Attachment - Asset Value Added Tax

Asset VAT - The President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget, June 7, 2022

There are two debates in tax policy: how we tax salaries and how we tax assets (returns, gains and inheritances). Shoving too much into the Personal Income Tax mainly benefits the wealthy because it subsidizes losses by allowing investors to not pay tax on higher salaries with malice aforethought. 

Asset Value-Added Tax (A-VAT) is a replacement for capital gains taxes and the estate tax. It will apply to asset sales, exercised options, inherited and gifted assets and the profits from short sales. Tax payments for option exercises, IPOs, inherited, gifted and donated assets will be marked to market, with prior tax payments for that asset eliminated so that the seller gets no benefit from them. In this perspective, it is the owner’s increase in value that is taxed.  

As with any sale of liquid or real assets, sales to a qualified broad-based Employee Stock Ownership Plan will be tax free. This change would be counted as a tax cut, giving investors in public stock who make such sales the same tax benefit as those who sell private stock.

The repeal of corporate profits taxes as part of the creation of a subtraction value added taxes and repeal of capital gains taxes in the United States will lead to their repeal worldwide. If Asset Value Added Taxes are adopted, the rate should be negotiated so that investors who are able do not market shop for the lowest rate. The recent OECD compact on minimum rates is an example of how tax cooperation on capital can work for other types of asset taxation.This tax will end Tax Gap issues owed by high income individuals. The base 20% capital gains tax has been in place for decades. The current 23.8% rate includes the ACA-SM surtax), while the Biden proposal accepted by Senator Sinema is 28.8%. Our proposed Subtraction VAT would eliminate the 3.8% surtax. This would leave a 25% rate in place. 

Settling on a bipartisan 22.5% rate (give or take 0.5%) should be bipartisan and carried over from the capital gains tax to the asset VAT.A single rate also stops gaming forms of ownership. Lower rates are not as regressive as they seem. Only the wealthy have capital gains in any significant amount. The de facto rate for everyone else is zero.  

With tax subsidies for families shifted to an employer-based subtraction VAT, and creation of an asset VAT, taxes on salaries could be filed by employers without most employees having to file an individual return. It is time to TAX TRANSACTIONS, NOT PEOPLE!

The tax rate on capital gains is seen as unfair because it is lower than the rate for labor. This is technically true, however it is only the richest taxpayers who face a marginal rate problem. For most households, the marginal rate for wages is less than that for capital gains. Higher income workers are, as the saying goes, crying all the way to the bank.

In late 2017, tax rates for corporations and pass-through income were reduced, generally, to capital gains and capital income levels. This is only fair and may or may not be just. The field of battle has narrowed between the parties. The current marginal and capital rates are seeking a center point. It is almost as if the recent tax law was based on negotiations, even as arguments flared publicly. Of course, that would never happen in Washington. Never, ever.

Compromise on rates makes compromise on form possible. If the Affordable Care Act non-wage tax provisions are repealed, a rate of 26% is a good stopping point for pass-through, corporate, capital gains and capital income. 

A single rate also makes conversion from self-reporting to automatic collection through an asset value added tax levied at point of sale or distribution possible. This would be both just and fair, although absolute fairness is absolute unfairness to tax lawyers because there would be little room to argue about what is due and when. 

Ending the machinery of self-reporting also puts an end to the Quixotic campaign to enact a wealth tax. To replace revenue loss due to the ending of the personal income tax (for all but the wealthiest workers and celebrities), enact a Goods and Services Tax. A GST is inescapable. Those escapees who are of most concern are not waiters or those who receive refundable tax subsidies. It is those who use tax loopholes and borrowing against their paper wealth to avoid paying taxes. 

For example, if an unnamed billionaire or billionaires borrow against their wealth to go into space, creating such assets would be taxable under a GST or an asset VAT. When the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street borrow against their assets to avoid taxation, having to pay a consumption tax on their spending ends the tax advantage of gaming the system. 

This also applies to inheritors.  No “Death Tax” is necessary beyond marking the sale of inherited assets to market value (with sales to qualified ESOPs tax free). Those who inherit large cash fortunes will pay the GST when they spend the money or Asset VAT when they invest it. No special estate tax is required and no life insurance policy or retirement account inheritance rules will be of any use in tax avoidance.

Tax avoidance is a myth sold by insurance and investment brokers. In reality, explicit and implicit value added taxes are already in force. Individuals and firms that collect retail sales taxes receive a rebate for taxes paid in their federal income taxes. This is an intergovernmental VAT. Tax withheld by employers for the income and payroll taxes of their labor force is an implicit VAT. A goods and services tax simply makes these taxes visible.

Should the tax reform proposed here pass, there is no need for an IRS to exist, save to do data matching integrity. States and the Customs Service would collect credit invoice taxes, states would collect subtraction VAT, the SEC would collect the asset VAT and the Bureau of the Public Debt would collect income taxes or sell tax-prepayment bonds.

Video: https://youtu.be/azVxkDBN7AA