April 2, 2019
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, announced today that he would soon release a proposal to eliminate massive tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthy on their capital gains income. If successful, the proposal would ensure that income from wealth is taxed just like income from work.
His plan, which he has promised to flesh out in a white paper in the coming weeks, would tax the appreciation of assets owned by the very wealthy as income each year, an approach known as mark-to-market taxation. It would also subject that income to ordinary tax rates rather than special, lower income tax rates that apply to capital gains.
https://itep.org/sweeping-reform-would-tax-capital-gains-like-ordinary-income/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-democrat-proposes-annual-tax-on-unrealized-capital-gains-11554217383
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:27AM (4 children)
Even more interesting, what about real estate capital loss.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:45AM (1 child)
Yeah, about that.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Insightful) by NPC-131072 on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:31AM
More about $500,000 capital gains allowance for a married couple flipping their home.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:58PM (1 child)
But having said that, I don't mind an annual capital gains tax as long as it properly handles losses (and the other stuff), that is, treats it like negative income which the government will pay back taxes for (or at least carry over indefinitely). Else you'll get market dysfunction every time a large downturn happens. Sellers have less reason to sell, since they'll lose negative gains. Long term buyers are going to be more reluctant to enter a market because their short term gains would be taxed next year while they won't see the liquidity to pay for the long term investment for some time. Anything that kills interest by either side to trade is a strong indication it's a bad policy.
I think the bigger problem will be non-market investments. How can you mark-to-market when there's no market? I think it'd be terrible to create a considerable incentive for the wealthy to abandon the markets (and the tax avoidance industry to increase its revenue).
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday April 08 2019, @12:29AM
We already have some unrealized capital gains taxed at supposedly mark to market. Namely real estate taxes are going up as values are assessed by the local government. Note that when prices are going down, no adjustments are made.
In my case I am still a quarter million down, while my taxes are up. In 2009 they simply adjusted the value twice down, while increasing the taxes twice up to end up with approximately the same dollar number and increase it ever since.
Meantime I lost $250K and my bank wants it back and refuses short sale deal because I can pay. The story of the rich right here. It'd be nice if I could deduct all of it from my income.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:28AM (11 children)
I'm 60, been watching congress for a good 40 years. Whenever they say "sock it to the rich" they seem to squarely hit the middle class right in the balls, and the rich have tax lawyers to dodge the effects. I don't remember what an "unrealized capital gain" is (I sold all my stocks 4-5 years ago cuz, well, I'm old and don't have a long term horizon anymore), but I know I used it on my tax returns.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:20AM (10 children)
If you invest money in assets, you only pay the CGT when you sell an asset at a profit. The rules for selling an asset for a profit is that you liquidate the asset (sell it for cash or cash equivalents). An "unrealized capital gain" is when the asset has increased on paper, but has not been liquidated. The reason why some people propose the UCGT is that many of the really wealthy own assets and then hold them forever. Therefore, most of their wealth won't have a taxable event until the asset is worthless, until their death, or the ILC, RIET, ILIT, etc. terminates (which can literally be never).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:57AM (1 child)
And what is the problem with that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:52PM
I'm not saying there is or isn't a problem with it; I'm just explaining what the CGT is, what the UCGT is, and why some people want them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:48AM (4 children)
In which case the owner never received any actual money from the "asset" - so what are you taxing?
Probably they got some indirect, intangible benefits from having an inflated "net worth" - it would certainly "open doors" shall we say - but how do you put a value on that? Anyhow, the people who know how to leverage their net worth in that way are the same people who will take 5 whole minutes to find an end-run around any new tax. Maybe liberals should be concentrating on stopping discrimination against people based on "net worth" - I dunno, like some way of getting non-negligible interest if you have less that a quarter of a million bucks to invest, or lenders taking a fairer share of the risk on loans?
Meanwhile, a tax like this will affect your pension fund, drive up your insurance costs and affect anything else in your life that indirectly depends on equity investments (even if you don't know it). I wouldn't want to guess what effect it will have on property prices and rents - but anything that changes the balance of investor behaviour will affect property (even/especially if property itself is excluded from the tax) and its the little guy who is always on the losing end of that deal.
There's also the catch that the very existence of these 'unrealised gains' depend on a lot of people not realising them. If too many people try, those gains will just evaporate. So this proposal is taxing money that doesn't actually exist - so at best its another way of printing money (with all that entails), at worst it turns the economy into even more of a pyramid scheme that it already is...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:29PM
Are you sure that isn't the goal. Almost all the policies of the republicrats seem geared towards keeping the ponzi going, which means growing it to ever more absurd levels.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:47PM
Sounds like a bluff I'm willing to call. My take is that it'll have the very opposite effect. Attempts to realize the gains on pyramid schemes (that is, when the marks start heading for the exits) are a very quick way to end the pyramid scheme.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @02:23AM (1 child)
Is it possible to access the value of that asset without paying taxes against it? Like collateralizing a low interest loan against the value of the asset? Some searching suggests that this can be accomplished with a transfer-of-title loan (from this page [stocksloan.net]):
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Monday April 08 2019, @03:07PM
Yes, that's the sort of thing I meant by 'opening doors'. But what sum are you proposing to tax? Lets say you bought shares for $1M, the value rose to $1.5M, and you then used that as collateral to get a loan at 1%. Your only "gain" will come from the difference between that 1% interest rate and some hypothetical, higher, rate that you might have got with only $1M in collateral. That's going to be impossible to calculate or police. If there's some way to exploit that mechanism to (effectively) cash in your shares without cashing them in then there has to be a bit more to it (I wouldn't be surprised - e.g. what happens if you default on the loan - if you can walk away, and the lender keeps the shares without CGT getting paid then, yes, you have a tax dodge)
...and, always remember before shaking down Richie Rich for some extra cash, this might also be the sort of thing that Mrs Miggins' pension fund manager does to manage their cashflow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @08:11PM (2 children)
Doesn't that screw over frugal people who invest as much money as possible so they can retire early, though? You'd have to have progressive UCGT tax brackets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @07:53AM (1 child)
Depends on how they invest. Most people would probably use a 401(k), 403(b), employer-provided DBP, IRA, ILIT, Roth accounts, (and a few other limited instruments), or a combination of the above. They are already exempt from CGT or have all sorts of special rules already for when they can be taxed. The UCGT would only hit assets owned outside of them; and other than real estate and certain other property (which already has a yearly value tax, let alone a CGT) most people only own a small amount of assets that would be subject to a CGT, realized or otherwise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @06:11PM
"Most people would probably use a 401(k), 403(b), employer-provided DBP, IRA, ILIT, Roth accounts, (and a few other limited instruments), or a combination of the above."
most sycophantic slaves...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:37AM (33 children)
Tax high-frequency trades. Not much, just 0.1% per trade. Those guys are playing with the US economy like it's their personal, private casino.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by old kiwi on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:49AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:36AM
No, just ditch HFT and futures trading. Absolutely not the "real economy" and should be isolated as gambling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by black6host on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:44AM
Personal private casino? Absolutely! It's helpful though to look back on history and see what drives all this. We're no different than we were 2000 years ago. We just have the capacity to kill earth. All the while taking the short term gains at the casino...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stretch611 on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:58AM (2 children)
High Frequency trades are actually realized gains/losses, on the actual trade. So, the " mark-to-market tax concept" where taxes are applied annually would not apply.
However, increasing the maximum capital gains tax to the tax bracket of the seller would apply and make a difference on HFTs.
Taxing HFTs was not mentioned in the linked articles. However, I am agreeable with that idea... Personally I would extend that to any security held less than one full year... even add a 0.1% fee on the market value of losses sold in less than one year. IMHO, if you regularly hold stocks for less than a year, you are gambling, NOT investing. And because a lot of people hold stocks for such a short period of time, we get board of directors more interested in short term gains for a quick stock bump than long term investment in the actual company for greater gains later.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:22AM
I agree: tax HFTs. But I would go farther, and have a scaling tax on stock sales. As other posters have pointed out, one really wants to encourage long-term investment, as opposed to short-term gambling. The squawks of the HFT companies that they are "adding liquidity" to the market is crap - the stock market worked just fine before they existed. So, a scaling tax: Hold an asset for less than a minute: pay 100% tax on the transaction value. Hold an asses for less than an hour, pay 50%. Less than a day, 25%. Anything held for a year or more has no transaction tax at all.
That said, Ryden does have a point: If you are rich enough, you can live off of your wealth while paying virtually no taxes. There is a genuine argument that multigenerational wealth needs to be broken up. If you, yourself, manage to make $billions, more power to you. However, what benefit does society have, by allowing your wealth to establish a dynasty? If he can figure out a way to break up multigenerational dynasties, more power to him. However, it isn't likely - at that level, the dynasties establish trusts and "charities", or just move their wealth to overseas tax havens.
Unfortunately, it is far more likely that Ryden's idea will simply be a sneaky way to tax people's retirement accounts, thus nailing the middle class yet again.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:09AM
This is already the way taxes work in the US. Capital gains are split into "short-term" and "long-term" where the line between the two is holding the asset for at least a year. "Short-term" gains are taxed as normal income, not at the favored capitol gains rate used for long-term gains.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:46AM (13 children)
Obviously written by someone who has zero idea what they are talking about.
HFTs are basically 100% a force for good. HFTs provide tremendous liquidity to the overall market and stabilize prices through arbitrage. Without HFTs the market would be far more volatile and hostile to small investors. But hey, they're all just a bunch of dirty capitalists who deserve to have their wealth seized, right?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:22PM (12 children)
LOL. HFTs do not benefit anyone who is not involved in HFTs. And the barriers to entry are so high that only a tiny percentage of market participants are in the HFT club.
HFTs are a scourge on the market and should be taxed per transaction if not outlawed completely.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:19PM (11 children)
That's the argument in a nutshell. We can apply it everywhere. Climate change mitigation doesn't benefit me. Widespread measles vaccination doesn't benefit me. Peace and prosperity in far away lands don't benefit me. If it doesn't benefit me, then why do it, right? But then there's the zero sum thinking. If someone is doing something that I'm not benefiting from, then it must be harming me instead.
Where's the evidence?
I think this is more of the same zero sum thinking. I now have to invent a reason why said activity needs to be banned/penalized.
My view on this is that HFT is almost purely a mutual consent activity like having sex. Sorry, Mom and Pop aren't getting robbed by microsecond traders or any of the other nonsense that is routinely attributed magically to HFT.
So we're in a democracy, right? And we're talking about voluntary activities that don't hurt anyone outside of the narrow little group (aside possibly from a slight cost to a few big traders who couldn't be bothered to make their trading HFT-proof). That means to me absolutely no reason to ban or penalize the activity.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:25PM (10 children)
You're full of shit. Climate change mitigation benefits you in a myriad of ways (keeping the food belts stable for example; do you really want the US to become unable to feed itself and Russia to be the world's breadbasket as Siberia thaws?). Widespread vaccination benefits you through herd immunity, and what happens if you suddenly become immunocompromised through, for example, an organ donation or HIV? Peace in far-off lands benefits you because the economy is now global, and the fewer knockon effects the better, as countries at war don't do much trading.
You're even worse than zero-sum: you're 100% selfish, and not even rational or far-sighted about it. People like you are a scourge when they become politicians, and I thank my lucky stars that you have no control over anything of more consequence than your own porn habits. You don't know shit, you don't know THAT you don't know shit, and the permanent case of Dunning-Krugeritis that comes with it makes you inflict yourself on all and sundry around you, necessitating people like me to do the memetic decontamination for anyone caught in the blast radius.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:08PM (9 children)
Climate change doesn't destabilize such things very quickly. It's like being concerned that people will drown from a normal tide. If we couldn't adapt on the fly to such things, there would be thousands of drownings every day from people who couldn't figure out that they needed to move a little towards the shore to keep their head above water. But the thing is, we already adapt to a lot of stuff without explicitly realizing it.
Finally, it's absurd to claim that the US will be unable to feed itself from slight climate change. We already grow a ridiculous multiple of excess food and would have generations to adapt to climate change.
Suppose I had measles recently? Don't need herd immunity then. Point is, you can always find someone who doesn't benefit from immunizations.
Hypothetically, I might actually lose my job because of that peace. I work doing no skill widgets. Now, country X resolved its civil war and can make those widgets cheaper. Bad for me. Point is that even actions with lots of social benefit, real or imagined, will have people who don't benefit from those actions for various reasons. Should we then ban or penalize them on the basis that they don't benefit everyone to the last person?
Sorry, you got it wrong again. And recall, if you can, that I was criticizing an AC whose only concrete complaint was that a small number of people benefited from HFT. I wasn't the one being selfish here.
I can't help but notice how utterly irrelevant your post is, even if you can't.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 08 2019, @12:59AM (8 children)
You truly do not understand how interconnected everything is. That's fine; things move nice and slow until suddenly they don't anymore. You'll find out. And when you do, you will envy the dead, who by that point I sincerely hope will include me. Ignorance must truly be bliss...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday April 08 2019, @02:28AM (7 children)
Sorry things aren't that interconnected.
Will your feelz push things over the tipping point? Because nobody, including you, has shown that there is a fast mode to climate change. In fact, what I keep hearing from the hype is that climate is changing faster than anyone has seen before. So it's already at its fastest, allegedly, and that's at least an order of magnitude slower than anything that would strain society's resources in the developed world, which let us note is expanding due in large part to productive use of fossil fuels.
OR my society will adapt to these slight changes, possibly without even noticing that they happened.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 08 2019, @02:39AM (6 children)
Idiot. The change itself isn't what I'm talking about; it's the systems that depend on certain parameters staying within a certain range. You don't know what the hell you're talking about, as usual. I'm not even going to bother explaining to you how buffer solutions work and how this relates to the ocean's acidity; it'd be pearls before swine. Shut up and piss off.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday April 08 2019, @06:00PM (2 children)
Ok, what makes you think that observation is relevant? You ever going to bring out any evidence? I'll note that no one has shown that 1.5 C above beginning of Industrial Age, for a glaring example of the hysteria present here, is necessary to our range, much less that of ecosystems we rely on. But it's a real convenient threshold for demanding that we do something now.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:22AM (1 child)
Here's an easy one: with a few degrees Celsius change, all that methane under Siberia and Alaska and trapped in clathrates in the oceans is going to fart itself back into the atmosphere, and then you'll see some *real* thermal fireworks. Methane is way the hell worse than CO2 for trapping IR-spectrum radiation. It would only take a small amount of actual warming to set that off; this is one of those knock-on effects I was talking about.
Imagine what happens if the US Midwest becomes an arid desert and Russia suddenly gets, in the form of Siberia, the world's largest stretch of arable land. Do you really want to live in that geopolitical reality? And that's to say nothing of what happens when just about everywhere within 20 degrees of the equator becomes literally unsurvivable in the summer; think of the massive migrations to the north.
You foolishly focus only on the single, simple fact of rising temperatures, and don't think about how fragile and interconnected and multilayered our civilization is. This is why I say you not only do not argue in good faith on this matter, but *cannot.* You lack the capacity, the intellectual honesty, the imagination, or some combination of the above to take in the real scope of the problem. Your posts on the subject have a signal to noise ratio just slightly under that of a long, wet beer fart.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:59AM
How many such degrees? I notice that most of that sort of research ignores the water that's been thrown on the ocean deposits. Higher pressure means higher temperature required till something happens.
I can imagine all kinds of things. But what's actually going to happen? Maybe we should start thinking about that instead.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday April 08 2019, @06:02PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:18AM (1 child)
Fuck me sideways with a sandblaster, you actually said "let all the brown people die of starvation, disease, and heatstroke" in code and thought we'd all be too dumb to pick up on the meaning behind your dogwhistling. What is it with you fucking nutbars and your persistent delusions of being the smartest people in the room? Do you really think we can't hear your real feelings loud and clear?
You know, the mitigations don't have to lead to overpopulation. Nothing slows down the fertility rate like a rising standard of living, haven't you noticed? When people aren't having 10 kids because 7 will die of malaria or yellow fever, guess what: overpopulation stops being an issue.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:57AM
Sorry, you just placed yourself well below that threshold of stupidity.
I never had that delusion. Sounds like you'd have more luck thinking than being defensive here. You're amazingly wrong.
Indeed. They could come up with mitigation that actually mitigates, for starters. But when one looks at the actual mitigation proposals one sees a remarkable lack of interest in outcome. It doesn't matter that Germany or Denmark double the cost of their electricity while doing nothing to reduce their carbon footprint. It doesn't matter that everyone is funding renewable energy projects guaranteed to go nowhere. The huge drawbacks to unreliable energy sources or their high cost don't matter. In other words, there's a group of people who have this idea about what is right, and they're willing to drive the rest of the world into poverty to get it, even if their efforts don't actually do anything about climate change in the process. Poverty is what will generate the overpopulation problem.
Practice what you preach.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:56AM
That's a very old idea: The Brits have been doing that since the 1600's, and the US did it for a few decades in the early 20th century thanks to FDR. In both cases, it worked more-or-less as predicted.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:00PM (7 children)
Or we could not do that. No one has ever come up with how HFT is supposed to be bad for the US economy. It's not magic, somehow detecting your trades before you make them. It's not crashing markets all the time. And the number of zeros in trade volume are completely irrelevant to anyone outside of a few traders in the stock market. That's why HFT whining fell off the radar a few years back.
Further, taxing stuff because someone doesn't like it is a terrible idea. If you strain yourself, Azuma, you might be able to think of something you do on occasion that someone else would love to tax. I would start with your homosexual inclinations and go from there. "Gay people are harmful for the US economy with their hard work, out-there creativity, and corrupting the youth of America. We need to tax 'em!!!"
My view is that the gear developed for HFT and the trade strategies developed by themselves more than make up for any harm HFT is supposedly causing to the US economy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:06PM (6 children)
Your view is full of shit, as your head is lodged permanently somewhere between your duodenum and your sigmoid colon. Fuck off, you worthless bootlicker. You are not elite and you never will be, and if the elite even noticed your disgusting fawning over them, they wouldn't thank you for it; they'd laugh in your face and call you the sucker you are.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:17PM (5 children)
I don't face ignorance for the benefit of some elite. I'm not interested in such games. I've corrected you before and you've ignored that correction before.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:27PM (4 children)
Sorry, what? I can't hear you with all the slobber and shoe polish dripping off the end of your tongue. Sounds like you're in denial of what we can all see you actively doing...? Odd.
Also, for your future benefit: an ad hominem is when someone substitutes insults for arguments. I am *supplementing* my arguments with insults; therefore, I am not committing an ad hom, just being a Nasty Woman (TM) as usual.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:44AM (3 children)
Let's fix your ignorance here. An ad hominem is when someone uses an irrelevant quality or description of a person as a way to refute their arguments.
The problem is you don't have anything substantial to go with those insults.
I find it telling that you feel the need to correct me on my imaginary accusations of ad hominems even though no one has accused anyone of ad hominems in the entire discussion! This is an example of a red herring [wikipedia.org], introducing something irrelevant to distract from the topic at hand.
Let's face it, you're just a complete fuck up when it comes to reason or logic. It's clear that you could be otherwise - sometimes you get it and those posts are great, but well, horses and water.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:45AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:13AM (1 child)
Oh no, don't misunderstand; your arguments are wrong because history has shown them to be. You are a bootlicking traitor *on top* of being wrong. That doesn't make you any more wrong, it just makes you that much more contemptible and pathetic.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:00AM
The same pattern of bullshit as always. Funny how you can never ever specify an actual example of this alleged behavior.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday April 07 2019, @08:34PM (3 children)
+10000 to this...not so much to make tax revenue as to make the practice vanish like the fucking cancer it is. To make matters worse, the companies doing it pay for faster network access to the data, which is for all practical purposes, legalized insider trading ffs. There is NOTHING good about this one, and the last I heard, it made up something like 75% of all the trades that occur.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:46PM (2 children)
Just to recap: HFT is when you place an order to buy a stock, they receive your order and in the time between ordering and buying they buy the same stock (lower than your price, if they can) and sell it to you (higher if they can). If they can't make this work, they cancel their order and fulfill your order on the open market.
It's pure, out-and-out creaming off profit at your expense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arslan on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:59PM (1 child)
You know they call it front-running in the a lot of non-HFT places and is a regulated offense, yet somehow I've also been curious why HFT folks have no such limitations.
Some folks claims it provides liquidity, but will it? In a market downturn where everyone is holding on to cash, will it provide liquidity if it has no traffic volume to leech off of? It can certainly boost liquidity when there's flow but in on itself I don't think it actually provides 1st order liquidity.
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Monday April 08 2019, @03:59AM
The HFT firms only make a move when they have both a buyer and a seller lined up and it's advantageous to them to act as a middle man. They don't hold onto any stock long term, just long enough for them to complete the transaction which can be as fast as a fraction of a second. As such they provide absolutely zero liquidity, as they simply won't act at all if there isn't already a buyer and a seller.
They provide the illusion of providing liquidity as they do many transactions, both as a buyer and seller. But that illusion can go poof in an instant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:44AM
wow, amazing how some ink on a piece of paper can turn gold into rustable iron...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:48AM (10 children)
If your house doubles in value, you need to pay the government. If you don't have the money to pay... you need to sell your house.
Idiots are in favor of this.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:03AM (3 children)
And if your house falls in value, the Democrats will keep your money. So it's "heads they win, tails you lose". Fucking brain-dead Democrats.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:01AM (1 child)
From the WSJ Article:
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:12AM
Just like the income tax started out as only for the .1%...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:29AM
They're not brain-dead. They know exactly what they're doing.
They're not stupid. They're evil.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by darkfeline on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:27AM (2 children)
Assuming this is implemented "sanely", whatever that means, you would no longer need to pay the government when you sell your house.
I'd much rather pay taxes on my house doubling in value over the span of a decade than all at once when I sell it, due to progressive tax brackets. Also presumably this would mean you get tax deductions when you house drops in value.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:12AM (1 child)
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:00PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of the stock market that the stocks change in value?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:42AM
Houses, like all other property subject to a property tax, is already exempt from any CGT, realized or not, as long as your position doesn't remain liquid for a couple months. That is one of the reasons why the rich love boats. They can keep selling and buying boats and none of that is subject to the CGT because they never stay liquid long enough for the taxable event to arise. Well, none arises until they lose value, then they are more than happy to write off the loss on their taxes.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:44AM (1 child)
If your house doubled in value and you haven't sold it you're the idiot.
Though practically speaking, if everyone is facing this same predicament, the increased supply will lower the demand and your house won't suddenly rise in value.
That's to say, if anything, this law will deliver a critical, possible final, hit to the real-estate bubbles without hurting the middle class at all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:43PM
The portion of the middle class that doesn't hold real estate, that is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:30AM
and watch all US companies move towards paying out its profits as low taxed dividends.
Anyway, it looks like the Trump campaign is in full swing with the Democrat Party.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:35AM (10 children)
Fair taxation.
And, in general, I usually think Ron Wyden's proposals are pretty good.
However, this really doesn't make a lot of economic sense.
I'd be all for taxing short-term capital gains at the same rate as regular income, long-term capital gains at a slightly lower rate, and taxing "carried interest" [wikipedia.org] at even higher rates.
That said, the point of a capital gains tax is to encourage investment. With the idea being that you invest and both you and the economy profit from said investment. You allow that investment to grow over the long term, and pay tax when you sell that particular investment.
If you tax profits from those investments *before* they are sold, you pretty much destroy the incentive to invest for the longer term -- which is generates significantly more economic good than short-term investments.
In fact, we should be doing all we can to incentivize folks to invest and think over the longer term, as that will help keep the economy stable and discourage the kind of short-term thinking that gave us high-frequency trading and the harms caused by corporate managers too focused on quarterly profit growth (stock buybacks instead of investments in building a business, massive layoffs, mergers and asset selloffs) that they sacrifice the health of companies to ensure their bonuses/raises/stock grants/etc.
This is a bad idea.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:45AM
Absolutely -- this is a point I meant to make in my post below, but I got sidetracked with the absurdity of it all. Yes, we need market stability. Long-term investment is better for that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:16AM (5 children)
The problem is that the most optimal form of capital gain for the investor is to buy something, slap a coat of paint or a new business veneer on it, and sell it again quickly, which doesn't add any value to anything except the investor's bank balance. What we have here (non-US country) is time-constrained capital gains tax, if you flip a property/business within a year or two of buying it you pay CGT, if you hold onto it for longer you don't, with exceptions e.g. for the family home. This encourages actual investment, not just speculation and turning over properties as fast as you can.
(Score: 1) by EJ on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:52AM
That's the theory behind short-term versus long-term CGT. I'm all for them significantly raising the tax on short-term investments.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday April 07 2019, @03:20AM (3 children)
Which is sort of what we have here in the US [wikipedia.org]. If you don't hold your investment (and that goes for stocks, securities and other instruments, as well as real property) long enough, you pay one rate. If you hold them for longer, then you pay a lower rate.
Currently, both rates are lower than the lowest income tax bracket.
It's only the most optimal if you incentivize such activities. Which is what taxing capital gains at a lower rate than income, and more apropos to this thread, so would taxing "unrealized" capital gains.
I'm not really sure where you see that I said something different. I'll assume that you think that's important, so you decided to emphasize the point I'd already made.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by schad on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:26AM (1 child)
Short-term capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. Long-term capital gains are taxed at 0% up to about $40k (single) or $80k (married), 15% up to about $500k, and 20% past that. The lowest income tax bracket is 10%. Your statement is only correct for people who probably aren't investing in the stock market much or at all.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:48AM
I am aware of the tax structure.
My point wasn't that those in the lowest tax bracket aren't getting a fair shake because their capital gains rate is too high. My point was that those who have significant capital gains generally pay less on those gains than the income taxes much poorer people pay.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Sunday April 07 2019, @05:35AM
Short-term capital gains are taxed as ordinary income, meaning they are taxed at exactly the income bracket you're in, and definitely not lower than the lowest one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @05:00AM (1 child)
So you think were this thing to pass (very unlikely as the fat cats will ferociously oppose) the rich would go to do honest work instead of investment and living on dividends? That does not sound very realistic to me either.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Sunday April 07 2019, @05:23AM
I would hope that just about *everybody* would oppose this, as it's really dumb and would have lots of negative ripple effects on the economy.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @12:35AM
Fair Taxation is an oxymoron. There is nothing fair about a tax.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 07 2019, @01:43AM (6 children)
First, I want to be clear that I believe -- to be fair to all -- our tax system definitely needs to tax the wealthy more and allow them fewer loopholes. Charging the same tax rate for capital gains as for regular income makes perfect sense.
But, what the hell is this:
No, that's not like taxing your income from work. That's taxing you based on BS. As any idiot who understands basic market economics knows, an item is only worth the amount someone is willing to pay for it when you sell it. You may buy your house for X dollars, and the "market goes up" and you think your house is worth Y dollars, but no -- your house really isn't worth anything in exchange for currency until you get someone to sign a contract to buy it. And by the time you get around to selling or find a buyer who actually likes the weird renovations you did, it turns out what you can actually get for your house is Z dollars, which may be less or more or between X and Y.
Stock prices may appear to be more precise, but you really never know what your gains will be until the day you liquidate those assets. Investments in stocks and other securities are inherently volatile and everyone knows (or should know) that returns aren't guaranteed.
Yet the government is going to tax you on theoretical "gains"?
The argument seems to be that the rich are getting some sort of "tax dodge" by being able to hold on to securities for long periods and see growth without being taxed until the end. Except the rich do have to pay capital gains at the end -- and they definitely should be made to pay as much for gains as other working income. So where's the dodge?
Besides, anything that's supposed to hit the rich with taxes is going to fail unless we completely rewrite the tax code, get rid of the complexity and loopholes, and start putting a lot of people in prison for tax evasion. But that's probably not going to happen.
So who is this particular idiocy going to hit the most? Probably not the middle-class, thankfully, or the poor, who probably can barely fund some money in a tax-deferred retirement account or Roth IRA each year. No, this is going to hit the upper-middle class: the ones aspiring to do a bit better, to have multiple kids go to good colleges, to retire early, to go on an extra vacation each year. They're the ones who probably can afford to have a few more investments that can't fit into tax-deferred retirement accounts and such, but aren't rich enough to bury their money in an offshore account or afford tax accountants who can hide their wealth and play up massive schemes and loopholes like the rich actually do.
And everyone is just thinking of stocks and such here, but what about other things people buy for investments? If I think a 30-year-old bottle of Scotch is going to make me money and I buy several cases, do I have to pay the government taxes every year for the supposed market value if it goes up? If I buy a painting that hangs on my wall and it accumulates value because of the name of the artist, do I need to pay capital gains tax?
Of course, if the government actually were consistent and start applying capital gains to all assets while you own them, that would completely screw over the middle class if their houses go up in value. But, well, do I get to deduct the depreciation in my car every year? After all, that's a loss in an investment -- a predictable one, but a common one. How about all the electronics and clothes that I own? An iPhone someone bought a couple years ago is worth 10% of its original value -- why not deduct that as a loss? Yeah, it was a stupid and poor investment compared to others people make, but it's a lot of money for some people. If the government is going to start charging people just for holding assets and theoretical gains, why not grant people take breaks for all the depreciation in all the other things they buy and lose value in?? It would be just as absurd.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:26AM (3 children)
Sometimes, +5 just isn't enough.
If I were to single out just one phrase from your post, it would be "allow them fewer loopholes". Just close the loopholes, and the tax revenue would increase dramatically. Do it across the board, for the wealthy individuals, corporations, foundations, everything. If it's not "tax exempt" then it's taxed at an equal rate to everyone, everywhere. And, maybe we need to reexamine tax exemptions, as well?
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday April 07 2019, @08:27PM (2 children)
We agree on this one for sure. This has to be one of the most bat shit crazy ideas I've ever heard. The degree to which this would complicate the tax code is unimaginable. He also seems to have forgotten that ordinary middle class folks can actually have investments as well. What happens when you get taxed to death on unrealized gains right before something like the 2008 crash ffs?...makes my head spin.
I actually wouldn't have a problem with some increase in the capital gains tax. That would hit me a bit, but I think there are quite a few folks who make the bulk of their money from this who are really getting a break they don't need...for example that growing group of the 1% who aren't entrepreneurs, but just entitled children of entrepreneurs. At least that's taxing it when you actually make the money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @01:32AM (1 child)
I seem to recall that several years ago there was a proposal to pretty much do exactly this. It was roundly excoriated as a "death tax" and the idea died of humiliation. My recollection was that even though this was proposed to be only a marginal tax on the inheritances of the uber-wealthy, people were scared into believing that their small Mom-and-Pop family businesses would be taken away from them, etc. Another win for the fear mongers!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 08 2019, @01:56PM
Laws do tend to creep. Let us remember seat belt laws. When first passed, a cop couldn't stop you for a seat belt violation. They had to have some other reason to stop you, THEN, they could ticket you if you weren't buckled up. Today - they can and do pull you over for no other reason, then decide how much to harass you after you are stopped.
If the little people were to push a law through to claw away some of the money the 1% holds, you can bet both cheeks of your ass that the law would creep downward, sooner of later. First, they come for the multi-billionaires, then they come for mere billionaires, then they come for multi-millionaires, and on it goes.
Yes, eventually, they'll come for my mere thousands, and yours too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:30PM
That isn't exactly true, especially for high value real estate. Owners can borrow based on the current market value and that leads to quite a bit of liquid profit. Yes, they pay a low APR interest on the loan, but the loan itself is tax free.
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:45PM
It is mostly correct, only it becomes complicated through the fact that the capital gains may actually indirectly be realised before its time through lending. As an individual, you may take out a mortgage in your house to buy another house, which you rent out, using the rent to pay the mortgage (and then some). You then mortgage the new house to pay for another rental house in the same manner as the first. You can create a very long chain of mortgages this way, which could create a good income for you based on, in reality, mostly untaxed assets. It is obviously a gamble in some ways, but I know that some people in the UK have made a thriving business out of doing just this. After some years, as the mortgages are paid out, you will own the houses outright thus increasing your income as the repayments stop and you stop paying interest.
Housing is one way but Big Industry™ has even better ways, I am sure, as they have expensive lawyers and financial experts to optimise this beyond reason. So yes, I agree, stop the loopholes that makes this possible and find a sensible way to handle it all.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:00AM (2 children)
Yes sirree, this here plan is going to be MONUMENTAL.
Let's see: rich people will either look for long term returns overseas (good for the world economy, just not the US) or flip all assets like crazy, or strategically use depreciation to kill their tax burden. Win-win-win!
Poor people don't have assets anyway, except for long-depreciated clunkers and grandma's old firetrap house in the sticks that nobody wants to buy and is just sucking up the property taxes, and they can't sell for anything more than a song and dance anyhow.
The only ones this will nail will be business owners and retirement fund members. And fuck a whole bunch of those guys!
Assholes, all wanting to build businesses and retire and shit. Who the fuck do they think they are anyway?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:34AM (1 child)
Err... might they be "assholes"?
:-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @01:36AM
Ya mean we are all assholes? Well, OK. I guess it has a certain logic to it. Sort of.
(Score: 4, Informative) by exaeta on Sunday April 07 2019, @02:53AM (19 children)
Government can't tax idle assets (except real property, because penguins?) because doing so constituites a "taking" and requires "just compensation". You can't take property or tax an asset that isn't participating in commerce, under the takings clause, unless you pay for the asset (and so implicitly, taxing the asset that it not participating in commerce is not allowed.)
There are a few laws that seem to include these taxes, but I'm going to bet this is because they haven't been challenged in federal rather than because they're actually allowed. AFAIK, the government can onky tax real property this way.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:38AM (4 children)
Many people, especially socialists, forget that. For us little guys, we need to explain how that works.
You get a pretty good job, and you're putting money into a savings account for a home, a car, or whatever. At the end of the year, you're doing your income taxes. A new line on the form asks "How much money do you have in savings accounts?" You fill it in, let's say $20,000. The next line says "multiply by .08" and the result is $1600. And, then, you are instructed to "Add this amount to "taxes due" line below." You have (presumably) already paid income tax on all of that money, but now gubbermint wants ANOTHER bite out of that same money.
Worse - whatever you were saving that money for has been delayed until you can replace the $1600 that gubbermint has just confiscated from you.
Here, people favoring taxing the wealthy will explain, "Well, the first $250,000 will be exempt!" Great. Since you're going to exempt most people, it justifies robbing some people. Just great.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:26PM (2 children)
Taking savings doesn't fix the real issue, bonds and lack of inflation.
Government bonds are thd main cause of wealth inequality. It allows the rich to get richer by doing nothing.
A simple solution is to limit the ownership in bonds to a fixed amount, where anyone who already exceeds this amount cannot purchase new ones.
Or $20k limit in yearly bond purchases by individuals would solve most prroblems, I think. Or a limit of $250k in bond ownership? Either one would probably force the economy back into gear.
Removing regulations would also help, or at least removing the IP law barriers to legal compliance with regulations. As usual the rich place boundaries to financial mobility for the middle class.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @02:08AM (1 child)
???? You have an...uhhhh...interesting view of the world.
Whatever, Don Quixote. Tilt at that windmill, if you must. Go for it!
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday April 20 2019, @11:08PM
Many problems have simple solutions that are not as radical as the ones people will propose.
A big problem can have a small solution, due to the butterfly effect.
And likewise, a large problem can be caused by a small law.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:42PM
You are already taxed on the gains for savings and other accounts on your income tax, hence why you get a 1099-INT if you have enough. In addition, savings and certain other accounts can't be taxed like this, as they are, by definition, not capital assets, but rather cash and cash equivalents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @08:05AM (13 children)
Nonsense. The government already taxes idle assets in the form of licenses and permits for cars, firearms and television sets as well as the usual municipal property taxes. The government can easily pass a "Must have a license/permit for owning property of any kind" and set it at 20% the market value but say you only need to pay, say, a year after taking ownership.
They can even extend the concept of property deeds to every asset as a legal framework and mandate courts won't acknowledge ownership unless the assets are registered and have their associated yearly taxes paid for.
And what's really good about this is the potential to fix the patents and copyrights issues with simple market forces: Suddenly companies won't be able to sit on patents and not license them or manufacture them since they'll bleed over it. No one will be able to hoard generic pharma patents just to sell their own old brand. No one will be able to keep a better engine / battery design from entering the market just because they don't want to upgrade their factory line.
Good law. Very good law.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:28PM (12 children)
Government can tax your right to drive a car on the road, it cannot tax a car in storage.
Your idea is not valid, and will not pass muster in our legal framework. It would be declared unconstitutional in a heartbeat. Of course, it's also possible to amend the constitution.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday April 08 2019, @01:59PM (11 children)
Have you not heard of personal property taxes [henrico.us]??? We have to pay all sorts of tax on stuff we simply own and that isn't driven on roads.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday April 10 2019, @04:12PM (10 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday April 11 2019, @05:28PM (9 children)
> Personal property taxes are unconstitutional.
Apparently not [wikipedia.org], at least at the state- or locality level. Remember that the US constitution only applies to the Federal government.
> A small county can get away with it, for a few years ...
How about all of the existing states bar one as early as 1796 [wikipedia.org]?
I can understand wishing they were unconstitutional, but actually believing it borders on delusional.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday April 12 2019, @01:02AM (8 children)
You may be a bit confused. Just because a law is passed does not make it constitutional. Judicial review normally happens after a law is passed and enforced, not before. It's fairly common for unconstitutional stuff to continue for 40 years or more before someone decides to challenge it in court, and win.
Some things, like abortion restrictions, get challenged right away, but other stuff can be unconstitutional yet go unchallenged for decades before it finally is challenged and struck down by a federal court.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday April 15 2019, @07:01PM (7 children)
I am not the least bit confused. Property taxes have been around for over 220 years. Don't you think one of your hypothetical 'rich people' would have challenged them and had them overturned by now if they were actually unconstitutional?
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday April 17 2019, @12:50AM (6 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:39PM (5 children)
Explain these non-real estate taxes [henrico.us], then. And by the way, Henrico county has been around since 1634 or so in the form of one of the original Shires of Virginia, so there's been plenty of time for these taxes to be contested.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:59PM (4 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday April 18 2019, @11:40AM (3 children)
> I'm just going to defer to the constitution, the takings clause, and the prohibition on direct taxes in the constitution.
As you've said, the constitution forbid the FEDERAL government from levying direct taxes. It does not, however, forbid states or localities from doing so. There are reasons for state/locality property tax matters to appear before the supreme court, but they are not addressing the legality of the taxation, just whether it's otherwise legally applied (see examples, below).
Here's one from 1939 for you to read that clearly shows the legal opinion then (nothing has changed since then) [indiana.edu]. Here's an excerpt, emphasis mine:
Here's another [franczek.com] that asserts:
I'm not going to continue trying to educate you - you seem stubbornly convinced that the US constitution applies in situations where it clearly does not. I recommend a Civics 101 course to introduce you to the concept of separation of powers between the Federal and State governments.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday April 20 2019, @09:59PM (2 children)
Oh yeah, the states can do direct taxes, except TFA mentions a federal bill! Ron Wyden is a U.S. Senator, not a State Senator. So yeah, that argument is invalid. Attention to detail is important when doing legal analysis. You seem to think I'm uneducated, but may be failing to consider the possibility you may be painting things with too broad a brush?
You keep quoting non-authorative sources. Is there any point in arguing with someone who doesn't seem to read primary sources? Unless a judge writes it, the interpretation is not law. If you want to make a legal argument, you need to cite primary sources. You can cite statutes, judicial opinions, etc. Even the other writings of people who helped write a bill are fair game. Secondary sources have little to no value here, especially given the room for context dependent misunderstandings.
Also, citing universities and academic articles is generally bad practice. Most universities lean towards a "liberal" interpretation of the law, and there is a 5-4 "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court. Same with your ad hominem "civics 101" comment. You may think you understand it, but I doubt you actually do.
If you honestly think that taxing idle assets like this would be treated as "income" by the Supreme Court and not a "regulatory taking" I find it hard to swallow. If a tax applies to only specific person's property and is not uniform it becomes a taking, not a tax. The label a government uses, e.g. "penalty" or "tax" or "taking", is irrelevant for constitutional purposes. This is why the the Affordable Care Act "penalty" was upheld as within the federal taxing power. It was within the constitutional definition of a tax, even if not intended to be one. Likewise, this "wealth tax" would be considered a taking, not a tax, so is not constitutional. If the tax singles out a category of people to apply a property tax, then it is a taking not a tax because of the non-uniformity.
Venue where a court adjucates a dispute and the body of law that applies to it are different things. State courts cannot set federal precedent. see the Suprme Court's decision in England et al. which may explain it for you. This is well known in the legal field and I don't feel like writing a brief to teach a know it all.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday April 20 2019, @10:24PM
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday April 22 2019, @11:36AM
> Is there any point in arguing with someone who doesn't seem to read primary sources?
You ask me for citations - I have seen exactly zero citations from you to support your case.
Cite a single case of a state or locality being prevented from implementing a property tax based on it being against the US constitution for them to do so (not that they applied it unfairly, etc).
> If you honestly think that taxing idle assets like this would be treated as "income" by the Supreme Court and not a "regulatory taking" I find it hard to swallow.
I think we're vehemently agreeing here. It would clearly be unconstitutional for the federal government to do so. The whole point of my original post was your assertion that _all_ property taxes were unconstitutional. When applied by a state or locality, that is clearly not the case.