nonliquid assets

Saez and Zucman counter that most nonliquid assets be valued based on known metrics — reported sales and profits for nonpublic businesses, comparable property appraisals for real estate.

Rich people don’t know how much money they have, and “net worth” includes appraisals on all sorts of nonliquid assets, from cars and houses to fractions of companies.

But thanks to the Republican tax law, Apple will pay at a fraction of the tax rate on its foreign profits that it would have paid at under previous tax law — just 15.5 percent on profits held as cash and 8 percent on earnings held in nonliquid assets like real estate and equipment.

Under the new tax law, companies that make a one-time repatriation of cash will be taxed at a rate of 15.5 percent on cash holdings and 8 percent on nonliquid assets.

The IMF estimate could be overly cautious, given China’s relatively low level of external debt, but it could also be too sanguine in that some significant portion of China’s reserves, estimated to be around a third, is believed to be tied up in nonliquid assets—and unavailable in a crisis.