Ask HN: Why are you not outraged at the capital gains tax proposal?

Re:Ask HN: Why are you not outraged at the capital gains tax... by PaulHoule on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @04:11PM (#29005652)

If they weren't able to train 70 million people to get outraged about that sort of thing then there wouldn't be a Republican party.

The trouble though with taxing unrealized capital gains is in the implementation.

For instance, somebody might own a huge amount of shares in a private company that is valued at a certain price. That might be almost all of the wealth.

If they are taxed on the capital gain they are going to have to (1) find some price the government believes is the real price of the asset, (2) sell some of the asset to get the money to pay the tax.

Since it is a private company, (2) might be very hard to do, particularly if you want to get the price (1).

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Re:Ask HN: Why are you not outraged at the capital gains tax... by Witeshadow on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @10:33AM (#29013821)

The tricky part is def the implementation. The question is how to tax billionaires and discourage hoarding of such wealth, and instead encourage spending and investment.

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Re:Ask HN: Why are you not outraged at the capital gains tax... by relaunched on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @10:58AM (#29014143)

There is a provision for private company equity (illiquid) that you pay an extra fee, on top of capital gains, upon disposition.

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Re:Ask HN: Why are you not outraged at the capital gains tax... by alecst on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @04:16PM (#29005715)

Yea makes sense, I thought about this a while ago when Liz Warren proposed a wealth tax in 2019. Good point.

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Re:Ask HN: Why are you not outraged at the capital gains tax... by wmf on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @05:42PM (#29006699)

People are begging to buy shares in private companies right now BTW.

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