General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Note To Bloomberg: Like A Lot Of People, I Own A House. And Every Year I Have To Pay... [View all]Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)which includes the stock. That would fall under his business income taxes. He invested a lot of money in the first place, plus there are expenses & other deductions, and revenue.
Businesses don't pay taxes on the value of a business, except to the extent that revenue and costs are taken into account on net income of the business for the year.
So stock isn't an inherited property. If you tax it, you have to take out his COST in creating it, in the first place. What takes that into account is his cost basis, which is calculated when he sells. Not sure how it works for his business taxes every year.
Business officers/owners who are granted additional stock annually (bonuses or whatever), have to pay tax on that. For Bloomberg, his initial stock wasn't given to him. He created it. So he didn't GAIN...he got what he created. This is very complicated.
There is talk on taxing capital gains, stocks, etc. Many middle class people own these things. I do. I am retired and started a retirement account years ago, and also a small taxable account. I have stocks in both. A capital gains tax would hit ME, and I'm far from wealthy. A tax on stocks would hit ME, and I'm not even close to being wealthy. I just read some investing books years ago and put some of my savings into stock investments. If that is taxed more, people won't do that, which will lower the income of seniors AND lessen the money available to businesses (buying a stock = loaning capital to the company), which will affect businesses, which would affect the economy (unlike trickle down economics).
I already pay taxes on my dividends, unless qualified. If qualified, the dividend still is including in determining my income for tax rate purposes. I already pay a tax on short term capital gains that is more than my regular tax rate.
People make assumptions that only wealthy people have stocks, capital gains, and such. That's simply not true. I'm just an average working woman who worked for decades as a paralegal, making little in the beginning to merely a decent salary at the end. I sacrificed in order to save for my senior years. I've never been on a vacation in my adult life, never bought the latest electronics, never bought a smartphone. All so I could save that money and invest it for my retirement. IF there are taxes on these things, it should be clear that it's only on the wealthy.
The tricky thing is...how do you determine how wealthy a person is? It's tricky. It's not like income. It's value, which changes year to year.