• BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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    8 months ago

    This is misleading. The 49.5% tax in the Netherlands is on income above €75,518. Billionaires rarely make the bulk of their money as income.

    We don’t have a capital gains tax, instead there is a tax on capital that’s based on expected return on that capital. It’s about 1% on money in bank account and about 6% on stock and other investments.

    • Yrt@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      Same for Germany. It’s income taxes (everything above ~66k/year is 42% taxes and everything above ~277k/year is 45%) no capital gains taxes (they are 25% no matter the amount of capital gains) or asset taxes. Don’t know where the 47% are coming from.

    • multifariace@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Also misleading, the US gives trillions of tax dollars to the wealthy who are paying nothing. Usually it is in corporate welfare, but a couple years ago they were paid directly.

    • Blaat1234@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The expected return part is the main tax on billionaires. With capital gain you can hold on forever and never get taxed, and if you die you completely skip capital gains tax with inheritance. Effective tax rate is near zero. This trick obviously only works for people who don’t need their invested money, buy and never ever sell.

      Compare that to NL’s tax. Invested? You pay 6.17% x 32% = 1.97% on your investment account, immediately, no deferral possible, year after year. And the rate went up to 36% in 2024 to reduce passive income’s rate advantage over income from work.

    • nymwit@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Would that mean that if something was not continually growing in value you’d end up paying the value of it in taxes over some amount of years? Does this encourage people to pay the tax value out of the asset or just divest from non appreciating assets? If you paid taxes from the value of the asset I guess it’d be like a series converging to zero over time? Like 6% of 100 is 6, the 6% of 94 is 5.64, 6% of 88.36, vs. paying 6 bucks every year. Slower but sort of an eroding effect - like paying society’s subscription fee for how you got the value in the first place!

    • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Taxing expected return sounds a bit absurd. What if the capital turns out to be lost, does the state give the tax back?

      • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Greed should be punished, pro-social vocations rewarded.

        Greed is a an antisocial force more effective in its destruction than even hatred.

      • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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        8 months ago

        In practice it means that the rich pay very little tax. It’s been an ongoing debate for years, and changes are being worked on to tax actual gains.

        • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Dude, I have much of my savings for retirement invested in stocks (ETF’s, it’s a fairly safe investment) since the social security in my country kinda sucks. My return on investment is 5% a year. Having a 6% tax actually means I lose money