Treasury secretary came out against the proposed global levy, which proponents say would stop the rich from shifting wealth into countries where they can avoid paying the tax

  • blazera@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Trump is in trouble for wildly misvaluing his real estate (including openly lying about factual information like square footage)

    And people lie about income for income taxes. And then they get audited. A wealth tax doesnt have to be accurate to the dollar, its about dissuading gross wealth hoarding. A billion and 40 thousand can still round to a billion and be a very effective tax estimate.

    guessing at the wealth of some Bhutanese millionaire who has a deep in with the local government and can bribe officials to undervalue or misassign property would be extremely difficult.

    I dont think people in small low income countries like bhutan are going to affect this tax much. I would also assume this international tax would come with some form of international auditing.

    Thats the one thing working in our favor dealing with the people that have concentrated the worlds wealth into a few hands: its in a few hands. Its easy to keep track of.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      And people lie about income for income taxes. And then they get audited.

      The difference here is that we definitively know how much income people make by collecting that number at several steps in the process - since wealth isn’t transferred we only have the reporting party and estimations.

      If we’re okay being approximately correct that’s much more reasonable though.

      guessing at the wealth of some Bhutanese millionaire who has a deep in with the local government and can bribe officials to undervalue or misassign property would be extremely difficult.

      I dont think people in small low income countries like bhutan are going to affect this tax much.

      Bhutan was meant to be a non-controversial example let’s instead consider Russia, do you think Russia will aide or hamper the ability for the international community to tax their oligarchs… please keep in mind that their government is entirely composed of oligarchs that are currently sanctioned by most western countries. What about Brazil, do you think some millionaire with close ties to the government is going to be accurately reported? Or do you think Brazil has a motivation to keep that money underreported in favor of bribes - bear in mind Brazil’s long history of corruption.