Two prongs. One, tax loans against stock options and publicly traded shares. Two tax foreign investment dividends that constitute more than 10% of the total value of a publicly traded company. Step one makes them live off of dividends and realized assets. They can't live off other loans of other people's money and just keep hording assets, two pins them down and keeps them from trying to take their money and run to a tax haven.

They will eventually find a way around those, and you will have to adjust the tax code to accomodate, but that's going to be true regardless. It's a bit like digital hygene and cyber security. An endless arms race between states trying to build more effective risk management tools and people trying to exploit and the system and thus the people living within the system.

The biggest loophole they use is taking out loans and using stock as collateral. Stock is supposed to be unrealized so if it is used as part of ANY transaction it should instantly become taxable.

You have a special division of the IRS whose job is to identify the top few hundred wealthiest individuals and then tax them. These people wouldn't have to self report like the rest of us.

That’s the thing. If you pay people to figure it out, they will. It’s only through massive defunding that the IRS has become completely incompetent. They used to be quite good at their jobs.

I guess you tax assets more and salaries less - and work internationally to make tax avoidance harder and less profitable by taxing capital flows and by cracking down on tax havens.

Unless you can get a political consensus on it, I don't think an inheritance tax will be very effective. Tax planners will find a way to transfer the wealth before it gets inherited, helped by certain kinds of politicians whenever they have power.

Tax them? Nationalize their assets

In several different ways. The trick is to attack the problem of excessive wealth accumulation by making the system feed more aggressively on accumulated wealth.

A wealth tax is important to prevent the excess accumulation of capital. Money is only really working if it's in motion. Once it stops moving it stops adding value to the economy which is fine sometimes and in small amounts.

Tax disuse. Vacant real estate should be taxed extra. If they don't want it taxed it should be actively used in a non-extractive way. This means low impact agriculture, preservation, or occupancy not mining, dumping or logging.

Tax non-resident ownership. You can own as many houses as you want but each additional one beyond your primary residence is going to incur a scaling tax penalty. Two probably would be manageable Three would be difficult once you get to four and five houses you're going to find it extremely difficult to make any money. And the scaling tax penalty would apply to the most expensive one first.

If they're extracting resources from it or doing heavy agriculture they should be paying a premium and not externalizing wastes. They could be taxed to ensure compliance and enforcement is adequate. They should also be taxed in advance to fund potential cleanup of any toxic or environmental hazards. The money can be held in escrow but it needs to not be held by the same people who have a financial incentive to cut corners.

See I don't actually believe the problem is rich people or income inequality broadly it's the runaway effect of the accumulation of wealth in the absence of any kind of functional theory about how money is supposed to actually work in the economy.

There are people that are going to just work like crazy people and they will in any fair system acquire more resources than most other people.

I think in a fair system the people who are likely to end up with more resources would look very different than the people who end up with more resources in our systems.

Something people don't often understand about American dollars and American taxes is that the function of the government's tax policy is not to pay its bills. Our government doesn't need taxes to pay its bills. The function of the government collecting taxes is to delete money from the system.
They need to be deleting money from the places where there's too much of it. Otherwise that money crowds out legitimate money that is the representative of economic value produced through labor. If labor has no voice, then the economy stops functioning.

Listen the IRS has routinely made clear that every time it's forensic accountants get to sink their teeth into a billionaires financials, the return on that effort is enormous. Don't ask "how are going to tax billionaires," first demand that they actually BE taxed.

We'll figure it out later, man. Realistically, just have a team of specialists that focuses solely on the ultra-wealthy, and then let "unrealized gains" be taxed if they were ever used as collateral for a loan.

Land value tax and unrealized capital gains tax.

I was going to write about how an existing tax agency (the California FTB) is already aggressive at tracking down high-earning residents that leave the state -- whether in-fact or on-paper -- in order to collect precisely what the state is owed per the tax code. That is, the FTB already engages and challenges the precise amounts that these former residents write on their final California tax returns, with some more spectacular results being some incredibly detailed timelines for when someone finally stops being a resident in California, as defined in state law.

But then I noticed that because of California's proposed wealth tax (aka Billionaire Tax) on the November 2026 ballot, the SF Chronicle has already started a series of articles to answer the specific what-and-hows of the wealth tax. This is the first article, pertaining to enforcement, and it agrees that the FTB would be capable of pursuing any high-wealth individuals that the proposal would tax. https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/ca-billionaire-tax-mechanism-21330110.php

This proposed tax in California is written as a one-time tax, so the question of whether high-wealthy people could flee the state is nearly irrelevant, because either they're subject to the tax or they're beyond the reach of the US courts (eg Venus). Almost. The remaining questions are legal in nature, and don't really change how the tax would be pursued. Whether FTB simply hires a dedicated team or outsources to private investigators, the task is still straightforward: follow the money.

Unlike civil lawsuit plaintiffs, who have more limited means of chasing down a defendant's assets in order to get paid on a judgement, the California tax authorities enjoy the benefit of the subpoena power, that can be used to compel companies and banks to tell the tax authorities about where and how wealth is being held. It is, after all, a core power of a US state to administer a tax, especially when the tax is authorized directly from the sovereign power (ie the citizenry). Any other result would conflict with the very purpose of a republic: to unyieldingly serve the people.

Tax the total of any loans backed by speculative assets taken out in a one year period as both realized gains and income if they total more than 100x the average take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners (currently around $16k).

If they want higher loans without taxes, people have to be paid more.

There are two loopholes to close:

1. Capital gains taxes - income is income, not one guy pays 50% less tax than another based on how the money is defined. ie. plumber pays 45% taxes but if a guy invests in a plumbing shop, he only pays 30% or less. And for no good reason, hedge fund managers only pay CGT. Get rid of CGT and make lower income taxes.

2. Borrowing money against stock values -this is a huge form of tax evasion.

3, heavily tax any money taken offshore.

Taxing the ultra rich is easy. Taxing them without screwing over someone else in the process is hard. They can afford the best lawyers and accountants to find loopholes and still consider it cheap.

Wealth caps

Worldwide wealth caps

Start at 100 million..after a decade, lower that to 10 million

Anything, income, gift, whatever, over that goes 100% to taxes

Nobody had the right or need to be worth over 10 million dollars

Wealth caps are also an extremely simple solution, a very simple rule to add to the current system to fix so maby issues.

Governments will get so much more Income that they can immediately do free healthcare, free education, etc.

Nobody will have a huge amount of money, and as such, a huge amount of power anymore which will lower the chance of wars. With that we can significantly lower expenses to killing materials and instead focus on life

We can solve poverty, which, in addition to free mental health care, will also solve most crimes (yeah, crimes of passion will remain)

We can finally spend a huge amount of resources on climate change and fixing the environment around us!

We can make government funded non profit investment foundations for infrastructure projects, for independent journalism, etc so that we have great independent news and great infrastructure

A simple rule with so many great consequences...

But it would would require the rich allowing us to implement that simple rule. World wide. So it won't ever happen

With a large bladed machine.

outlaw wealth at 10x median, same way they have civil forfeiture for drug crimes in the US.

almost forgot... global corporation tax

there is no escape for weather hidden in companies and transferred around the world to avoid taxation

the current global corporation tax just the first step of destroying tax havens

America used to tax billionaires already in the 1900s. Nothing new to invent here.

100% of what they make over $1B.

Tax things they can't move like land and only things they pay for like jets, yachts, art...

EDIT: formatting

A potential mathematical approach to equal taxation that works in any country:

1. Calculate the average income of every citizen. Let A = the average income (amount per year)
2. Set a baseline tax amount for the average (e.g. 10%). Let P = baseline tax percentage
3. Given a person's income, calculate how far above or below they are compared to the average. Let I = a person's income. We can calculate the difference, D, with D = I - A. A positive value means the person's income is above average, whereas negative is below.
4. Calculate the difference as a percentage. Let Q = D / A
5. Calculate the percentage of the tax percentage. This will determine how much more or less a person will have to pay: R = Q * P
6. Finally, calculate the person's unique tax amount: T = P + R. If R was a positive value, that means the person will pay more. If R was a negative value, they pay less. If R = 0, they pay the base amount.

Example: Let's say the average income per year is $50,000 USD, and the baseline tax rate is 10%

So A =50,000 and P = 10% / 100 = 0.1

Given a person's income: $30,000/yr:

I = 30,000

Calculate the difference:

D = 30,000 – 50,000 = –20,000

Q = –20,000 / 50,000 = –0.4 (–40%)

Calculate how much more/less the person pays:

R = –0.4 * 0.1 = –0.04 (–4%)

Calculate the unique tax amount:

T = 0.1 + (–0.04) = 0.1 – 0.04 = 0.06 (6%)

There might be a better set of formulas, but this is what I came up with. Let me know if I made a mistake in my math.

At gunpoint.

100% inheritance tax on any value over 5 million, and slam shut any loopholes that get found.

Force them to either spend it stimulating the economy or give it up to society directly.

An incremental step would be to look at the tax cuts of the last few decades, and role them back. That especially includes other types of income and passthroughs

As someone who has participated in startups, the options and shares market is a rigged game. We also need to restore rules for the ultra wealthy so they play the same game as we do

5% wealth tax, and no loans for corpos or other orgs, only for humans and even then it would be considered a charity (meaning if they default money goes puff), this would mostly be coming from tax that was collected earlier.

Also no patents, only open source research. So people can set up bussinesses easily and anywhere, buyers will pay for labour.

We already know how to grow food and build houses, let's end these issues first and only then focus on advancing science and tech, and any advancement should be for betterment of all humanity, not for individualistic gains.

Super simple. Inheritance tax is enormous. You have the right to pass on as many "upper middle class trust funds for life" as you would like, but no other wealth of any kind is inherited.

It's actually easy if you think about it.

Rich people love comparing their wealth to others, so they can feel better about themselves. So we know quite precisely how much each billionaire is worth, cause they really like measuring those dicks.

Anyways, we can use this against them. You just tax the wealth. Not the income. Not the surplus or the profit. You tax the wealth.

For instance, during the Danish election, there were some parties who proposed the idea of a wealth tax such that all wealth above, say 30 million DKK would be taxed by 0.5% to 1% (depends what party you ask) every year. Someone worth 100 million Danish kroner would therefore need to pay 70*0.01 million or 700.000 kroner in taxes every year.

You could do more than 1% and 30 million for billionaires if you ask me.

Take all of it every year. They are claiming that they are smartest people on this planet so they figure something out.

Take their moneys.

the only sure way is to abolish private property and give the businesses to the workers

Not exactly a solution for the ultra rich oligarchs, but a progressive consumption tax would be a good policy. It would be applied as a sales tax on everything, everyone would get regular rebate checks to cancel out the tax on spending up to the exemption. It could make all the megayachts more expensive.

I would confiscate their rocket ships and satellites. All yachts designated as navy or coast guard. You could also do one of those lies about the stock market so it can be mutilated and raped to bring more profit, but for the citizenry, so it's a good thing. /s

There's just an upper limit on what any one person can own.

Ten houses, one private airplane, one yacht, and $100 million worth of 'stuff.'

No more than 1% of any company.

That's just off the top of my head for discussion. Feel free to jiggle with the numbers.

Like the French.

I would do a small transaction tax like 1% that should hopefully put the brakes on short term trading and tax inheritance the same as lottery winnings. Tax investment the same as income. for corps tax them based on their entire holdings right up to their top owner with all its subsidiaires but they can deduct any tax they pay in authorized countries (so the way we do sanctions now we could take away their taxes being able to be deducted).

In my opinion, you'd establish a number that is the max amount anyone would need in a region per year, let's say 1 million. For one million you could finance a place to live, a car, food for you and your family, hobbies and maybe a trip or two. Then multiply that by three. Just to shut down the ones who'd argue. Three times what ever the amount of money anyone would need is an obscene amount of money per year. Everything else goes to 1) the state to regulate the quality and cost of the community, and 2) entities that generate value and has jobs

Set up a flat tax to close to 40%.

Can be paired with an automatic credit for around half of the poverty line.

Tax=(income × 0.40) - (poverty / 2)

The poor people get a negative income tax, while the people who earn more pay more.

No capital gains or any other loophole.

If somebody owns shares of $company_A, they have to pay 1% of the shares annually, which become public property. This way, the means of production (company shares) slowly become public property over time.

I wouldn't tax rich in any special way.

I'd get rid of all income taxes, and tax the shit out of luxury good consumption

With bullets. On all of them.

Take the number advertised on the Forbes list and their self reported number. Tax then according to which is the higher.

Tax unrealised gains on holdings annually not on realisation. Tax banks for giving loans against stock holdings, with rate of interest under 2%.

Tax stock when it is given for bonus or pay package. The gov gets the top end tax rate with of the stock to be sold over the next 12 months.

ultra 1040 without lawyers to drive buses through loopholes

Wealth tax and land value tax

One rifle per family.

At least until the bottom 50% has as much as the top 50%

"Give us half your money or give us half your scalp"

Make assets not count towards wealth.

What's that? Your wealth can't be taxed because they're not really money? Oh, I guess you're not really rich then. No Forbes lists for you :(

I fall to see any argument for one person controlling even 8 digits, much less any more.

If you have even half a million of disposable money to spend, you shouldn't be even close to be allowed a loan in any form. Being rich shouldn't be a collateral for more money.

Given that it's a common way they increase their worth, they should be barred from utilizing it.

Every dollar past 10 million should be gone right off the top, no exceptions.

Enacting it should either be completely secret, or enforced on everyone here now, regardless of where they move after this point.

That payday would fix a lot of immediate problems.

Bring obscenely rich should be meet with obscene "punishment". At least they would call being cut down to size punishment.

I'd argue that stealing that much wealth and health care should be a capital crime. If I could bring them back so they could experience a capital punishment more than once, that would be justified IMO. That's a harder sell to some, but there are no billionaires that should be allowed to live. Even the squeakiest clean (ethically speaking) one should be taxed and fined out of existence.

Attainder.