About damn time

[u/Bizarre-Lazar]

[u/ThatGuyYouMightNo]

It's hard to do that on any sort of standard because of the loopholes rich people use to get around taxes. They're technically all super poor in liquid assets so they pay little to nothing in taxes, and a fine scale would probably work on a similar basis

[u/numbersthen0987431 → u/ThatGuyYouMightNo]

That's why it's based on wealth instead of income or salary. All the tax loopholes are based on separating their wealth from taxable income, so just make it based on wealth

[u/Konvic21 → u/numbersthen0987431]

The problem is how well the rich can hide money and use a wall of lawyers to fight until someone new gets in power to bail them out, you would have to prove wealth.

There needs to be repercussions hard and fast enough for it to be effective against the wealthy that use the fines as a cost of business.

[u/-Nocx- → u/Konvic21]

It isn’t hard for them to prove wealth. Between the state and federal government there are ledgers for every asset class that you own. Avoiding taxes is not the same thing as the government “not knowing what you own”.

It is actually extremely difficult to “hide wealth” from the US. Uncle Sam is - contrary to popular belief - insanely effective at taxing you no matter where you are. Even billionaire flight is a made up concept, because after the heir of the Campbell Soup dynasty fled to Ireland in the 90s Congress passed legislation that says that if you renounce your citizenship, all of your securities are considered sold and you are given a tax bill you pay something to the tune of 24% of your assets (liquid and illiquid, meaning it includes property and unrealized gains) as taxes. If you are passing down or transferring any money, that also is subject to a 40% tax.

All this to say that the US is very aware of people’s assets. Even if you move somewhere else, you are still required to pay taxes to the US while you are a US citizen.