Multiple parties are jockeying for position in the aftermath of France’s seismic snap election. The leftist New Popular Front (NPF) insists its ideas should be implemented.
France’s left wing New Popular Front (NPF) - now the largest group in parliament - has called for a prime minister who will implement its ideas including a new wealth tax and petrol price controls.
The leftist alliance secured the most seats in the recent French elections but fell short of the 289 needed for a majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
President Emmanuel Macron’s Together bloc came in second and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party finished third.
France’s parties are now jockeying for position and it’s unclear exactly how things will shake out, but the NPF has insisted it will implement its radical set of ideas.
The really wealthy don’t take income. Instead they park their wealth in stocks and trust funds and leverage those as collateral for cheap loans from their buddies at the bank.
I thought communists were intelligent but this thread is
devoid of any intelligence.quite cheery about something that won’t even impact any capitalist.Don’t you all know what "Capital"ist means?
An income tax is a tax on the working class.
You morons should stop salivating and start eating more dried fruits.Edit: I realize calling people morons is a bit too much. Sorry about that. I was just miffed by a few who were cheering on punishing their own class. It’s so hard to find class solidarity in this day and age.
I think there is a significant distinction between “regular” working class and “earning above €400,000 per year” working class.
Argument is correct.
Tone is asshole.
Upvote or downvote? I’m not sure on this one.
Sorry about the tone. I was just miffed by a few who were cheering on punishing their own class. It’s so hard to find class solidarity in this day and age.
Income from capital can be, and is, taxed differently. In the U.K. there is Capital Gains Tax, for example. Why not adjust this instead of income tax?
Because capital gains taxes are only taken when a gain is realized. Me selling my 2 shares of Boeing will get taxed capital gains, but the person holding 200,000 shares and using them as collateral for untaxed loans will get no capital gains taxes assessed.
Also because making gains in the market is one of the few ways a working class person can set themselves up for retirement (as fucked up as that is), so raising the tax would hurt them more unless you have a tiered structure like we do for income tax brackets.
The same argument I was trying to make. Any tax is gonna be just cost of business for billionaires and industrialists.
I don’t know how France classifies “income”, so it could be good at capturing income. It’s our own fault when something that is obviously “income” doesn’t technically count, in principle a tax system can capture everything that makes sense to count.
In the US, along with wages, interest income and dividend income also count as “regular” income and are taxed appropriately. Capital gains is… weirder and this is the first area ripe for opportunity to reform to capture “rich guy income is different than normal guy income”, as long as it is intelligent about it (e.g. if you said, without qualification, all capital gains are taxed like crazy, then suddenly selling your house as part of moving becomes an unreasonable burden, which is why it already has an exemption, but just an example to say vaguely why we have to be careful about capital gains).
Then you get to the borrowing you mention, and I’ve seen a pretty reasonable approach to capture that as “income”, in theory: https://equitablegrowth.org/closing-the-billionaire-borrowing-loophole-would-strengthen-the-progressivity-of-the-u-s-tax-code/
TL;DR: Currently borrowing doesn’t count as realizing gains, change it so that borrowing counts as “selling” the stock, further mandating that the cost basis of all identical stock is a specific way rather than letting the shareholder pick and choose their most favored cost basis.
I’d be willing to concede some tax break on repayment of such a loan to reconcile “real income” being exchanged for it down the road, but at that point I think it would largely be academic because suddenly there’s no point in borrowing against the stock rather than just selling it outright.