Fine, he pays some of that to the government, and maybe sells slightly more. I don't see the problem.
If, in fact, your wealth only comes from ownership in a company and you have no other source of wealth, then yes you would be encourages to sell your shares to pay the wealth tax.
I don't see why this is a problem. That's kinda the point of a wealth tax, that yes you do get taxed on your wealth.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-bezos/bezos-is-sell...
Yes, I would expect that if I had 100k shares of amzn (300 million dollars of net worth), and we implemented a wealth tax, the IRS would tell me "You have to pay us $300k or so" each year on that wealth. If that means I sell some stock, then sure. That means, btw, if I live 60 more years and gain zero more dollars of wealth, I still have 280 million dollars left of my original 300 mil. I still have plenty of shares left.
You clearly don't understand the point of a wealth tax or how the rate rises progressively with wealth it is if you don't understand why we'd be taxing ownership of wealth, and why this wouldn't negatively impact most people.
> If that is the case no one would ever buy any shares of any company...
I currently don't have over 50M of net worth. A wealth tax would not impact me, so I'd still buy stock just as I do now, with no difference. If my stocks did so well that I had millions of dollars, I'd now be able to pay a wealth tax, and have on problem with that. I'd also keep buying stocks if they got me from a net worth of almost nothing to $50M, and all I had to do was pay a small percentage each year along the way.
I used that number since that was the number the parent comment saw as being obviously too much already, so I didn't need to use a higher number.
I do think 0.1% would already be pretty appreciable. That's already several 10s of billions a year. The current budget for all of the IRS is on the order of 10s of billions now, so I really doubt adding that new tax would be a net-loss.
And, of course, once you have a wealth tax and the sky doesn't fall, tweaking the number up over time is easier.
And if I have my shares, I don't want to sell them. I currently own X number of shares of dozens of companies, I don't have IRS breathing down my neck to sell them, why should Bezos have them breathing down his?! I pay taxes when I sell my shares, not just due to the fact that I own them...
That's the point of a wealth tax, to in fact tax that checking account too. You seem to misunderstand how it would work and what the intent is. It doesn't treat your checking account differently from company ownership; both are wealth, a wealth tax suggests taxing both.
> I don't have IRS breathing down my neck to sell them, why should Bezos have them breathing down his?
You shouldn't if you're not wealthy (as in you have under 20 mil net worth). If you're wealthy, you can afford to pay a wealth tax, and your money will help those poorer.
Why shouldn't we be taking money from the rich and helping the entire country? Why should our country continue to have a wider and wider economic divide?
Anyway, the IRS absolutely would breath down your neck to give them money if you owed them taxes. If all your assets were stock, and you somehow triggered a large tax liability, you'd have to sell some stock to pay the IRS. That's already true. It's perfectly possible to trigger a tax liability larger than your liquid assets now, and have to sell stock to cover it.
But that's rare now. And with a wealth tax that would still be rare. Most people with 20MM+ net worth have liquid assets, or the ability to easily liquidate assets.
You're arguing about an edge case that almost certainly doesn't effect you in any way.
