Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

(3) There usually aren't dividends. Capital gains isn't a thing until stock is sold. You *could* transfer an increasing ownership stake in virtually every highly successful business to the federal government, but obviously DON'T DO THAT.

As long as they just auction off the stocks or do mirror voting seems like that would be fine? Agree we don't want active management by the IRS.

Actually having the IRS take 3% of the company on paper and just hold onto it and mirror vote solves your problem as everyone's votes are diluted equally!

If you zoom out a bit, what this looks like is the federal government gradually taking ownership of the country's most successful businesses under the guise of a tax that doesn't actually raise revenue. At bare minimum, this looks very, VERY bad

Why bad? Only bad if they engage in active management. Otherwise it's just a sovereign wealth fund - the govt is accumulating wealth and when dividends are paid it can use that to fund expenditure, or borrow against its savings.

Rob, when did Amazon last pay divs? In fact, with your proposal, Amazon would be gov majority, with no cash! Instead of Bezos / mgmt focusing on building the most consumer focused company in the world, they'd slowly be eaten by a crocodile

If equity were signed over to the govt and they held it and just did mirror voting, why would it affect their business decisions in any significant way? They don't have to pay out but whether the gain comes in capital gains while the govt holds, or dividends, doesn't matter.

I guess in effect this would be the same as a CGT tax, but a CGT tax *caps* the tax on company building - ie. at tax rate of [~22.5%] (im Aus) which would be ~7 years of company building under a 3% annual tax. Not obscene that after 30 years of building your co, gov owns 90%?