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.
I’ve always thought that it would make sense to tax borrowing money against something, but you need to have a way to account for it being paid back with either yet to be taxed assets, or already taxed assets.
E.g
Has 100 million in bank.
Leveeages 10m to buy a house.
Sells stock to pay off loan monthly.
Now in this case we can tax the 10m (maybe at a different rate) but if they sell the stock to pay off the loan it should take into account the tax they paid on the loan.
Also if they pay the loan off with already taxed money (cash in an account) that loan then needs to have its tax refunded in some manner.
It can get pretty messy, but if the law only triggers when you do this over a certain threshold, those people would be able to afford the tax people to sort it out.
The easy way around the problem is to tax loans that aren’t being used to purchase an asset. This is the “living expenses” loan hack that the ultra-wealthy use and it absolutely needs to be removed.
Your example is a bit different because the wealthy person is selling stock to make the mortgage payment. In this case they should already be paying capital gains taxes on those sales. If they aren’t then figure out why and fix the tax code.
We can tie the two situations together by considering the annual sum of all stock sales and non-asset purchasing loans as regular income and thus subject to income tax, minus any capital gains taxes already paid.
That easily closes both of the common loopholes that the ultra-wealthy use while leaving us normal people untouched. The ultra-wealthy would suddenly be paying income taxes on the money they are spending to maintain their lifestyle, same as the rest of us are.
Sorry I meant in my example they took out a loan, not a mortgage.
Better rates that way probably.
But it’s the same problem even if it’s living expenses.
You borrow 1m to live off of and pay income tax on it.
You then sell stocks to close out the loan and pay capital gains tax
You’ve now paid tax twice.
Edit: that’s what it needs to be able to account for which might get messy