I would advocate a large estate tax. I don't see why anyone should get rich off his or her parents' wealth.
I don't support a wealth tax during one's lifetime. That is earned wealth. (Unless of course it's inherited.) Plus, your wealth has already been taxed as income, or will be taxed as a capital gain when you dispose of it.
I would rather have much bigger estate taxes and much smaller income taxes. And nil wealth tax.
That would also help equality of opportunity.
There are issues with all of this, unfortunately. Firstly those that are in anything like this league of wealth just set up trust funds which don't 'die' and so aren't taxed.
Income is taxed. Income from prior income should also be taxed, why not? That is new money! So you think any money you earn should ever after be able to grow tax free? Only the *growth* is taxed when you dispose of it, not the principal - so there is NO double taxation here.
I mean yeah personally I would way rather a very simple estate tax - say 65% of anything over $500k perhaps? Something like that. And arguably *higher* tax on investment income of any kind than earned income (because earning money costs you money - transportation, clothes, etc - and of course most importantly, time - plus all the other deductions like social/pension etc). Perhaps earned income shouldn't be taxed, but interest/dividends/cap gains should all be taxed much higher...
Wealth tax I think is absolutely fine on any amount above what a normal person would need to live forever - any money that you can point at and really say, that money is not necessary for you to live a normal good life. I don't know that it's necessary, I'm not strongly for or against it, but I don't have a massive problem with it.
My point (and not a political one) with the thread was really, a billionaire saying they thought 10% total tax on a fortune of 100 billion over his life was ok, 20% over his life was ok... doesn't seem right when earned is taxed directly at 20-30-40% (or whatever the rates are in various states, I have no idea, but I know that once you leave your tax free allowance it is 20% in Ontario until you get to $50k or so; in the UK it is 20% plus national insurance after £12,000 or something like that - those are the LOW bands).