[tomder55]

Sec Treasury Janet Yellen described how they would pick to pockets of billionaires .
In the new bill is a plan to tax unrealized capital gains . An unrealized capital gain is a potential profit that exists on paper, resulting from an investment. It is an increase in the value of an asset that has yet to be sold for cash, such as a stock position ,or maybe a property ,or anything else owned that has increased in value but has not been sold . Currently a taxable gain is only realized when an asset gets sold . Under the Dems plunder that would change.
Not to worry the Dems say . Only the billionaires will be affected .......for now How long would it be before they make a $ million the threshold . A farmer who has a paper value above a million because of the value of the land would be taxed on the value of the land . You see where this goes ?
Or maybe not . There are many millionaire Democrats in Congress . Note how Bolshevik Bernie changed his tune to demonizing only billionaires once he joined the millionaire club.

Now you see why the Dems secretly favor the inflation we are experiencing . Many assets increase in value as prices increase .Inflation related gains are not real gains . In a fair system the gains of assets sold would be indexed to inflation. Taxing unrealized gains not indexed for inflation is an even greater plunder .

Madam Mim estimates the new proposal would raise $200-250 billion which would be well short of funding the now $2 trillion spending The rest will still be funded with monopoly money .

So if the billionaires will have to pay taxes on unrealized gains what is to prevent them from writing off theoretical unrealized losses ? Or what if a stock does real well one year and tanks the next ? Will there be refunds of the taxes; or credits for the loss ?

Next up is anyone who has worked hard to amass any savings . Remember when Madam Mim wanted to tax Roth IRAs before someone reminded her that the money in Roth IRAs were already taxed when invested . Well how long would it be for the Dems to dip into Roth plans due to unrealized gains in that investment ?

Tax unrealized gains ;change banking as we know it as I described in my post about Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, ; scrutinize every transaction over $600 Now you know why the Dems add so much additional $$ and staffing into the IRS .

Let's go Brandon !

[tomder55]

So the obvious problem to this plan is that it is illegal The Sixteenth Amendment authorized Congress to tax “incomes Capital gains aren’t income.

The Dems know this very well and don't care . They will impose their illegal tax and then fight it out in court . When the courts eventually sh+t can the idea ,the spending will have already been authorized . Then the Dems can blame the courts for sabotaging the financing and the added debt relief .

You could take the entire fortune of the 700 people they plan to punish by this confiscation and not make a dent in the total amount of US debt . This will eventually be added to middle class incomes too if allowed to proceed .

[Athos]

Capital gains aren’t income.

If they're not income, what are they?

[tomder55]

correction unrealized capital gains are not income .

[Athos]

correction unrealized capital gains are not income .

The proposal to tax the gains is a wealth tax not an income tax.

[tomder55]

There are no gains or losses if there is no transactions . It is only a theoretical gain or loss or a paper gain or loss . I have watched the value of my IRA fall and rise 2% in the last month alone . Depending when I cash it in determines it's value and not the theoretical value of it at the end of the tax year .
imagine having GNC stock and paying it's theoretical value in 2020 only to see it go bankrupt in June .

Who calculates these theoretical gains and losses ? It does explain why the Dems want to vastly increase the budget and staffing of the IRS. Clearly tax accountants and lawyers are writing this legislation .

It is also a blatantly unconstitutional tax and the Dems know it . Call it what it is ;a bill of attainer designed to punish the few (only about 700 billionaires out of a 300 million plus population ) Bills of attainers or laws that are punitive to a class of people are unconstitutional. ( Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 )

[tomder55]

The problem is not government revenue There is a government spending problem. However if the Dems feel the uber rich are not paying their "fair share then the answer is to change the tax code to a graduated flat tax and remove all loop holes. They could do that and increase revenue while cutting the IRS budget and staffing dramatically. Tough luck for the accountants . Guess they would have to go and find real work .

[jlisenbe]

The problem is not government revenue There is a government spending problem.

In 1991 the federal budget amounted to about 1.1 trillion. For this year it is nearly 4 trillion. Inflation in those thirty years has amounted to about 100%, meaning federal spending, in real dollars, has nearly doubled.

When the pols figured out that we have become so dumb as a people that we will allow them to engage in deficit spending year after year after year, then it was a great day (in their minds) for them and a bad day for us.

[tomder55]

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."

Accreditted to Alexander Fraser Sometimes it's credited to Alexis de Tocqueville

[Athos]

if the Dems feel the uber rich are not paying their "fair share then the answer is to change the tax code to a graduated flat tax and remove all loop holes.

A graduated flat tax is a contradiction in terms. If it's flat, it's not graduated. If it's graduated, it's not flat. What we have now is a graduated income tax.

A flat tax is the dream of the mega-rich. Steve Forbes, the one-time major promoter of the flat tax, stood to gain hundreds of millions in reduced taxes from it.

By all means eliminate the current loopholes and stop the lobbyists from buying the pols by establishing a rational campaign finance system.

[jlisenbe]

A graduated flat tax is a contradiction in terms. If it's flat, it's not graduated.

Not necessarily. One component of the flat tax concept, at least as I understand it, is that there are very limited, or even no, deductibles. It could be two tiered so that income above, for example, 200K would be taxed at a higher rate than income under that target, and yet would still be a flat tax concept.

Income tax revenues in 2020 were about 1.6 tril. The deficit was about 3 tril. So to balance the budget in 2020, income tax revenues would have needed to almost triple. Now 2020 was an unusual year. For 2019, the increase would have needed to be about 75%.

[tomder55]

lol the complaint against a flat tax is that it is not progressive a graduated flat tax attempts a compromise by having limited tiers . There is a definition available provided by economists for those who do not want to parse words . My preference would be to eliminate income taxes all together and replace them with consumption and sales taxes .

[tomder55]

stop the lobbyists from buying the pols by establishing a rational campaign finance system.

can always count on progressives to oppose free speech. The lawmakers are the last people you can count on to make rational laws that affect their bottom line

[Athos]

lol the complaint against a flat tax is that it is not progressive a graduated flat tax attempts a compromise by having limited tiers

You're back to the contradiction. Flat v. progressive/graduated. Anyway you slice it, the flat tax is a boon to the top wealth levels. It REDUCES what they pay.

[Athos]

can always count on progressives to oppose free speech. The lawmakers are the last people you can count on to make rational laws that affect their bottom line

Buying politicians by financing their campaigns to be re-elected as an example of free speech boggles the mind. Only a conservative could see Citizens United as a free speech issue. That decision only gave the rich more power and wealth. It was a giant step toward a true oligarchy. The wheels grind slowly, but they grind.

[jlisenbe]

the flat tax is a boon to the top wealth levels. It REDUCES what they pay.

That depends. For the rich liberals like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk who now pay next to nothing in taxes, it would represent a substantial increase.

It makes no difference anyway. There is no tax scheme proposed by anyone that could even come close to raising the gargantuan amounts needed to balance the budget. It's hopeless. We will go along until this house of cards we live in collapses.

[tomder55]

There is no way punitive taxes on 700 people will dent the problem of over obligation. The more the government spends the more of the budget is used to service the debt and less to spending on programs .

Graduated flat tax is a term used by economists .You can call it anything you wish . It is different than a progressive tax system .


I note that the Dems never have an issue when wealthy individuals like Zuckerberg spend their own money to influence elections in the Dems favor
Political speech is the very speech the framers sought to protect. Campaign finance law are intended to restrict speech precisely because its subject is politics. If there was any absurdity in the case it was the government's argument during the argument phase that asserted its power to prohibit corporate speech was so broad that it could even prohibit companies from publishing books that contained a single line advocating for or against a candidate.

What happened was that Citizens United ,a non-profit corp. funded an anti-Evita ad . Before the Citizens United decision that was a criminal act .In Citizens United ,SCOTUS decided that corporations could spend money advocating the election or non-election of political candidates just as individuals could. The amounts spent, as federal law required, had to be publicly disclosed.

Since the decision Super Pacs (groups of like-minded Americans that independently engage in political speech advocating the election or defeat of candidates.)that cater to individuals have dwarfed those of corporations .2016 Super Pacs spent $1.8 billion on the campaign . Of that money $1.05 billion came from individuals and labor unions($260 million) or other citizen's groups . Only $113 million came from corporations .

The Dems need to stop demonizing the decision . It has worked on their behalf. If corporation spending is corrupting then so is union spending and doubly so from public service unions spent to support the campaigns of the politicians with whom those unions will be negotiating their contracts. . Most Pacs are issue oriented and have nothing to do with benefitting a for profit corporation.

Corporate spending to influence politicians is done so with lobbying efforts to a much greater extent than during campaigns . The way to fix your concerns is term limits for all.

[tomder55]

the biggest contradiction in terms I see is "unrealized capital gains " Yellen Madam Mim and Quid want to income tax people not on what they have earned but on what they have not earned yet .

[jlisenbe]

The hard question to answer is motive. The dems have no plans to balance the budget or even come close to it, so why the fake concern over revenues? It's all theater. They want to appear to be the party that supports the little guy by hammering the rich. In reality they are the party supported by the wealthy elite, and in the end I doubt they will do much to disturb the complacency of their rich benefactors.

[tomder55]

tax the rich is on All Out Crazy's gown . It is their mantra.

They have removed illiquid assets from their plan . That is a plus I guess ;although Mittens properly points out that instead of accumulating stocks ,the rich will accumulate art instead.

When you own a stock ,you own a share of a companies future earnings ;earnings that were already taxed . That is why you hear economists call the cap gains tax a double tax.
The reduced rate for cap gains is an incentive to invest in long term entrepreneurship and job creating .If you tax future wealth creation, you will get less of it. If you tax entrepreneurship, you will get less of it.

These billionaires are not sitting on a mountain of cash .Their holdings in stock invest in a company's growth ie more job creation . If they are taxed on unrealized gains from those stocks then they will be forced to sell some of them to pay the tax. This in turn drives down the value of the stocks .Does that just hurt the billionaire ? Nope . Most middle class IRA's 401-K,s have holding in stock funds .

And who would be the most likely buyers of those stocks ? Not US investors who would be subject to the same tax on unrealized gains .It would be foreign buyers .