Wonderful and just concept. You have taken on a massive task. Our current system is a cancer eating democracy. Kudos!
A few more background facts would help me better grasp magnitudes. 1. How much of a haircut would some multimillionaire like Bezos likely pay? And how many individuals/corps pay these taxes? 2. For the convincing part of the argument, approx how many tax preparers and lobbyists would have to find honest work? 3. Projected impact on IRS? Cost savings to public of not having to do all the paperwork?
I really wish we were finished with this mess and rebuild a rational and just democracy and could focus a national conversation on this transformation!
At a current average S&P500 (8%) your average multibillionaire would essentially pay the equivalent to the average market return as a function of their wealth, i.e., Musk @ ~$300 billion wealth would get hit with a yearly tax bill of $24 billion.
The idea is pretty straightforward: whatever they can make in excess of the average market return they get to keep as an increase to their wealth.
This would just about wipe out the tax preparer industry/IRS, but for those in charge of auditing wealth to make sure people aren't underreporting similar to what currently exists with income.
Most average people would be able to just get something similar to a 1099 from their insurance company showing the value of their car/home/etc. which for most people would add up to less than the exemption which at current numbers is close the $1M, meaning that for ~85% of US residents they would have a $0 tax bill, which they could probably file with a checkbox at the IRS website.
It would really be the most impactful if states were to also move to the Meritocracy Tax, as it would solve a whole lot of state issues like education funding being screwed up for people in poor neighborhoods since education tends to be funded locally via property taxes.
1. Is any other country using this system? If so, for how long?
2. Just curiosity--what's the tax structure like in Brazil, & what's your opinion of it? :)
Tax reform is a real nitemare. Everybody has an idea; & when it comes to money, everybody finds a rope to tug on to try to tip things their way. That's why changes rarely happen. But I guess we can always attempt it.
A few countries have net wealth taxes (like Spain, Norway and Switzerland), but they are not designed to be the single source of revenue, so the rates are lower though the exempt wealth is less than what my system is calculating.
There have been other countries that tried but gave about for different reasons.
I think one thing about what I'm offering that should be particularly advantageous is that there's no "rope to tug." All numbers used for calculating the taxation are based on total numbers for the country, like total population, total wealth, total budget, etc. There are literally no levers to give anyone any arbitrary advantage. It just self-adjusts based on those global variables. For example, as wealth inequality decreases, the tax becomes less concentrated on the wealthiest and vice versa. I'm happy to run a few scenarios if you'd like, just let me know.
I've run my tax model (the actual python code that's available in my github (link in the article) through ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini. They all say the math is good and the concept is viable, the hardest part being to just convince people to go for it.
This is a really great sounding plan, honestly.
Thanks for your reply. It will help me to spread your concept among my contacts.
Wonderful and just concept. You have taken on a massive task. Our current system is a cancer eating democracy. Kudos!
A few more background facts would help me better grasp magnitudes. 1. How much of a haircut would some multimillionaire like Bezos likely pay? And how many individuals/corps pay these taxes? 2. For the convincing part of the argument, approx how many tax preparers and lobbyists would have to find honest work? 3. Projected impact on IRS? Cost savings to public of not having to do all the paperwork?
I really wish we were finished with this mess and rebuild a rational and just democracy and could focus a national conversation on this transformation!
At a current average S&P500 (8%) your average multibillionaire would essentially pay the equivalent to the average market return as a function of their wealth, i.e., Musk @ ~$300 billion wealth would get hit with a yearly tax bill of $24 billion.
The idea is pretty straightforward: whatever they can make in excess of the average market return they get to keep as an increase to their wealth.
This would just about wipe out the tax preparer industry/IRS, but for those in charge of auditing wealth to make sure people aren't underreporting similar to what currently exists with income.
Most average people would be able to just get something similar to a 1099 from their insurance company showing the value of their car/home/etc. which for most people would add up to less than the exemption which at current numbers is close the $1M, meaning that for ~85% of US residents they would have a $0 tax bill, which they could probably file with a checkbox at the IRS website.
It would really be the most impactful if states were to also move to the Meritocracy Tax, as it would solve a whole lot of state issues like education funding being screwed up for people in poor neighborhoods since education tends to be funded locally via property taxes.
I like it. Good minds developing a sound simple system.
I just have two questions:
1. Is any other country using this system? If so, for how long?
2. Just curiosity--what's the tax structure like in Brazil, & what's your opinion of it? :)
Tax reform is a real nitemare. Everybody has an idea; & when it comes to money, everybody finds a rope to tug on to try to tip things their way. That's why changes rarely happen. But I guess we can always attempt it.
A few countries have net wealth taxes (like Spain, Norway and Switzerland), but they are not designed to be the single source of revenue, so the rates are lower though the exempt wealth is less than what my system is calculating.
There have been other countries that tried but gave about for different reasons.
I think one thing about what I'm offering that should be particularly advantageous is that there's no "rope to tug." All numbers used for calculating the taxation are based on total numbers for the country, like total population, total wealth, total budget, etc. There are literally no levers to give anyone any arbitrary advantage. It just self-adjusts based on those global variables. For example, as wealth inequality decreases, the tax becomes less concentrated on the wealthiest and vice versa. I'm happy to run a few scenarios if you'd like, just let me know.
Yes, this is a great idea! I was thinking of having billionaires pay 10% of their net worth every year, but this is easier, as you say ;)
Retirees?
What about retirees? There's much that can be said that relates to them, but I would need more to understand the question you have in mind.
ChatGPT was asked about taxing billionaires and concluded that a fair tax policy would yield 800B to 1T per year Those are BIG numbers
I've run my tax model (the actual python code that's available in my github (link in the article) through ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini. They all say the math is good and the concept is viable, the hardest part being to just convince people to go for it.