Sweeping Reform Would Tax Capital Gains Like Ordinary Income
itep.org
itep.org
> 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).
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
Removing prop 13 from commercial buildings (nobody lives there) and removing the socially corrosive ability to give it to your kids tax free would fix most of the financial and social problems and preserve the best part.
This would keep grandma in her home or farmstead, but prevent corps from selling, but doing tax free exchanges and preserving the low tax base forever.
PS, mark-to-market is a terrible idea and these gains are not income for most people until sold. We already have property taxes, we just need them to work.
I'm... not sure this is right. But! Let's take it at face value for a moment.
A major problem in SF is that folks who are entirely concentrated in housing investments are likely to stymie the building of necessary services and density increases because meeting housing demand tends to make their house cheaper, and investment and essential services might negatively impact property values.
We see these forces at play all over the city. And while it's easy to say, "Oh yeah we totally wanna keep those Mission Grannies in their homes," the reality in SF is that nearly all the homes owned are rented out to said grannies.
> 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).
Given that taxation is fundamentally different in its impact between the rich and the poor, it seems like it's reasonable to have the rules differ to be sensitive to it. Even if that is only a transient condition, it is not like we're in a world where the US tax code isn't complicated and this will be the proverbial straw.
Imagine holding a growth asset like a small tech company and its value goes up 10x before the end of the tax year, prompting a very large taxation. Then shortly after, it crashes down to 2x. You've probably lost money still.
This would have serious implications for private equity firms and other risk-takers.
Where this is a problem is for people with undiversified holdings, such as early employees exercising stock options. Under current system, they are on the hook for the tax bill, but if the stock crashes next year, they’d lose out and likely not having any offsetting gain where the loss could be a shield. Unlike the said firms.
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%?
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
As a dual filer, I know this is not true. As a U.S. citizen, you are required to file taxes on all income, foreign source or U.S. source, but you are not required to pay taxes on all of it. And why remain a U.S. citizen anyway if you can't afford it?
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
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)
Some background on the author.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
As an aside, unified partisan power only occurs about once per generation per political party. Using that power typically results in destroying the concentration of power. And the US Congress has a two year cycle between elections with elections watering down much progress through the every other year political cycle. So effectively, unified party power has about 100 days of live once per generation. That’s becoming less and less capable of supporting substantial change. They’re basically only able to pass one big change in those 100 days. For the Ds, this change has to pass a significant portion of the Democrats- and they don’t vote as a bloc. They vote in relation to their representative bodies, which themselves vary significantly.
Kiss your 401(K) good bye! Genius plan.