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Top Democrat Proposes Annual Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains

posted by martyb on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:19AM   Printer-friendly

An Anonymous Coward writes:

April 2, 2019

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, announced today that he would soon release a proposal to eliminate massive tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthy on their capital gains income. If successful, the proposal would ensure that income from wealth is taxed just like income from work.

His plan, which he has promised to flesh out in a white paper in the coming weeks, would tax the appreciation of assets owned by the very wealthy as income each year, an approach known as mark-to-market taxation. It would also subject that income to ordinary tax rates rather than special, lower income tax rates that apply to capital gains.

https://itep.org/sweeping-reform-would-tax-capital-gains-like-ordinary-income/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-democrat-proposes-annual-tax-on-unrealized-capital-gains-11554217383

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:47PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 07 2019, @06:47PM (#825884) Journal

    There's also the catch that the very existence of these 'unrealised gains' depend on a lot of people not realising them. If too many people try, those gains will just evaporate. So this proposal is taxing money that doesn't actually exist - so at best its another way of printing money (with all that entails), at worst it turns the economy into even more of a pyramid scheme that it already is...

    Sounds like a bluff I'm willing to call. My take is that it'll have the very opposite effect. Attempts to realize the gains on pyramid schemes (that is, when the marks start heading for the exits) are a very quick way to end the pyramid scheme.