The original PR stunt that worked to lower capital gains was to present retirees as human shields in front of capital holders whose income came primarily or eve

The original PR stunt that worked to lower capital gains was to present retirees as human shields in front of capital holders whose income came primarily or even exclusively from capital gains. The entreaty was: capital gains would force your grandparents into eating cat food by taxing them twice in their twilight years! There is a grain of truth to that, but for various American-specific reasons, it is difficult to apply a ceiling income level beyond which all capital gains income is treated as plain income. I believe one pernicious issue that must be addressed is treating corporations as people: lots of legal and tax accounting maneuvers absolutely depend upon this treatment, and a lot of tax-shielded income falls apart without it. Another pernicious issue is actual versus legal control of organizations: again, lots of legal and tax accounting maneuvers depend upon legally on paper showing no or minority control (especially fiscal disbursement) over an organization, yet actual control resides with real-world fiscal beneficiaries. It is highly unlikely these will ever be addressed in the foreseeable future, as many retirement structures among many other kinds of organizations are built around these issues.