Also, if you aren't trading public stocks, it seems much easier to get around size limitations. When you spend $5500 buying the SPY, the government is incredibl

Also, if you aren't trading public stocks, it seems much easier to get around size limitations. When you spend $5500 buying the SPY, the government is incredibly certain that is the amount of money your investment was valued at. If you buy $5500 of stock in a startup? Who is to say? The opportunity to buy that stock might have been worth 10x that amount the moment that transaction occured, and there's no real way for the government to actually determine that.