Malevolent Insanity of Taxing Unrealized Capital Gains

If price controls on food don’t scare you enough to fight Democrats tooth and nail, consider Kamala Harris’s plan to tax unrealized capital gains:

Harris wants to extract a $5 trillion tax increase from American households and businesses, her campaign confirmed on Monday.

The Harris campaign officially endorsed the laundry list of new and higher taxes included in the Biden-Harris administration’s fiscal year 2025 budget, a plan that would increase taxes by $5 trillion over ten years.

It isn’t easy for a decent person to grasp this level of greed. It calls to mind the Black Lives Matter mobs Democrats enthusiastically supported as they looted stores out of existence.

Harris wants to hike the current 21% federal corporate income tax rate to 28%, higher than communist China’s 25% and the EU average of 21%, her campaign said Monday.

Imagine expecting to get elected on this platform. Democrats have a lot of faith in the power of the media — unless they are counting on election fraud.

Harris proposes a capital gains tax rate of 44.6%. The rate in communist China is less than half that high at 20%.

The most demented aspect of this looting spree is a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains. The American Institute for Economic Research explains:

A tax on unrealized capital gains means that individuals are penalized for owning appreciating assets, regardless of whether they have realized any actual income from selling them.

If you purchased a stock for $100 this year, for example, and it increased to $110 next year, you would pay the assigned tax rate on the $10 capital gain. You didn’t sell the asset, so you don’t realize the $10 appreciation, but must pay the tax regardless.

Even if the stock goes back down next year.

Taxing unrealized capital gains contradicts the basic principles of fairness and property rights essential for a free and prosperous society. Taxation, if we’re going to have it on income, should be based on actual income earned, not on paper gains that may never materialize.

Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, Marxist policies based on maliciousness and greed sink everyone:

[T]axing unrealized gains hurts economic activity by discouraging investment and capital formation, the lifeblood of a dynamic economy.

This will erode the tax base, reducing tax revenue in the long run. Democrats are okay with that.

By taxing unrealized capital gains, we discourage risk-taking and stifle innovation, essential elements for improving productivity and raising living standards.

Or even just maintaining them.

Producing poverty isn’t a bug. As with welfare policy, it is a feature. The more impoverished people are, the easier they are to enslave.

If Harris and her supporters are allowed to consolidate power, the Great Depression will look like Thanksgiving dinner by comparison. The same sort of people starved tens of millions to death in the name of the same ideology in Russia and China. America face a similar fate if Democrats are not stopped.

On tips from The Great Cornholio and Mr. Freemarket.

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