Standard operating procedure for the government. Introduce a new tax that only affects a very small percentage of the population. You know, the portion that just aren’t “paying their fair share”. The populace is fine with the idea, after all it doesn’t affect me. Step two, lower the threshold after a couple of years and don’t tie it to inflation. Step three, wait 20 years. At that point, you’ll have captured a large portion of the population in this totally unmanageable tax (imagine having to value and reach agreement on assets like real estate, classic cars, art every year with the government).
A good example of this is the Alternative Minimum Tax. When first enacted it affected just a few hundred people.
You also made a nice corollary as to why estimated value based property taxes also make no sense.
My working class grandfather tried for decades to sell his home / land that the state valued for over $1 Million. When he died we tried to aggressively sell the property but because of extreme zoning and EPA measures it was impossible to sell or build. We ended up selling the entire property for less than $250k at the hight of the housing boom.
What pisses me off is not the fact that the land was not worth what he thought, but that the government assessed it at a ridiculous value, charged him taxes on that value for decades, and then created a regulatory mess that made the land not developable.
Agree with QTR 100% on taxing unrealized capital gains being a bad idea, even if limited to folk with wealth greater than I'll ever come close to reaching. So how about increasing the amount of realized capital loss deductible each year from $3000 to $10000? How about eliminating the cap entirely, you lose $50,000 you can deduct $50,000 from other income and if it doesn't erase your income entirely, carry it over till next year. Even better, how about allowing deductions for unrealized capital losses, to go along with taxation of unrealized capital gains. Let's have some fun, do away with the $100 million wealth cap ceiling, and fuck with everybody.
This article should be required reading for every congressman and woman, although half of them wouldn't understand it. 100,000,000 threshold this year, 5,000,000 in 5 years? If someone has major losses can they deduct them, I bet tax attorneys are licking their chops.
I couldn’t agree more, this is more legalized theft (as most taxes are). Congress & the Biden administration needed to stop spending OUR money like they’re living out some twisted version of Brewster’s Millions.
But what’s is really going on here?!? It’s the Cloward-Piven strategy which has been initiated by Cloward-Piven sycophant & fellow alum, Barack Obama, et al. This is the deliberate & systematic destruction of our economy in order to usher in a new Socialist utopia.
Unless I misread, you've missed what might be the most important reason not to tax unrealized gains. We'll make the example everybody's favorite boogieman: Elon Musk. He doesn't actually have a lot of money - what he has is a lot of unrealized gains. When he bought Twitter he couldn't just write a check, he had to sell a shit ton of Tesla stock to raise the funds. If you tried to tax his unrealized gains, what would he do? I think you see where I'm going, he'd have to sell another shit ton of Tesla stock to pay the tax. Spread this behavior around to everybody with over $100 million in assets and you're setting up the mother of all stock market crashes.
Notice and be wary of the shifting overton window, even in the AIER piece that was quoted here. Taxing unrealized income is criticized, as it should be, but then less onerous tax regimes are suggested as alternatives. For those in support of freedom and against the state, this is the intellectual trap that has been set for you. Instead of arguing properly, that taxation of any kind is theft and therefore illegitimate, you are put in a position where you are doing your enemy's heavy lifting by defending taxation (as long as it's done in a certain way).
I can see this used to target the middle class and upper middle class via home valuations. If you buy a house and its value went up over a course of 1 year, you owe a tax on that gain. Remember, we are supposed to rent and be happy...
Come on man, it s the plan . The dems see a loss in November and their only choice is to totally destroy the economy for the next republican president. They did it in2015 . This is cloward piven on steroids. Dems have 6 months to destroy america
Our elected leaders (Dem or Rep) are willing to try anything but spend less OPM. Its crazy. The Boomers have become experts at it over 30+ years in power. Just hand it over to GenX already.
Thanks for sharing QTR, very refreshing to read a slightly different (more pragmatic) take on the spending vs. taxation debate.
Im opposed to this scheme out of principle; I may not like Zuck or Bezos, but it’s not because they’re wealthy. Give the federal government an inch and they’ll take a country mile.
The idea makes zero sense in any iteration, but it makes even less sense than that if unrealized losses don’t see any sort of tax refund/credit. Obviously they won’t get that treatment, so it’s even more of a nonstarter in my mind.
Good information for the uninformed and otherwise interested patriotic Americans who see their American Dream crumble to the ground the last several decades. Unfortunately, the system cannot be fixed from within the system. Those days are long gone. There is only one solution (and it is already happening) and it will destroy the corrupt and criminal fake fiat Ponzi system. #BitcoinFixesABrokenWorld #EscapeTheMatrix #ABetterLifeOfPeaceFreedomTruth
This is the Left's way of clawing back the inheritance tax. The people who need to read this article are the affluent white female urban liberals who are protesting one day for Antifa , the next day for Hamas on daddy's dime.
Standard operating procedure for the government. Introduce a new tax that only affects a very small percentage of the population. You know, the portion that just aren’t “paying their fair share”. The populace is fine with the idea, after all it doesn’t affect me. Step two, lower the threshold after a couple of years and don’t tie it to inflation. Step three, wait 20 years. At that point, you’ll have captured a large portion of the population in this totally unmanageable tax (imagine having to value and reach agreement on assets like real estate, classic cars, art every year with the government).
A good example of this is the Alternative Minimum Tax. When first enacted it affected just a few hundred people.
You also made a nice corollary as to why estimated value based property taxes also make no sense.
My working class grandfather tried for decades to sell his home / land that the state valued for over $1 Million. When he died we tried to aggressively sell the property but because of extreme zoning and EPA measures it was impossible to sell or build. We ended up selling the entire property for less than $250k at the hight of the housing boom.
What pisses me off is not the fact that the land was not worth what he thought, but that the government assessed it at a ridiculous value, charged him taxes on that value for decades, and then created a regulatory mess that made the land not developable.
Agree with QTR 100% on taxing unrealized capital gains being a bad idea, even if limited to folk with wealth greater than I'll ever come close to reaching. So how about increasing the amount of realized capital loss deductible each year from $3000 to $10000? How about eliminating the cap entirely, you lose $50,000 you can deduct $50,000 from other income and if it doesn't erase your income entirely, carry it over till next year. Even better, how about allowing deductions for unrealized capital losses, to go along with taxation of unrealized capital gains. Let's have some fun, do away with the $100 million wealth cap ceiling, and fuck with everybody.
This article should be required reading for every congressman and woman, although half of them wouldn't understand it. 100,000,000 threshold this year, 5,000,000 in 5 years? If someone has major losses can they deduct them, I bet tax attorneys are licking their chops.
I couldn’t agree more, this is more legalized theft (as most taxes are). Congress & the Biden administration needed to stop spending OUR money like they’re living out some twisted version of Brewster’s Millions.
But what’s is really going on here?!? It’s the Cloward-Piven strategy which has been initiated by Cloward-Piven sycophant & fellow alum, Barack Obama, et al. This is the deliberate & systematic destruction of our economy in order to usher in a new Socialist utopia.
Unless I misread, you've missed what might be the most important reason not to tax unrealized gains. We'll make the example everybody's favorite boogieman: Elon Musk. He doesn't actually have a lot of money - what he has is a lot of unrealized gains. When he bought Twitter he couldn't just write a check, he had to sell a shit ton of Tesla stock to raise the funds. If you tried to tax his unrealized gains, what would he do? I think you see where I'm going, he'd have to sell another shit ton of Tesla stock to pay the tax. Spread this behavior around to everybody with over $100 million in assets and you're setting up the mother of all stock market crashes.
Good read. So are they going to allow them to deduct their unrealized capital losses.
Notice and be wary of the shifting overton window, even in the AIER piece that was quoted here. Taxing unrealized income is criticized, as it should be, but then less onerous tax regimes are suggested as alternatives. For those in support of freedom and against the state, this is the intellectual trap that has been set for you. Instead of arguing properly, that taxation of any kind is theft and therefore illegitimate, you are put in a position where you are doing your enemy's heavy lifting by defending taxation (as long as it's done in a certain way).
I can see this used to target the middle class and upper middle class via home valuations. If you buy a house and its value went up over a course of 1 year, you owe a tax on that gain. Remember, we are supposed to rent and be happy...
Come on man, it s the plan . The dems see a loss in November and their only choice is to totally destroy the economy for the next republican president. They did it in2015 . This is cloward piven on steroids. Dems have 6 months to destroy america
No disagreement here, ......but obliterating an economy built on printing money and buying room service from the world wouldn't take much.
Just watch. The guys running the printer are about to show you how it's done.
Our elected leaders (Dem or Rep) are willing to try anything but spend less OPM. Its crazy. The Boomers have become experts at it over 30+ years in power. Just hand it over to GenX already.
Thanks for sharing QTR, very refreshing to read a slightly different (more pragmatic) take on the spending vs. taxation debate.
Im opposed to this scheme out of principle; I may not like Zuck or Bezos, but it’s not because they’re wealthy. Give the federal government an inch and they’ll take a country mile.
The idea makes zero sense in any iteration, but it makes even less sense than that if unrealized losses don’t see any sort of tax refund/credit. Obviously they won’t get that treatment, so it’s even more of a nonstarter in my mind.
Good information for the uninformed and otherwise interested patriotic Americans who see their American Dream crumble to the ground the last several decades. Unfortunately, the system cannot be fixed from within the system. Those days are long gone. There is only one solution (and it is already happening) and it will destroy the corrupt and criminal fake fiat Ponzi system. #BitcoinFixesABrokenWorld #EscapeTheMatrix #ABetterLifeOfPeaceFreedomTruth
This is the Left's way of clawing back the inheritance tax. The people who need to read this article are the affluent white female urban liberals who are protesting one day for Antifa , the next day for Hamas on daddy's dime.
Do you ever get the feeling this shit show is on purpose?