Hacker News Reader

There's a reason governments give out bizarre capital gains incentives: rich people bribe ('lobby') politicians for them.

The truly rich receive most of their income through capital gains rather than wage labor, so when the rich lobby for tax cuts for themselves, they lobby for reductions in capital gains taxes.

View on HN

The parent is talking about dividend vs capital gain taxation; your comment does not address this issue.

GP's comment outlines a pretty solid driver for the CG taxes to be driven lower than dividend rates, so yeah, it does address it.

If capital gains rates were required to be equal to the rates on dividends, the incentive toward buybacks and other earnings bypass measures would go away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com