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"imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up"

Like property taxes, then. ;-)

Realistically, I understand the issue. If I had to pay taxes on the increase in price on my house (say from a $300k valuation three years ago to a $500k valuation after the market bubble), I'd be fucked to find 15% of that overnight. Of course, if they allowed that to be offset by the primary residence exemption, it would be a zero cost. Without that, it would still be a non-issue for 95% or more of US taxpayers because most people simply don't own an illiquid asset that increases in capital value (much less an international one), and if you exclude secondary real estate that non-issue number probably increases to more then 99.9%.

imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up?

You mean property tax? Because almost every state already ups your taxes if your value goes up. In TX they reassess every year. In CA they had to pass a law to STOP doing it (now it only goes up by a flat rate every year if I remember correctly), but that has led to new loopholes to avoid tax.

But I do see your point. For normal people, their main or only asset is their house. They need to live there and aren't necessarily getting 10% pay raises when their value goes up 20%. If my house were taxed at its current value, I don't think I could afford to live there since I don't own it outright.

The big issue is that banks give out very low interest loans based on assets that have unrealized gains. Those loans are used as income by wealthy people but aren't taxed by the government. They are "taxed" by the banks getting some money in interest, but the government sees none of that and it's at a much lower rate than capital gains.

Oh I agree the constitutional question is clear, and I agree that this articular court is compromised and cannot be trusted to objectively uphold the law. I'm worried about the court of public opinion, though. They are making every effort to obfuscate the critical points, and make it sound like this poor couple has to sell their cat to pay for the illegal tax on an investment that didn't generate income.

I love legalese. So you’re technically correct. What did you hope to gain by pointing out an error in terminology without qualifying what these assets represent to the owners? That’s like trying to say rich people pay few taxes because their actual listed income is so small, like they have no money, so therefore them paying a pittance in tax relative to the average person is justifiable.

For anyone who doesn’t know, even if these assets aren’t earnings, they can leveraged to do things like get loans. You don’t pay taxes on loans. Loan interest rates are usually far, far less than any tax rate. So you take out a 10 million loan, pay zero tax, and maybe a few percent interest. It’s not income, but you now have 10 mil to spend on whatever you want.

One of the many ways the rich avoid taxes.

And non-binding ethical standards!

• Direct registering stock provides a clear record of the owner's name, making it easier to establish ownership and eliminate potential confusion or disputes.

• Investors also avoid certain fees associated with intermediaries like the DTCC to reduce transaction costs.

• Shareholders can also receive information and communications directly from the company, giving them a closer connection and greater involvement in corporate activities.

• With direct registering, shareholders have the opportunity to directly vote on corporate matters, allowing for a more democratic and individualized approach to decision-making. The current system makes the votes basically only coming from big funds like Vanguard and BlackRock.

If your stocks have Cede's name on them, they are not "your" stocks in a legal sense.

We've actually posted quite a few articles/sources on other ways the 1% is gutting true ownership over at: /c/drs_your_gme@lemmy.whynotdrs.org

They 'own' them in the literal sense of ownership. Cede and Co is the name recorded on the issuer's stock ledger. In case you aren't familiar, the stock ledger is something issuers are required to maintain and use to track ownership. Very commonly this responsibility is outsourced to companies called Transfer Agents, which themselves need to be SEC approved.

https://www.sec.gov/about/reports-publications/investor-publications/holding-your-securities-get-the-facts

I would definitely encourage checking out the SEC's recently updated page on the options investors have when holding securities. It's very readable and will likely answer your questions.

TLDR - If you own shares in a broker, you are a "beneficial" owner. This means that while the economic and voting impact of ownership are supposed to be passed on to you, you are not the named owner. If you own shares directly on the register of the issuer there is no middleman to pass these things to you.

DRS is not about price impact on any security. There should never be any price impact on a security from investors choosing DRS over an alternative holding method. DRS, rather, allows for other assurances - most critical for me personally are 1. being able to submit shareholder proposals directly to the company without needing to go through other channels and 2. knowing that my votes will not only be cast, but counted. For more on 2, know that over voting is a massive issue in shareholder democracy, and companies holding elections or seeking shareholder input on proposals never get to see that. Proxy vote counting companies truncate or control voting results before reporting.

This is (imo) a fascinating and tragic problem. Here are a couple sources to get you started if you feel the same way.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=904004

https://web.archive.org/web/20060421085925/http://www.rgm.com/articles/FalseProxies.pdf

https://katten.com/files/21384_proxy-vote-processing-issues.pdf

Replace "teller" with "bank" because we are talking about legal ownership, not physical control.

They don’t have anything but a responsibility to care for it

While they absolutely "have a responsibility" to you, they also benefit from holding it, so your "anything but" rhetoric is incorrect. Brokers and banks alike earn money by lending the assets the have, despite their corresponding liabilities.

Do you think there isn’t a “clear record” without direct registration (from your other comment)

Correct. Legally, you have a "security entitlement". Per UCC 8-503, the property interest you have a result of this entitlement is merely "a pro rata property interest in all interests in that financial asset held by the securities intermediary", i.e. what your broker actually has, which is (a) opaque to you as a customer, and (b) is fundamentally difficult even for them to pin down - as it is composed primarily of their DTC account balance, ideally but they undoubtedly have many derivatives, transactions to settle (which can extend beyond 2 days because FTDs are common), shares lent out that are due to them, etc. So while the number of security entitlements in your account has a clear record, your property interest in the issuer does not have a clear record.