The hottest Taxation Substack posts right now

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Top Links 1040 Tax the billionaires. America's first new refinery in half a century. The economy as strategy. Cancer odds.

Chartbook • 472 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
📰 News Taxation
  1. There’s a growing push to tax billionaires through a wealth or "billionaire" tax to raise revenue and address inequality.
  2. America is building its first new oil refinery in about half a century, signaling a shift in energy and industrial policy priorities.
  3. Policymakers are increasingly treating the economy itself as a strategic tool, using economic measures to pursue geopolitical and domestic objectives.

Singapore: Where your home loses value & everyone's better off

The Novelleist • 532 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🌐 International Taxation
  1. The government owns most land and sells only time-limited leases, so homes lose value as leases run down and eventually revert to the state, making housing a place to live rather than a long-term investment.
  2. Control over leases and planned lease expirations lets the state auction land to developers, capture value through fees, and master-plan redevelopment on a 40–50 year horizon to increase density and modernize the city.
  3. Revenues from land leases and sovereign-wealth investments fund low taxes and broad social services—universal healthcare, subsidized education, CPF pensions, and near-universal affordable housing—helping deliver high living standards and strong economic performance.

Slightly Against The "Other People's Money" Argument Against Aid

Astral Codex Ten • 13145 implied HN points • 23 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. The “other people’s money” critique misses key facts: voters also pay the taxes they support and supporters often hold most of the wealth, so backing foreign aid isn’t just a way to avoid personal sacrifice.
  2. Psychological and coordination issues better explain why people vote for aid but don’t donate: virtue signaling, the desire for clean ‘problem solved’ stories, assurance-contract transaction costs, and time-inconsistent preferences push people toward collective solutions.
  3. Government can legitimately reduce coordination and self-control problems, but that creates fairness questions; one practical compromise is default funding with a clear opt-out on tax forms so long-term preferences are honored without coercing everyone.

Mamdani’s Tax Fantasy Is Already Failing Somewhere Else

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 52 implied HN points • 22 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. Targeted taxes on high earners can raise money at first but often push wealthy people and income out of a jurisdiction, eroding the tax base over time.
  2. People who can move or change where they earn money will respond to tax incentives, so migration can carry away far more income than raw population numbers suggest.
  3. Lowering estate tax thresholds to modest levels risks hitting ordinary homeowners and retirees, encouraging them to leave and leaving behind a smaller pool of taxpayers who then get labeled as the new "rich".

A pedagogical tax

Global Inequality and More 3.0 • 1328 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. A tougher Zucman-style tax on the ultra-rich would mainly serve as a moral, pedagogical signal rather than a big revenue source, showing society objects to extreme greed and vanity.
  2. Greed (pleonexia) is driven by a need for social validation, so people keep accumulating and displaying wealth with no natural limit, which makes status-driven consumption endless and socially harmful.
  3. A social-credit-style system for billionaires could tie tax rates to behavior, rewarding decent conduct and raising taxes for abusive or unethical actions to create real accountability and reduce elite impunity.
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Elon's gonzo pay

Robert Reich • 21679 implied HN points • 31 Jan 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. A judge ruled Elon Musk's compensation package was excessive.
  2. Delaware court established the concept of excessive compensation.
  3. Democrats proposed taxing corporations based on CEO-worker pay ratio.

Dos Capital

Don't Worry About the Vase • 2553 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. If AI and robots fully replace human labor while capital yields rising returns and humans keep owning and controlling that capital, simple math predicts extreme, potentially unbounded wealth concentration.
  2. Those key premises are fragile and unlikely: perpetual human control, inviolable private property, AIs having no property rights, continued human survival and enforceable global taxes are all nontrivial and may break in a transformed world.
  3. Redistribution tools like inheritance or wealth taxes could in theory address extreme inequality but face political, enforcement, and economic limits; the real outcome depends on who holds power and whether democratic control endures.

Elections Have Been Nationalized; Did You See Virginia?

Points And Figures • 746 implied HN points • 20 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. State elections now shape national politics, so what happens in a state like Virginia can affect who controls Washington and national policy.
  2. Democratic control at the state level is portrayed as leading to higher taxes, more regulation, and progressive changes in education, elections, and criminal justice that could raise living costs.
  3. The suggested response is to focus on state-level politics by registering and voting in primaries, supporting and donating to candidates, and working to keep or flip key states to prevent a national shift.

BOOM: LVT Candidates Get Elected - Landscape #5

Progress and Poverty • 2155 implied HN points • 17 Nov 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. More candidates who support land value tax (LVT) are being elected, like mayors in Seattle and Buffalo. This shows that LVT is gaining traction in local politics.
  2. Katie Wilson's victory in Seattle is significant as she plans to push for LVT, making her city a leader in property tax reform.
  3. There is a growing conversation about LVT across the country, with more media coverage and legislative proposals, indicating it's becoming a mainstream topic.

At least five interesting things: Nerdy economics edition (#54)

Noahpinion • 16529 implied HN points • 05 Dec 24
💼 Business Taxation
  1. The Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax (DBCFT) could help companies invest more and boost U.S. exports. It changes how corporate taxes work, making it easier for companies to grow and innovate.
  2. Construction productivity in the U.S. has been dropping, partly due to strict land-use regulations. These rules lead to smaller, less efficient construction firms, which impacts how quickly and effectively projects are completed.
  3. Not all so-called 'irrational' decisions people make are true mistakes; sometimes, it's just that the choices are too complex. We need to rethink how we view human decision-making in economics.

A Tax Proposal Against Progress And Democracy

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 30 implied HN points • 06 Mar 26
🌍 World Politics Taxation
  1. Taxing the rich and their wealth discourages saving, investment, and innovation, which lowers productivity and real wages and so harms ordinary and vulnerable workers.
  2. Large taxes on income and wealth expand state power and fuel rent-seeking, patronage, and corruption, which undermines equality before the law and weakens democracy.
  3. The proposed solution is low, simple taxes with no levies on savings or wealth, plus strong property rights, deregulation, and strict limits on public spending to protect prosperity and democratic health.

Public Choice Links, 1/9/2026

In My Tribe • 258 implied HN points • 09 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. Basic goods and services like housing, healthcare, childcare, education, and electricity are getting less affordable even while the economy grows, and many argue the root causes are supply-restricting regulations and demand-boosting subsidies.
  2. Policies that subsidize consumers or providers can raise overall demand and costs, shift burdens to taxpayers, and create opportunities for fraud or misuse.
  3. Effective cooperation and lasting policy fixes depend on careful systems of monitoring and incentives rather than goodwill alone, but political realities — like tax rules that penalize rentals and powerful interest groups opposing liability reforms — make those fixes hard to implement.

Commodity Taxes

Points And Figures • 399 implied HN points • 02 Jan 26
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Open prediction-market positions on December 31 can be treated like commodity contracts and must be marked to market, meaning you owe tax on any unrealized gains at year-end.
  2. Gains taxed under Section 1256 get a 60/40 split between capital gains and ordinary income, producing a blended rate often around 22%, and the tax is due even if the position later loses value.
  3. The 1986 tax reform closed a tax-sheltering loophole so losses after year-end can be carried forward, and consistency with commodity rules suggests prediction markets should follow the same tax treatment.

New capitalism III: Capital

Global Inequality and More 3.0 • 1691 implied HN points • 27 Jul 25
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Capital income is different from labor income. You earn labor income by working hard, but capital income comes from simply having money to invest.
  2. Income from capital is very unequal. Most people don't receive any capital income at all, making it highly concentrated among the wealthy.
  3. A large portion of the world's population has no income from capital. Up to 85% of people may not earn anything from their investments, leading to a significant divide in wealth.

The curious case of Qingdao, China's land value tax

Progress and Poverty • 1539 implied HN points • 31 Jul 25
💼 Business Taxation
  1. Qingdao implemented a land value tax that focused on the unimproved value of land, which helped reduce speculation and boost development. This tax system meant that instead of taxing income or trade, the main focus was on land, aiming for a fairer economy.
  2. Despite its successes, Qingdao's regime had significant flaws, including no real democracy and the extraction of natural resources for foreign benefit instead of local empowerment. This shows that good economic policies must also consider fairness and local benefit.
  3. The case of Qingdao teaches us that even a straightforward land value tax can lead to economic growth and success, as long as assessments are frequent and transparent. It highlights the importance of making land accessible and fairly taxed to prevent speculation.

Gao Peiyong: boosting consumption requires profound redistribution reform

Pekingnology • 60 implied HN points • 14 Feb 26
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Household consumption is weak mainly because people’s job prospects, incomes, and confidence are shaky, so restoring expectations and income security is central to reviving demand.
  2. Fixing this requires deep redistribution: shift fiscal spending away from large physical projects and fiscal assets toward public services and direct support for people, and make fiscal policy more equal between urban and rural areas.
  3. Pair short‑term policy measures to unlock immediate spending with long‑term institutional reform — especially a universal, non‑discriminatory social security and transfer system — and make expectations management a routine part of macroeconomic governance.

New York Can’t Afford to Sideline Private Developers

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 21 implied HN points • 25 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. New York needs to build many more homes where people want to live, and the private sector is essential because the city can’t afford to pay for all the new housing itself.
  2. Policies that sideline developers—like strict tenant controls, talk of expropriation, or big public housing plans—discourage investment and reduce the supply of rental housing, which tends to raise rents.
  3. Given tight city finances and the risk of people and firms leaving if taxes rise, the practical way to close the housing gap is to work with private builders and use market-driven solutions.

India’s AI Wedding Buffet: Generous Portions, Political Economy Heartburn

Get Down and Shruti • 20 implied HN points • 16 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Taxation
  1. The government favors an innovation-first, light-touch AI governance model that leans on existing laws, sector regulators, and techno-legal standards, and it has already moved to impose binding deepfake rules; but enforcement capacity and institutional scaffolding lag behind the rules, risking overreach or automated over-removal.
  2. Physical and political-economy constraints—notably soft soil at fab sites, slow and complex subsidy disbursements, and an insolvent, politically distorted electricity distribution system—are the real bottlenecks that will decide whether AI chips, data centers, and other infrastructure actually get built.
  3. India has world-class engineering talent and a strong startup ecosystem that can build niche, language- and document-focused models and do the messy systems integration work enterprises need, but unpredictable tax rulings, bureaucratic grant processes, and limited private capital certainty make it hard for companies to scale to global frontier models.

Vote Buying And Pandering

Points And Figures • 799 implied HN points • 03 Aug 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. States run by Democrats often have stricter taxes and financial issues, pushing people to move to states with better conditions. Many people are leaving states like Illinois for more favorable economic environments.
  2. A recent pension law in Illinois may worsen financial problems by increasing liabilities, which could lead to more taxes for residents. This is seen as a political move to win votes from public sector workers.
  3. The decline of Chicago's economy has led to fewer job opportunities and businesses, making it less attractive for residents and companies. Issues like high taxes and government inefficiency continue to drive people away.

Economics Roundup #5

Don't Worry About the Vase • 1836 implied HN points • 25 Feb 25
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Many people believe that average tax rates and structures are unfair or ineffective. This could mean that policies need to evolve to better meet people's needs without creating high penalties for earning more.
  2. Trade barriers impact economic growth negatively, as they create higher costs in trade and limit opportunity for development across regions, both domestically and internationally.
  3. Access to credit can significantly influence people's financial wellbeing. If restrictions are placed on credit availability, it can harm those who are already struggling financially.

The U.S. Debt Binge will end with a 2-tier health care system

In My Tribe • 561 implied HN points • 25 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. There is a possibility of big tax increases in the U.S. to manage the rising debt. This could mean people will need to pay a lot more in taxes than they do now.
  2. Health care might start being divided into two levels: basic and luxury care. Many older people might have to pay out of their own pockets for better medical services.
  3. Medicare could cut down on what it covers, making it harder for people to get certain medical treatments. This could lead to a situation where only the basic care is affordable without extra costs.

Banfield on the Hyperbole of Urban Bankruptcy

Bet On It • 135 implied HN points • 28 Nov 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. Politicians often exaggerate city budget crises to gain credit or shift blame, rather than because the city is truly insolvent.
  2. When leaders claim a city "must" get state or federal aid, it usually means local taxpayers prefer not to pay or hope others will, not that paying would force people into poverty or be impossible.
  3. If people aren't willing to pay to fix a problem, it's probably not truly critical, and governments still have options like austerity or tapping unused tax bases (for example, taxing unimproved land) instead of declaring bankruptcy.

Why I Left Norway

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1553 implied HN points • 10 Dec 24
💼 Business Taxation
  1. High taxes in Norway, including a new unrealized gains tax, made it hard for entrepreneurs to keep their businesses profitable and maintain ownership. They struggled to balance their income with the need to pay these taxes.
  2. Many successful Norwegian entrepreneurs are leaving the country to escape burdensome taxes, and this trend is affecting the wealth distribution in Norway. A significant number of top taxpayers have relocated to protect their wealth.
  3. The situation in Norway reflects a troubling pattern where government policies may stifle innovation and entrepreneurship. This has created an environment where those who want to build businesses feel they have no choice but to move elsewhere.

Hong Kong's death has been exaggerated

Asian Century Stocks • 471 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Investor sentiment in Hong Kong is currently negative, but the perception of the city changing or dying may be misplaced due to its advantages like low taxes, currency stability, and efficient infrastructure.
  2. Despite economic struggles in China, Hong Kong's economy is recovering with tourist returns, retail sales growth, and positive net migration, with potential for lower interest rates in the future.
  3. Hong Kong remains vital in Asia, benefiting from low taxes, reliable legal system, and financial hub status, even amidst challenges like interest rate impact and risks from geopolitics and National Security Law.

❄️ 🐣 Comment investir l'épargne des enfants ?

Snowball • 825 implied HN points • 14 Sep 23
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Consider investing children's savings in the stock market for long-term growth potential.
  2. Opening a brokerage account in your name to hold ETFs or stocks for your child and then gifting it to them can be a tax-efficient way to invest for their future.
  3. Ensure to handle legal aspects like declaring the donation to the tax authorities and consider equal distribution among multiple children to avoid inheritance disputes.

3 Ways out of our "Fiscal Death Spiral."

cryptoeconomy • 707 implied HN points • 08 Jul 23
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. There are 3 ways to escape the fiscal crisis: reduce spending, raise taxes heavily, or resort to printing more money.
  2. The increasing debt and interest payments are approaching unsustainable levels, potentially leading to historic inflation rates.
  3. Regardless of the chosen path, the final destination seems to be inflation as the most likely outcome of the fiscal crisis.

Housing and 'a global wall of money'

System Change • 687 implied HN points • 06 Jun 23
💼 Business Taxation
  1. The housing crisis in Britain is not just about supply and demand, but also about a global wall of money inflating housing values.
  2. Speculation in the property market is fueling high house prices, not a shortage of supply.
  3. To make housing more affordable, measures like property speculation tax and managing speculative capital flows are needed.

How SP culture produces financial crisis

America in Crisis • 59 implied HN points • 01 Jul 24
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Financial crisis can stem from a shift in profit usage from investment to financial market growth, impacting economic growth.
  2. SP culture, focusing on shareholder returns through stock buybacks and dividends, can lead to financial instability and economic downturns.
  3. Minsky's financial instability hypothesis outlines how capitalist economies can transition from safe to risky financial structures, culminating in financial crises.

Survival - for now

Comment is Freed • 76 implied HN points • 27 Nov 25
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. The budget was a survival-first choice: ministers avoided big political risks and didn’t raise earned income tax, relying instead on smaller, targeted tax changes and fiscal creep.
  2. That approach buys short-term stability — a relatively kind OBR forecast and targeted moves (like ending the two-child benefit limit) should prevent market panic and help keep poll ratings steady.
  3. But it mostly defers hard problems: weaker productivity, higher welfare and debt costs, and postponed reforms mean bigger fiscal risks and tougher choices are likely to come back later.

Why I don’t think neoliberalism is over

America in Crisis • 79 implied HN points • 10 Jun 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Taxation
  1. Neoliberalism post-1980 may not be defined by changes in regulation, but rather by tax policy, specifically tax cuts on high income individuals.
  2. The focus on shareholder primacy in economic culture has led to high executive compensation, stock buybacks, and low enterprise premium since Reaganomics, shaping the kind of capital growth favored in the economy.
  3. The decline in worker power, rise of inequality, and other neoliberal characteristics are tied to tax policies and economic culture, indicating that neoliberalism is still ongoing despite claims of its end.

Strategic Funds

Points And Figures • 692 implied HN points • 05 Feb 25
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. The idea of a Strategic Wealth Fund (SWF) and a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) is seen as bad because they could go against individual freedoms and lead to misuse of taxpayer money.
  2. Government can't truly invest money; it can only spend what it collects from taxes or borrows. This means investments made by the government aren't genuine investments.
  3. Bitcoin is still mostly potential and hasn't proven its real-world value. Critics argue that despite years of development, it lacks practical uses in everyday life.

How Low Wages Made Japan A Deficit Addict

Japan Economy Watch • 339 implied HN points • 07 Dec 23
💰 Finance Taxation
  1. Low wages in Japan lead to decreased consumer purchasing power, causing a need for government intervention through deficit spending.
  2. Household income in Japan has been declining over the years, affecting consumer spending and economic growth.
  3. Government deficits in Japan are used to finance consumer spending and support the economy due to stagnant wages and decreased savings.