Against a wealth tax practical
Forces sale of illiquid assets
Owners whose wealth is tied up in a business or property may have to sell productive assets to pay the bill, harming firms and jobs.
- 3 counters
- 4 sources
- 3 people
- 1 evidence
The counters
Valuation is a solved problem Tax systems already value estates, capital gains and property; banding, self-assessment with audit, and de-minimis thresholds handle the hard cases. Repeals were about bad design The taxes that were repealed had low thresholds, leaky exemptions and poor enforcement — the failures were of design, not of the underlying idea. High costs already force working families to sell High tax bills and the rising cost of living already force the middle and lower classes to sell the few assets they own to raise liquidity when in debt; the burden of forced sales falls hardest on those with least, not the wealthy.Copy-paste rebuttal Drop a sourced reply where this argument shows up
Reddit / long form
You're making the "Forces sale of illiquid assets" argument against a wealth tax. Well-designed wealth taxes handle this with banding, de-minimis thresholds and deferral or instalment options for illiquid holdings — the same tools already used for estates and capital gains. Where past taxes forced fire-sales it was bad design, not an inherent flaw. And the forced-sale problem already exists, just upside down: high tax bills and the rising cost of living routinely force middle- and lower-income families to sell the few assets they own. The burden of forced sales falls hardest on those with least — not the wealthy. Learn more: https://wealthtax.now/arguments/liquidity-issues/
X / Bluesky / short form
You're making the "Forces sale of illiquid assets" argument against a wealth tax. Deferral, instalments and thresholds handle illiquid holdings — and forced asset sales already hit working families hardest under the status quo, not the wealthy. https://wealthtax.now/arguments/liquidity-issues/
Backed by
- Taking Stock of Progress on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes
Cross-border sheltering is a design problem that's already being solved. Since the Common Reporting Standard began automatically swapping bank data between countries, jurisdictions have identified about €107 billion in extra tax, interest and penalties from voluntary compliance, and in 2022 alone information was exchanged on 123 million accounts worth €12 trillion. Independent research (Boas et al., 2024) finds automatic exchange cut the offshore tax gap by roughly 70%. "They'll just hide it abroad" describes a loophole that enforcement has largely closed, not an inevitability.
Where it's been said
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If you want to own assets, we need to tax the rich moreRaised as a counter-argument to rebut. “sometimes when I say things like that, people turn around and say, "Oh, but they don't have the money in cash. They'll have to sell the assets."”
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£1million or £100million - Wealth Tax #Shorts @OwenJonesTalksRaised as a counter-argument to rebut. “what about people who are asset rich but income poor so like some old lady he's been living in a house that's suddenly been living in a house that's suddenly in”
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In My Opinion: We NEED A Wealth Tax - BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast with Rachel BurdenRaised as a counter-argument to rebut. “how do you pay a tax on a house if you're not selling it”
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GAMESTOP: Armchair Investors - Gary on Sky News Podcast with Dermot Murnaghan“robin hood is saying it was simply a uh an issue of liquidity wasn't it in that they had to they had to they had to pay for the shares effectively before the mo”