, tax the fuck out of the greedy C level.

    Private is harder since it’s less obvious what the tangible value is. But you could use the % shares granted yearly again. Maybe have it tiered to a companies net worth or whatever other metric that would be most appropriate.

    It’s fucking ridiculous that we have articles like “Bezos lost $1 billion after shares took a dive this week” kind of articles. That’s a single person hording billions and billions in shares while the workers doing the actual work get pennies.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Most stocks are in mutual funds and ETFs. So if I have a million dollars, but I only own like $500 worth of any one company…?

      • Wrench@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        … is that seriously what you’re talking about? You can’t imagine being able to estimate the worth of traditional investments? That’s already implemented.

        You already pay capital gains on what you earn in a year. It would be very easy to factor those investments into a wealth tax. Like… trivial.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Explain then. Would you have to calculate your equivalent net worth throughout the year and pay monthly taxes on it?

          I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying it’s very difficult.

          • Wrench@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yearly would be fine, but it could be done quarterly to. The capital gains tax on stock profits is already done quarterly.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              You know what, I’ve thought about it some more and you have a point. Securities valuation could be averaged out over a period of time and then treated as cash reserves for taxation purposes. That’s actually not as difficult as I thought it might be. Minor additional burden on investment firms.