The Left Party says "there shouldn't be any billionaires." With Germany gearing up for an election, the far-left force has launched a new tax plan — though it will most likely never get a chance to implement it.
Evaluating a publicly traded company is pretty easy. Stock price times the amount of stock = value of company.
However evaluating other forms of companies is a lot harder. Using the same formula is possible (if there is stock) and otherwise you can still look at the equity value, but it will only say so much. Generally looking at future cashflows is a pretty good way of evaluating a company, but there are loads of things you can have discussions about regarding this method (called the discounted cashflow method). There are also others and I have been part of evaluating a company and it’s a fair amount of work.
So it’s not something you can really do on a yearly basis for tax reasons.
There are other things you can do like looking at how much wage the major shareholder has or how much they have lent from their company. Both to themselves and to family/friends. In NL we kinda limit the amount you can loan from your own company.
Luckly for the whole situation most billionaires mainly have stock in publicly traded companies. Either directly or indirectly so that is taxable.
Yes, the value of potential future profits as reflected by high stock prices would indeed be hard to evaluate.
But assets, outstanding claims, in part even intellectual property? Companies already have to keep track of those.
Yeah you can do that, but often companies keep track of the purchase value minus depreciation. Which means that something like a building is on the balance sheet for 1m, but the actual value might be 10m. the equity is basically the assets minus the liabilities which should be the value. However, paying dividend to the shareholder will lower the equity, but it will earn the shareholders money. So I would see a lot of companies doing that to lower their equity to pay less taxes.
Evaluating intellectual property is also pretty hard to do. Generally it has an original value and you depreciate on it as well.
All of the above depends on the country, the size and type of company it is, but generally it is pretty similar. Across the western world.
You’re not wrong, but let’s not pretend that stock valuation formulas or discounted cash flow methods are anything but tools to justify hoarding wealth. Billionaires don’t just “mainly have stock”—they weaponize it, leveraging loopholes and tax havens while the rest of us debate theoretical equity.
This isn’t about complexity; it’s about complicity. The system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed: to protect capital at all costs. Meanwhile, the average person is drowning in bureaucracy just trying to keep their head above water.
And borrowing from your own company? Sure, if you’re part of the elite club that can afford to play that game. For everyone else, it’s crumbs and austerity. Let’s stop normalizing this absurd disparity.
Look, the bilionaires will always have ways to get out to pay the least amount of tax possible. There is almost no way to combat that because they have the money to setup a company in another country and setup structures to pay less.
You can however get more income tax from the companies below that. The medium to large sized companies with millions of profit. But it is not feasible to do a taxation for every company every year, it is impossible. There aren’t enough people working in the fields who would be responsible for those reports. (evaluators, accountants, etc.). Evaluating a company generally costs 10-20k minimum.
Idk how it is in other countries, but yeah it’s more like bureaucrazy than bureaucracy here in NL. So you want to add even more bureaucracy into the entire structure?
There are other ways of stopping businesses from abusing the system and governments are working to help fix the issue. But evaluating companies is just not gonna be a good structure for it. It’s way to subjective and in general wealth tax has been shut down by legal systems. Like here in NL, the legal system shut down the previous box 3 wealth system because it was against human rights. And the government and legal system are more separated here in NL than in say something like the US.
Also a lot of small business owners do take loans from their own companies (if it is something like a BV/Ltd). Sometimes we talk over a couple thousand, sometimes it’s a couple 100k and sometime’s it;s one or more millions and I mainly work with small to medium-sized companies.
Evaluating a publicly traded company is pretty easy. Stock price times the amount of stock = value of company.
However evaluating other forms of companies is a lot harder. Using the same formula is possible (if there is stock) and otherwise you can still look at the equity value, but it will only say so much. Generally looking at future cashflows is a pretty good way of evaluating a company, but there are loads of things you can have discussions about regarding this method (called the discounted cashflow method). There are also others and I have been part of evaluating a company and it’s a fair amount of work. So it’s not something you can really do on a yearly basis for tax reasons.
There are other things you can do like looking at how much wage the major shareholder has or how much they have lent from their company. Both to themselves and to family/friends. In NL we kinda limit the amount you can loan from your own company.
Luckly for the whole situation most billionaires mainly have stock in publicly traded companies. Either directly or indirectly so that is taxable.
Yes, the value of potential future profits as reflected by high stock prices would indeed be hard to evaluate.
But assets, outstanding claims, in part even intellectual property? Companies already have to keep track of those.
Yeah you can do that, but often companies keep track of the purchase value minus depreciation. Which means that something like a building is on the balance sheet for 1m, but the actual value might be 10m. the equity is basically the assets minus the liabilities which should be the value. However, paying dividend to the shareholder will lower the equity, but it will earn the shareholders money. So I would see a lot of companies doing that to lower their equity to pay less taxes.
Evaluating intellectual property is also pretty hard to do. Generally it has an original value and you depreciate on it as well.
All of the above depends on the country, the size and type of company it is, but generally it is pretty similar. Across the western world.
You’re not wrong, but let’s not pretend that stock valuation formulas or discounted cash flow methods are anything but tools to justify hoarding wealth. Billionaires don’t just “mainly have stock”—they weaponize it, leveraging loopholes and tax havens while the rest of us debate theoretical equity.
This isn’t about complexity; it’s about complicity. The system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed: to protect capital at all costs. Meanwhile, the average person is drowning in bureaucracy just trying to keep their head above water.
And borrowing from your own company? Sure, if you’re part of the elite club that can afford to play that game. For everyone else, it’s crumbs and austerity. Let’s stop normalizing this absurd disparity.
Look, the bilionaires will always have ways to get out to pay the least amount of tax possible. There is almost no way to combat that because they have the money to setup a company in another country and setup structures to pay less.
You can however get more income tax from the companies below that. The medium to large sized companies with millions of profit. But it is not feasible to do a taxation for every company every year, it is impossible. There aren’t enough people working in the fields who would be responsible for those reports. (evaluators, accountants, etc.). Evaluating a company generally costs 10-20k minimum.
Idk how it is in other countries, but yeah it’s more like bureaucrazy than bureaucracy here in NL. So you want to add even more bureaucracy into the entire structure? There are other ways of stopping businesses from abusing the system and governments are working to help fix the issue. But evaluating companies is just not gonna be a good structure for it. It’s way to subjective and in general wealth tax has been shut down by legal systems. Like here in NL, the legal system shut down the previous box 3 wealth system because it was against human rights. And the government and legal system are more separated here in NL than in say something like the US.
Also a lot of small business owners do take loans from their own companies (if it is something like a BV/Ltd). Sometimes we talk over a couple thousand, sometimes it’s a couple 100k and sometime’s it;s one or more millions and I mainly work with small to medium-sized companies.