alt Hacker NewsYou're right, the origin of this thread was making an argument about all taxes on capital, not just capital gains. I missed that, I guess because nobody mentioned wealth taxes specifically and it's fairly rare for taxes on capital to mean anything other than capital gains tax. Mea culpa.
> The startup wealth tax problem has another solution: allow payment in non-voting startup shares, instead of liquid cash
This is an excellent idea! Did you come up with this yourself or have you heard of others proposing it?
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airstrike • last Monday at 10:39 PM
No, it's a terrible idea, because the value of those shares isn't observable and therefore remains undefined until sold.
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I came up with it myself. It's possible there's prior art but nothing that I've read personally.
I don't think it's a particularly revolutionary idea because sovereign wealth funds already exist. Improving productivity means using less labor which means lower income tax revenues as time goes on (and that's what you want - higher productivity, fewer labor inputs).
And yet, the government needs revenue. What's growing? Wealth. Liquidating wealth to pay taxes is problematic. Hence the sovereign wealth fund. You can apply this to most forms of wealth - even publicly traded stock, real estate, crypto, and artwork.
I've proposed it on this site several times in the past.