Hang the Billionaire: a Modest Proposal for Making Rich People Less Rich, One Revolutionary Tax at Time

HANG THE BILLIONAIRE A (Mostly) Serious Look at Wealth, Taxes, and the California WayWhat if the solution to inequality creates a whole new inequality problem?California wants more money.Washington wants more money.And somewhere between the billionaires, the tax lawyers, the accountants, the politicians, the U-Hauls, and the government forms, somebody has decided that the easiest person to find the money from is-the billionaire.Enter Hang the Billionaire, a wickedly funny, surprisingly serious journey into the strange world of extreme wealth and the increasingly creative ways governments want to tax it.What happens when you tax someone's wealth instead of their income?What happens when most of that wealth isn't cash?What happens when the billionaire owns a private company that is supposedly worth $20 billion-but doesn't have $20 billion sitting in the bank?What happens when the billionaire moves to Nevada?What happens when the government needs to value a startup?What happens when the tax collector becomes a shareholder?And what happens when everyone discovers that the billionaire is not quite as simple a villain as the campaign poster suggested?From California's proposed billionaire tax to the broader political movement for wealth taxation, Aoo & Ro take readers on a hilarious tour through tax policy, inequality, entrepreneurship, government bureaucracy, billionaire psychology, and the unintended consequences nobody puts in the campaign brochure.Meet Chip Cashman, Patty Pending, Stanley Startup, Larry Liquid, and the other fictional billionaires who discover that being extremely wealthy comes with an unexpected perk: You become extremely interesting to the tax authorities.With sharp political satire, absurd bureaucratic scenarios, and enough fictional tax forms to frighten even the wealthiest accountant, Hang the Billionaire asks a deceptively simple question: How much is too much-and who gets to decide?This book is not a defense of billionaires.It is not an attack on government.It is not an economics textbook.And it definitely isn't an instruction manual for hanging anyone.It is something much more dangerous: A comedy about an argument everyone takes very seriously.If you've ever wondered whether taxing billionaires will save the economy, destroy the economy, barely change the economy, or simply create an entirely new industry of tax attorneys-welcome aboard.The billionaires are ready.The tax collectors are ready.The accountants are terrified.And the forms are already in the mail.HANG THE BILLIONAIREBig ideas. Bigger fortunes. Even bigger paperwork.By Aoo and Ro