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Sweeping Reform Would Tax Capital Gains Like Ordinary Income

• VonGuard 8y ago
  I mean, great, but the GOP will never let this happen. the Senate will kill this before it even gets to committee, let alone a floor vote.
  • rileymat2 8y ago
    I am not sure I support taxing capital gains as ordinary income unless there is some way to adjust the gains for inflation. For instance, if your capital gains tracked inflation precisely it seems fundamentally unfair to tax a percentage of the gains, as the person has not really "gained" in real terms.
    • _bxg1 8y ago
      One could say the same thing about salaries; most (salaried) people get a minimum 3-4% "raise" every year just to keep up with inflation and living expenses.
      • reboog711 8y ago
        2% or less is a lot more common in my experience, irregardless of what inflation is.
    • jdavis703 8y ago
      It looks like this plan would only apply to a fraction of the economic top 1%. Most people tend to support a progressive tax system, probably because it seems reasonable that the richest should help out a little more than the poorest.
      • rileymat2 8y ago
        I 100% support a progressive tax system, whether it applies to the 1% or everyone, not accounting for inflation strikes me as structurally unfair.
      • microcolonel 8y ago
        Even in a flat system, the productive contribute more. The current system is aggressively progressive, almost all the income taxes are paid by a tiny minority.
        • rileymat2 8y ago
          The rich surely contribute more in absolute terms, but that is not the only way to look at things. For instance, you could look at contribution as a percentage of discretionary income. In those terms, you might find that the middle class contributes the "most".
        • danaris 8y ago
          The rich can afford to give up a much higher percent of their wealth or income in taxes than can the not-rich. Living expenses do not simply increase as a linear function of income or wealth. They increase, sure, but there's an effective upper bound. Jeff Bezos does not need to buy 10,000 times more food (or food 10,000 times more expensive) than someone making minimum wage. Thus, the statement that "in a flat system, the rich contribute more," while trivially true, serves only to obscure the horribly damaging nature of flat tax schemes—or, indeed, even schemes that are only as progressive as the one we have now, which has allowed the very wealthy to accumulate the vast majority of all gains in the economy for decades. That's...not a good thing. It's something we need to be working against, and increasing the progressiveness of our tax scheme (however "aggressive" some may feel that makes it) is one good way of doing so.
    • erentz 8y ago
      But don’t we tax normal interest as income too? We don’t adjust that for inflation.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • WillPostForFood 8y ago
    There are probably more bipartisan approaches, like focusing on increasing taxes on things like carried interest instead of capital gains broadly.
  • tssva 8y ago
    You introduce it now to setup being able to pass it later when you have a majority. The Republicans now have to officially go on record opposing it which means you can use it as a campaign issue when running against them. If you then win a majority while having raised the issue during the campaign you can claim a "mandate" for passing it.
• dmix 8y ago
  > Just before taking on the role of ITEP’s director of federal tax policy, Steve spent more than two years as the senior tax policy analyst for Sen. Bernie Sanders and as a member of the senator’s Budget Committee staff. Some background on the author.
• amluto 8y ago
  I rather like this idea. Among other effects, it will get rid of the "carried interest loophole" for real, since carried interest will be taxed just like everything else.
  • coredog64 8y ago
    One can argue that carried interest as applied at hedge funds is extremely unfair, but it also applies down at the lower end of the spectrum when small businesses are formed as partnerships with unequal contributions.
    • amluto 8y ago
      And that’s fine. With this proposal, it simply won’t be a loophole any more. You can slice and dice the income however you like, and everyone will be taxed at (roughly) that same rate that they would be if they worked a regular job and earned the money the usual way.
• tshanmu 8y ago
  How does taxing a unrealised sale help? What if it loses value the next year - will they get a refund?
  • jdavis703 8y ago
    Seems like you could write it off as a business loss. It would tank government revenue in a recession, but perhaps it would also provide an automatic stimulus effect.
    • microcolonel 8y ago
      It would also make it pointless for a private individual or trust to invest. This is a terrible idea.
      • jdavis703 8y ago
        Why would it be pointless? I’m not an economist but it seems like it would make investments generally less profitable, but I don’t see it eliminating profits. Further where would billionaires put their money instead? Is the idea that they are just going to buy art and yachts instead?
        • microcolonel 8y ago
          They'll put their money in New Zealand or Canada or Taiwan, maybe. I know I wouldn't stand for this personally.
          • jdavis703 8y ago
            In the U.S. you’re required to pay taxes on income made both domestically and internationally. Failure to declare those earnings outside the U.S. would probably be tax fraud.
            • microcolonel 8y ago
• dboreham 8y ago
  I'm guessing there's some actual reason we tax capital gains at a lower rate.. Didn't find that in the article but it's probably along the lines of : the stock market would plummet like a rock otherwise, also real estate. And everyone's net worth is tied up in those asset classes.
  • tomp 8y ago
    > stock market would plummet like a rock otherwise Why would it? I mean, it wouldn't affect the fair value of companies... just the amount of actual cash you get out of selling the price (and if only gains are taxed, the tax is proportional, meaning that you it can't tax profit into loss, only profit into less profit).
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      It would create many economical forces causing investors to not want to invest in the stock market, eventually causing its demise. Each one has been already described in other comments. From my (EU citizen) POI, please go ahead. This will help Europe greatly as it's the most rational place to move assets for most Americans, with many great places with great tax and business culture + these are really nice places to live in, actually. That will in turn raise EU wages to the likes of the USA - thanks!
  • cheerlessbog 8y ago
    It's sometimes argued that it would amount to double taxation since corporate tax was already paid (on income you "own" being a shareholder). On the other hand we provide corporations unique legal benefits, from which as a shareholder you benefit, it is reasonable for them to have a unique tax regime.
  • coredog64 8y ago
    A couple of theories: You’re putting capital at risk, so you need incentives to account for the risk. Another is that capital gains aren’t indexed to inflation (which would be a nightmare to compute), so the long term rates are lower to bake inflation in. The US used to tax capital gains at higher rates, but when they did they also had generous exclusions (IIRC, the first 50% wasn’t taxed)
• digitalengineer 8y ago
  I don’t understand American politics... Is this -again- just for show? Why wasn’t something like this done during the Clinton or Obama administration? You know, when the democrats had the majority vote?
  • jdavis703 8y ago
    During the majority of those years Republicans had majority control of one or both houses of Congress.
    • digitalengineer 8y ago
      Well... if you really wanted to, how much time does one need to push it through?
      • microcolonel 8y ago
        A testament to the greatness of the U.S. system, "just ram it through" is usually not a valid political strategy.
        • digitalengineer 8y ago
          I agree. From what I gather the current administration does not agree. They get their stuff rammed through. The most insane stuff, I am sorry to say.
          • microcolonel 8y ago
            > I agree. From what I gather the current administration does not agree. They get their stuff rammed through. Well, give it a second look. Nothing weird is actually happening. People are just running around like headless chickens because they don't like the President, and to some degree that's fair enough, I don't like him either. At least this time the President is not using the IRS to harass his political opponents.
• tomp 8y ago
  Reading the title, this seems like an awesome proposal, but paying attention to the details... > tax the appreciation of assets owned by the very wealthy as income each year, an approach known as mark-to-market taxation > the proposal would be structured to affect only the richest 0.1 percent of Americans Yeah, it's almost certainly a terrible idea. (1) Mark-to-market is terrible, unrealistic, and arbitrary. Imagine a 70 year old grandma owning a house in SF... it's price rises 20% in a year, what is she to do? She has no money... the only thing she can do is sell the house! Even worse, what happens when there's a crisis, and house prices fall 20%? You lost more than you gained, and you still owe last year's tax! (2) only top 0.1% and like ordinary income is fundamentally incompatible - I agree that capital gains should be taxed like income (and with the tax / offshore assets reforms that the US has done in the past few years, it's uniquely positioned among countries to actually implement such tax), but I see no reason why it shouldn't apply to everybody (same as income tax).
  • asdf333 8y ago
    i understand your sentiment on the first but that’s what originally led to proposition 13 and is responsible for a lot of housing and budget issues in CA. i am not saying mark to market makes sense but for this rule, if the grandma is in the .1% her net worth is well north of 10m i’m sure she will be able to afford the 20% increase i’m not saying mark to market makes sense but your grandma example is not a good counter example
    • ianai 8y ago
      It’d be pretty easy to carve out for people without resources to pay such taxes.
      • joeyrideout 8y ago
        They will leave the country immediately.
        • gumby 8y ago
          It turns out most people don't organize their lives around tax policy. And in the case of US persons (citizens and GC holders) leaving the country doesn't remove the obligation to file and pay taxes.
• petermcneeley 8y ago
  Or we could tax income like we tax corporate profit. The profit of a person is what remains after all the expenses. So only the net cash year over year is taxable.
  • cheerlessbog 8y ago
    What would be legitimate expenses?
    • burlesona 8y ago
      For an individual probably just about anything. I’m guessing the benefit of the OPs idea is it punishes savings this has a stimulus effect. But, personally, I’m not a big fan of punishing savings.
      • petermcneeley 8y ago
        I was just more commenting on how taxing income of an individual is more like taxing revenue for a corporation.
• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Feels doubtful (to the point I can't take it seriously). That said, revenue is half the problem. Excessive spending and waste is the other half. Raising taxes to give mindless politicians more fuel for their boundless spending fire...what can go wrong?
• CryptoPunk 8y ago
  This would be absolutely terrible for the economy. Income inequality has to be tackled by removing impediments that the masses face in participating in the most lucrative sector and professions, not by pulling down those doing the best job of expanding capital (e.g. Warren Buffett).
  • gibybo 8y ago
    It's funny that you mention Warren Buffet, because basically everything he has done to expand capital has been through Berkshire Hathaway, which pays ordinary income tax on investment gains rather than the lower capital gains rate.
  • your-nanny 8y ago
    and what if those impediments are actually the result of political capture, tent seeking, and regulatory capture, by the ultra-rich? What if the super rich form an anticompetitive cartel? what if their very existence will inevitably mean that who you know will matter more than your skills, your hard work, and good ideas?
    • CryptoPunk 8y ago
      >>the result of political capture, tent seeking, and regulatory capture, by the ultra-rich? You can't defeat that by trying to reduce the wealth of the rich. There will always super rich people outside your jurisdiction who you can't tax and who can exert influence, and super rich people in your jurisdiction who evade your taxing authorities through legal means and secrecy, or simply because your taxes are not high enough to prevent them from acquiring massively more wealth than the average person. Trying to reduce the influence of money on politics by reducing large concentrations of wealth is like trying to stop a boat from sinking by boiling the ocean away. The solution is to plug the holes in the boat's hull, which means closing the avenues through which money affects the electoral and political process, not to destroy the wealth generation process by repealing the reward for creating wealth. >>What if the super rich form an anticompetitive cartel? what if their very existence will inevitably mean that who you know will matter more than your skills, your hard work, and good ideas? Fortunately that's not how the world works. The rich are far too numerous to create any kind of sustainable pact. They compete fiercely with each other in the market, which is why wages have grown 20 fold over the last 200 years, and grown faster globally over the last 20 years than in any time in history. The exception to this is politically coordinated government intervention like the kind that emanates from regulatory capture, which undermines contract liberty and the ability that provides to reject or defect from a pact.
• williesleg 8y ago
  Taxes need to be voluntary. The wealthy like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates all want to pay more, let them pay more.
• rm2889 8y ago
  Taxing unrealized capital gains? So someone like Bezos who's annual increase in wealth is in the form of amazon stock, would have to sell that stock to actually have the liquid cash to pay for this tax? Come tax season wouldn't it lead to a bunch of founders having to flood the stock market with their stock, hence a large decrease in the stock price and consequently lower taxable amount? Hence a self defeating tax? Then there's the inflation question. If CPI is 3%, and my capital gains amounts to 6% of my portfolio, my real increase in wealth is only 3%. But I pay tax on 6%?
  • joeyrideout 8y ago
    It's particularly self-defeating if it scares away foreign investors (or scares local investors out of the country), causing a net decrease in tax revenues from the lost business.
  • ianai 8y ago
    Increased stock flow not tied to the CEO’s utility of wealth and possibly opening opportunities for other people to buy stocks at a lower value but likely to rebound? Sounds like a boon for the market and smaller traders.
  • burlesona 8y ago
    I’m not endorsing the idea, but just thinking about how it would play out... I suspect that for the reasons you just gave, you’d see a quick transition in the marketplace where companies stopped paying high-end roles largely via stock, and founders like Bezos greatly reduced their personal holdings. If they’re trying to target only the top 0.1% it would probably have some floor like the first $1M per year that is exempt. But yeah this would seem like it would very much punish concentrated ownership of large companies. In reality though it would probably ha e some stupid loophole like it only applies to individuals so then people could avoid it by transferring their stock to intermediate LLCs or something.
• FighterMafia 8y ago
  At a 9% nominal return, that would imply an after tax return at a 40% rate of 5.4%. Then take out inflation of 2%, and you get a 3.4% real return on stocks. Which, if you consider the risk is pretty terrible. So would expect markets to reflect that divergence of risk/return that this bill would introduce and lead to a massive stock market sell-off. Kiss your 401(K) good bye! Genius plan.
  • asdf333 8y ago
    this is easily solved by phasing it in over time (stock bought before x year remains under old rules, increase taxes to match ordinary income gradually over a decade)
• abakker 8y ago
  I suspect that this would be good for the economy. I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect that cap gains deferrals over time are an important component of encouraging asset bubbles. A huge benefit of The benefit of ETFs have been to encourage permanent tax deferral of appreciating stocks through swapping out specific stocks. On the other hand, as someone in the middle class, i would Really prefer to not lose my capital gains benefits. If we taxed them as normal income, I’d love if they would reduce the effective income tax rate.
  • coredog64 8y ago
    I don’t think that’s how an ETF works. I can’t buy into an ETF, realize gains, and then cash out tax free. The part that is (and IMO, should be) tax free is that when the ETF swaps out components to maintain their ratio, they aren’t being taxed on it. If they were, it would just turn into a drag on the fund. It’s not like they’re using the ETF for HFT.
    • abakker 8y ago
      You’re right - I was a bit unclear. What I mean is that ETF balancing activity ends up being untaxed. Effectively, you get diversification, gains, reinvestment of dividends, etc but never have to realize the gains unless you sell. The avoidance at large probably induces bubbles of asset prices as collectively, early investors avoid realizing gains.
• sjcsjc 8y ago
  There might be a good argument for it of which I'm unaware, but on the face of it taxing unrealised gains seems grossly unfair to me.
• gist 8y ago
  Blog 'about' says non partisan. However the author of this article by his past certainly would appear to have bias: https://itep.org/wamhoff-steve/ https://itep.org/wamhoff-steve/ "Just before taking on the role of ITEP’s director of federal tax policy, Steve spent more than two years as the senior tax policy analyst for Sen. Bernie Sanders and as a member of the senator’s Budget Committee staff. In this capacity, he wrote legislation related to personal income and corporate income taxes, financial transaction taxes, estate taxes and tax avoidance." Now before even seeing this I could tell the socialist slant to the writing. For example he says: "When the value of an asset rises, that increase is income for all practical purposes, but our current laws do not tax this income until the asset is sold. (This untaxed asset appreciation is often called an “unrealized” capital gain.)" Except it's not 'income' until it's sold. And until it's sold the value can vary either higher or lower. Capital gains applies to a host of things including not only stock but also artwork, real estate, collectibles even 'domain names' being taxed when sold vs. prior. As anyone knows there is no guarantee with any asset sold will bring a certain price in the market. Note also that if Warren Buffett has '$70 billion net worth' unless he convert that net worth to cash he can't do anything with it. (Not discounting that being a billionaire has other value but that's a separate issue'. If I own an art collection (I don't) and the value of the art collection has appreciate to a value of $50,000,000 the only value of that art is that I can sell some and at that point I will pay taxes on the sale at capital gains rate. Part of the idea of taxing capital gains at a lower rate is to encourage investment in certain ways that leads to a presumably better financial good in the end (even if you are cynical and think there are other motives that doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate reasons for the lower tax rate).
  • chriscappuccio 8y ago
    Of course he's biased. He's writing to a progressive crowd. The big examples he gives of users of these tax schemes are the Trumps and the Kushners, as if they are part of some ultra-exclusive club. They're not.
• resters 8y ago
  In any discussion of taxes I think it's important to consider the significant asymmetry between state and federal taxes. The incentives created by the policy change in the article are difficult to anticipate, with reasonable arguments for and against. It would be significantly better if most of the important tax policy decisions were made at the state level, so that the consequences could be better understood. I live in a high tax state, and hear people complain about the high state taxes. But my state taxes are a tiny fraction of the massive burden caused by Federal taxes. Most of the Federal budget is due to pentagon spending that is not auditable by design. Since I have lived in several states I feel completely comfortable evaluating the ROI of my state tax dollars, but have very little confidence that the lion's share of my tax dollars (Federal) are being spent wisely or judiciously. I pay more in Federal taxes now than I earned in an entire year just a few years ago, and I'm not wealthy at all, barely middle or perhaps upper middle class in a major US metropolitan area. It puzzles me that so many people defend high Federal taxes. I don't know how high or how progressive taxes should be to be "correct", but I do know that Federal programs and appropriations are orders of magnitude less transparent than state and local spending. I would happily invert the two so that the state got most of the money to do things like fixing the highways that cause hours of gridlock almost every day, or removing the lead and chemicals from the drinking water. Capital gains tax debates try to make people adopt class warfare stances on what is fair, when the ones getting the best deal are the firms who steal billions via Pentagon spending.
  • thrill 8y ago
    As of this March, the federal budget spending is in three categories: Mandatory, which is at $2.841 trillion; Discretionary at $1.426 trillion; and interest on the national debt, $479 billion. Of those three, the DOD is about half of the Discretionary category, so totaling about 15% of the budget overall. In other words, the only budget item that the Constitution explicitly calls for is considered discretionary, and is less than 20% of the overall spend.
• jandrewrogers 8y ago
  Taxing the value of non-liquid or semi-liquid assets is extremely adverse. The "value" of these assets is notional only, disconnected from actual liquidation which may have a much lower value ipso facto, especially if liquidation is forced to pay the tax on the assets. Furthermore, it can put many people in the position of owing taxes for which there is no realistic source of income to pay (like the proverbial grandmother's house). And then there is the vicious downward spiral in valuations of liquid assets this can create, as assets are dumped to cover the tax liability. The US tax code is bad enough as it is when it comes to taxing unrealized gains, doubling down on that would be profoundly stupid and would make many tech startups impractical from a tax liability standpoint. All of which ignores that one of the (multiple) important reasons longterm capital gains are not taxed like income is that those investments are adversely impacted by inflation, which is not deductible in the US. In many other countries that tax capital gains at income-like rates, the cost basis is inflation adjusted, which substantially reduces the amount of taxes actually paid on capital gains. Most countries deal with longterm inflation on capital gains either by allowing deduction of inflation or lowering capital gains tax rates to compensate (which is viewed as simpler to implement), but it would very poor policy to do neither. tl;dr: This is not realistic tax policy. See also: Chesterton's Fence.
  • deanalevitt 8y ago
    re: Chesterton's Fence - great analogy. Until they mention the significant benefits of the lower capital gains tax, and how raising taxes won't detract from those benefits, the entire premise appears woefully unprepared.
• betterunix2 8y ago
  The title should be corrected: this proposal applies to unrealized gains.
• deanalevitt 8y ago
  How will this impact retirement plans? Unless I'm reading it wrong, the premise is that deferring taxation allows for wealth to grow "unfairly" and that the annual growth should be taxed annually. Wouldn't this decimate retirement funds, increasing the risk of investing in stocks and put even more pressure on Americans who already likely to outlive their retirement savings? I know it talks about only taxing the 0.1% but that doesn't appear sound to me. I'm skeptical. I'd feel better if the proponents of this actually addressed the benefits of a lower capital gains tax and how their plan would maintain these benefits.
• _uih7 8y ago
  Are we really better off if Elon is allowed to own only a small fraction of Tesla and SpaceX? I worry this proposal has the potential to harm American competitiveness by forcing entrepreneurs out of the companies they start. The proposal also would target only American citizens, but if the goal is to fight inequality shouldn't we tax all mega corporations operating in the US even if the owners are foreign?