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
Unrealized gains taxes is an extractive and totalitarian tax. Someone is always risking 100% loss until they realize those gains. It's an affront to entrepreneurial risk-taking and it's capricious. It would be just as ridiculous to allow someone to write-off unrealized losses.

>>chrisc+fX
Well when you have over 100m in assets in your pile of gold in the dragon lair, its time to be extractive.

>>kjkjad+5Y
How do you know you have over 100m in assets? One never really knows the worth of something until it's sold. (i.e. try selling a used car. there's what you think it's worth and what you get...)

And once the asset is sold, that's a taxable event.

>>rv3909+211
You raise a good point. I found this page from the Norway tax authority. (In a previous post, I noted that Norway had had a wealth tax for a long time. About 1%.)

    > When calculating wealth tax, you must include any assets that you own at the end of the year. These assets must generally be valued at what the asset is worth on the open market. However, an exception is made in the case of housing, and a lower value, known as the tax value, must be used when calculating wealth tax.  

Ref: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rates/tax-value-of-housing/

Two things stand-out to me:

(1) "assets must generally be valued at what the asset is worth on the open market". I guess there will be GAAP accounting rules about how to value less liquid assets. Tradable securities are easy to value; other things, like artwork are less easy to value. In the case of a car, an accountant could reasonably use an online used car marketplace to find a value. (The US has something called the Kelley Blue Book.)

(2) "an exception is made in the case of housing". It sounds like there is a totally different set of rules for taxing housing (land+building).