zlacker

>>southe+(OP)
I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of dollars worth of taxes.

>>andy_p+ex
> I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax

I very strongly believe you to be wrong:

1. Unrealized gains is unworkable. Billionaires will spend tens or hundreds of millions yearly to avoid paying literally billions in taxes because the expected value is net positive. The IRS won't win chasing down money scattered across the globe. This is not a productive use of capital.

2. Taxing unrealized gains causes extreme capital flight. This is _bad_ for the US.

3. Taxing unrealized gains will lead to corporations and startups incorporating outside the US and keeping their assets outside of the US. This is _bad_ for the US.

4. Founders would very quickly loose control of the companies they started, including before they exit. That is really bad for startups and the ecosystem.

5. This is almost certainly illegal in the US at the federal level.

6. Every tax for the wealthy eventually targets the middle class.

>>kansfa+l31
1. Capital gains tax is already essentially optional for the richest now with various tricks. Of course taxing people is difficult, are you saying because it’s hard let’s not bother?

2. Where will the capital go (all the best investments are in the US), if this happens lots of great businesses will be available to buy at a discount to people with smaller than $100m stock portfolios

3. Potentially true but I would still set up my business in the US and just pay the tax, if I make $100m it’s $20m for the government and I rate that as a great deal to be honest.

4. Why is a one off 20% tax going to lose founders control, this is only about companies post IPO.

5. IANAL are you?

6. If the rich continue to be able to accumulate wealth without paying taxes on it forever I think that is the road to serfdom personally. Taxation of the rich will make everyone better off. I pay over 50% tax in Europe, maybe if the rich were paying their share this could be reduced!

>>andy_p+T71
5. This has been brought up so many times by in the past few years and is very unlikely to pass scrutiny.

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The federal government has the ability to tax "income." Unrealized gains are not income as gains have not been clearly realized.

The closest legal definition for "income" comes from:

The Glenshaw Glass case

In Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., 348 U.S. 426 (1955), the Supreme Court laid out what has become the modern understanding of what constitutes "gross income" to which the Sixteenth Amendment applies, declaring that income taxes could be levied on "accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion". Under this definition, any increase in wealth—whether through wages, benefits, bonuses, sale of stock or other property at a profit, bets won, lucky finds, awards of punitive damages in a lawsuit, qui tam actions—are all within the definition of income, unless the Congress makes a specific exemption, as it has for items such as life insurance proceeds received by reason of the death of the insured party, gifts, bequests, devises and inheritances, and certain scholarships.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_U...

See case law section