> Sitting on property and collecting rent is clearly not working. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about that. Even landlords have to work (and I say t

> Sitting on property and collecting rent is clearly not working. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about that. Even landlords have to work (and I say this as a tenant). There's tenants to screen, repairs to manage, regular safety inspections to perform. Land rents have volatility and risk as well. There's the possibility of vacancy or bad tenants which leaves you with a property that's not returning any value. A landslide could take away your property entirely and insurance won't cover it (don't scoff; I know someone this happened to). Maybe it's not as much work as running a small business, maybe it is, I don't know. But it's a non-zero amount of work. EDIT: As I pointed out in a comment above, I think the top tax rate for unearned income should be higher, with more brackets overall. There's no reason for it to be flat 20% when the top rate for earned income is 40%. That unfairly penalizes small-time investors (who get taxed at 15% on an income that would be almost 0% if earned) as well as high-earning salaried people who pay 40% compared to the 20% someone making 20x as much in unearned income would pay. > I have yet to meet a person who can cogently argue why handouts (e.g. land rents) shouldn't be distributed equally. Taxing rental income at 100% would kill off the rental market completely. A lot of people like the flexibility of renting and don't want to deal with realtors and banks and mortgages every time they change their job. Many people can't afford the down payment to buy a house so they need to rent until they've saved up enough to do so (you might argue that property prices will go down because of no landlords and there won't be a need for mortgages, not sure that'll actually happen but it's another topic). Businesses also rent offices or retail space when they can't or don't need to buy. At the end of the day, landlords provide a service that's useful, by deploying their capital and labor. > I'm of the opinion that unearned income should be taxed at 100% Here's the IRS definition of unearned income: "Unearned income includes investment-type income such as taxable interest, ordinary dividends, and capital gain distributions."[1] So if you really mean that, you're going to be taxing average-Joe-worker-with-index-funds (that includes me BTW) 100% on his dividends. Maybe we need to start being clear on what the term "unearned income" really means before we argue further :-) 1. https://apps.irs.gov/app/IPAR/resources/help/unearn.html https://apps.irs.gov/app/IPAR/resources/help/unearn.html > whereas earned income should be taxed at 0% So...CEO making $50 million/year would pay $0 in taxes? > You really seem very keen on having the tax code encourage gambling over working. Gambling implies the possibility of loss, the presence of real risk. And even property speculation is still a lot of work; you have to research lots and lots of properties, crunch numbers, line up funding, develop and market the property for rent or resale. Given that it's work with more risk involved than taking a paycheck, why is it a bad thing for the tax code to recognize this?