should we be taxing earnings...or should we be taxing wealth?

[Sgent]

120. You forget

the non-transferable minority interest part. A huge number of office buildings, hotels, etc. are owned in this manner.

Its only worth what I can sell it for -- and if I go to sell my interest on the open market I'll get almost nothing. I can't force the sale of the building, nor can I force that profits be paid to me. Presumably I'll get paid my percentage at some indefinite point in the future, so I have to estimate the value of the property not today but in 10, 20, 30 or some other arbitrary number of years and then discount it back to today. What discount rate do I use -- treasury rate, what a bank will loan me money for, some number taking taking into effect the cost of capital and illiquidity?

And real estate is very easy compared to intangibles are assets with no / little intrinsic value. How do you value an artist who paintings sell 1 -2 a decade? The factory above may have income of 1,000,000 a year, but is it worth the 10 million in investment costs 20 years ago, the 500,000 the land and equipment would sell for today, or some other number based on expected future cash flows? These are hard issues that lead to court fights every day just for the purposes of a once in a lifetime valuation for estate tax purposes.

As for the copyright, talk to any number of writers / artists who were discovered late in life.

The compliance cost and intrusiveness of an asset tax would be insanely high.