Related Posts
Does EY let you keep Amex rewards points?
Bitcoin about to tank?
More Posts
🎉 Congrats to all who were promoted!
What does comp look like for PE ops associates?
Additional Posts in Personal Finance Bowl
Google stock to buy now or after the split?
Anyone have a recommended tax person in Chicago?
Paid off my account debt!
New to Fishbowl?
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.





He gets bamboozled.
Rising Star
Should we ensure that the super rich pay their fair share of tax?
Most people “yes”
Should people with over $80M in tradable assets - not private investments in startups or in real estate, pay a tax rate of at least 25% on their income?
Most people “yes”
Republicans “Kamala is going to tax unrecognized capital gains and the world economy will collapse”
Most people “run away! Run away!”
This isn’t going to impact the vast majority of people, so no, the kid doesn’t get it.
All of Kamala’s tax initiatives are for people that make more than $400k and have more than a $100 million net worth.
Having Trump and his cronies strip marginalized communities of their basic human rights is a bigger problem.
To me, it’s a no-brainer.
It isn’t relevant. It’s likely a fake story to cause a shitstorm over policy that wouldn’t affect 99% of Americans
Is the point of this reply is to reestablish the point that it affects a tiny portion of Americans or to say that it’s more than 1%?
The theory goes if the wealthy with large / concentrated holdings unload their assets to pay these taxes on unrealized gains it could send markets into a significant spiral / correction period — which would impact most Americans
Rising Star
That’s ridiculous because they aren’t going to be selling any meaningful portion of their assets to pay the tax. Billions of shares get sold every day and the market doesn’t collapse.
Keep raising taxes and people will leave and take their companies and entrepreneurship with them. Thats why you’ve seen such a massive exodus from NYC to Miami with finance, why startups and VC’s continue to move to Austin, and why high tax EU countries struggle with new company growth. Politicians frequently fail to appreciate the downstream impact high net worth individuals have through either job creation in the companies they’ve built, or the enabling effect they have on new company generation by having large amounts of capital they can readily invest in the most promising companies - they are far more effective at productively deploying capital than a government.
That being said, sure there will be some bad actors, and yes the balance can always be improved, but taxing unrealised gains will truly be one of the most self destructive moves a government can make on the health of its financial markets (short of fixing food prices - which is honestly one step away from economic oblivion)
The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to levy taxes. This means that any new tax, including one on unrealized gains, would have to be proposed as legislation and passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/23/kamala-harris-unrealized-capital-gains-tax
Ok I’m slippery sloping and going for worst case scenarios. Please take with a grain of salt.
The problem I see with introducing new taxes like this is that it is based on the what the government assumes is the unrealized gains.
Stocks are pretty straight forward.
But when you start talking about real estate, this is more fluid. For example: house bought in 2023 for 400k. In 2024 everything was reassessed by the county. That house is now worth 1million dollars. Nothing changed with the property - except the assessment. So, now with unrealized gains, I’m have to find money to pay for something that only exists on paper.
My concern today is yes, it might be 100 million. But we have watched all sorts of crazy promises since 2019. In 5 years that could be much lower and impact the HCOL areas like NYC or California because it’s now 5 million via executive order.
Rising Star
Luckily it only applies to “tradeable assets” and excludes those things that you are concerned about. So, given that, do you now support this concept?