U.S. billionaires would pay tax on unrealized gains from their assets to help finance President Joe Biden's emerging social-policy and climate-change legislation, according to a proposal unveiled on Wednesday by the top Senate Democrat for tax policy.
Semi-based, shame it will die somewhere in a committee
The absolutely bizarre thing is that Sinema apparently supports this while opposing hikes on the income or corporate tax? While I do support taxing unrealized capital gains (we basically already do for middle-class homeowners via property taxes), I feel this could be a nightmare to enforce.
How do you determine the capital gains on an original Van Gogh art piece purchased 5 years ago for $100 million? Is it worth more today? Less? I feel a billionaire wealthy enough to purchase an art piece like that is also wealthy enough to pay a tax lawyer to convince the IRS it hasn't appreciated.
Furthermore, does this also mean they'll be issuing tax refunds for unrealized capital losses? If Tesla's stock price cratered and Elon Musk lost $50 billion, is he entitled to a $15 billion tax refund? You'd pretty much have to say yes if you're taxing unrealized gains.
Again - I support this tax proposal, it probably has the votes to pass, and it'll end up being a net win. And it would get past the Senate parliamentarian too, since pretty much any tax proposal would. But this seems like a really weird, clunky solution because Democrats are too cowardly to just undo the Trump tax cuts on the rich.
UPDATE: Manchin's a no, never mind, lmao
You get tax deduction in future I assume. I.e. sell 35% stocks (I’m very optimistic here) to pay taxes, if your wealth craters you get 70 billion deduction for future or whatever the fuck.
With art pieces they can just make them taxable either on reselling or pawning