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Comment by ohCh6zos | Hacker News Reader

That feels right, I guess I just check yes, and as long as I never sell it, it's not really an issue.

I think it's quite likely that the government will come after the ability to defer capital gains. Avoiding taxable events is a heavily exploited 'loophole' by the very rich. In an effort to harmonize capital gains and income there will be some sort of mark-to-market wealth tax / property tax. So you may end up having to pay property tax on your NFT if you want to keep it. At least if it's valuable you can sell it to cover the tax incurred. The government doesn't have to value the property at sale price (see Chicago housing) so you could, however unlikely, end up owing more on taxes than you could sell it for - if this were to happen the government considers that more your problem than their problem.

I think that is unlikely because its not really about the state’s revenues, its about money circulating in the economy

they simply penalize people that try to hoard dollars and not circulate, via tax and inflation

so it doesnt matter to the government that rich people borrow against appreciated assets, if they spend the borrowing then vendors sell stuff and also pay tax on that. if they pay interest the bank gets that, usually. if they donate the loan proceeds or the assets thats fine too. if they invest it thats fine as well.

obviously almost no individual politician perceives it this way, and a law may be passed through their house, but the aggregate outcome is that risk and money circulating is incentivized by not being taxed, accumulation of just cash to hoard is disincentivized by heavy taxes.

My prediction is that politics will change out of necessity due to insufficient tax revenues and an increased wealth inequality will popularize tax harmonization. Rich people having more money will be of little comfort to the masses of working poor.

tax the rich always becomes raise income taxes on the upper middle class

which is palatable because the masses of working poor only relate to taxes on transactions categorized as income instead of everything else that rich people actually use

Don’t disagree, it’ll probably backfire, but political expedience means they’ll still try it. Plus I include the middle class in the working poor, once the middle class are no longer able to sufficiently save for retirement I consider them poor. Most middle class don’t know how poor they are yet and when they find out they’re going to be mad.

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