Yeah. But there are techniques (perhaps unrelated to tax evasion) for decreasing net worth, that the millionaire might use to avoid paying the 10%. Politicians use them to pretend they didn’t get rich while in the office. Divorcees use them to reduce alimony. Criminals use them to not appear suspiciously rich.
For example, “this is not my property, it all belongs to my wife and/or children”. Or it is owned by a shell company, which is owned by another shell company, which is owned by… oops, this one is registered in a country that does not disclose this information. Depending on the exact definition of “net worth”, the money could be (temporarily) converted to something that technically does not count as “net worth”.
(There is also an opposite problem, that sometimes the net worth is overestimated. For example, if you own a large fraction of shares of some company, their total value is calculated as “value of 1 share × the number of shares you own”, which ignores the fact that if you actually started selling the shares, that would automatically drive their price down.)
Hm. You may have made a case for not using ‘net worth’. (Though what else to use isn’t clear.) At the same time, it’s also not clear how much that would be an issue. (Is the practice more common among billionaires than millionaires perhaps?)
Such a thing, if done at all, might make more sense taking in to account the plans the people involved have for the future, i.e. they’re all doing something risky which could pay out big.
Yeah. But there are techniques (perhaps unrelated to tax evasion) for decreasing net worth, that the millionaire might use to avoid paying the 10%. Politicians use them to pretend they didn’t get rich while in the office. Divorcees use them to reduce alimony. Criminals use them to not appear suspiciously rich.
For example, “this is not my property, it all belongs to my wife and/or children”. Or it is owned by a shell company, which is owned by another shell company, which is owned by… oops, this one is registered in a country that does not disclose this information. Depending on the exact definition of “net worth”, the money could be (temporarily) converted to something that technically does not count as “net worth”.
(There is also an opposite problem, that sometimes the net worth is overestimated. For example, if you own a large fraction of shares of some company, their total value is calculated as “value of 1 share × the number of shares you own”, which ignores the fact that if you actually started selling the shares, that would automatically drive their price down.)
Hm. You may have made a case for not using ‘net worth’. (Though what else to use isn’t clear.) At the same time, it’s also not clear how much that would be an issue. (Is the practice more common among billionaires than millionaires perhaps?)
Such a thing, if done at all, might make more sense taking in to account the plans the people involved have for the future, i.e. they’re all doing something risky which could pay out big.