That’s calculated value, it’s not taxed until sold so the book value of the shareholder will be the purchase price. It’s hard to tax stocks owned especially if they’re private and the price per share is not known until sold. In theory if you base it on the last sale price you could sell one share at 1 cent and then the whole business will be worth very little.
If you tax revenue it breaks business models that are mostly distribution. If you tax profit they do some accounting magic to have zero profit like Amazon which leaves very little. Capital gains tax means money will be less efficiently allocated and dividend tax makes businesses just do share buybacks.
I think land value tax is a great start and taxing the businesses net assets would also help in this case. Of course billionaires shouldn’t exist but it’s hard to wipe them out with taxes.
That’s calculated value, it’s not taxed until sold so the book value of the shareholder will be the purchase price. It’s hard to tax stocks owned especially if they’re private and the price per share is not known until sold. In theory if you base it on the last sale price you could sell one share at 1 cent and then the whole business will be worth very little.
If you tax revenue it breaks business models that are mostly distribution. If you tax profit they do some accounting magic to have zero profit like Amazon which leaves very little. Capital gains tax means money will be less efficiently allocated and dividend tax makes businesses just do share buybacks.
I think land value tax is a great start and taxing the businesses net assets would also help in this case. Of course billionaires shouldn’t exist but it’s hard to wipe them out with taxes.