It seems you are assuming that flipping houses is somehow super easy and therefore seemingly high returns and possibly preferential tax treatment are morally ob

It seems you are assuming that flipping houses is somehow super easy and therefore seemingly high returns and possibly preferential tax treatment are morally objectionable. Moral questions are very person and I won’t speculate on that. However, flipping is far from easy on a consistent basis - it requires: a lot of capital (that one has presumably earned), sourcing deals, managing transactions, carrying market risk while capital is not liquid, project management (at minimum, but I’m sure there are folks who actually do the repairs/renovations themselves), marketing/selling the property for profit. During all this time our hypothetical house flipper is not getting paid, they have to wait for this once every two years payout. That’s not how businesses run, so this tax treatment doesn’t really encourage house flipping. This tax treatment does help people that have to move for job or other reasons, which I’d say is a good thing.