From The Hill. November 28:
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in early December on a case that has the potential to broadly reshape the U.S. tax code and cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.
At issue in Moore v. United States is the question of whether the federal government can tax certain types of “unrealized” gains, which are property like stocks or bonds that people own but from which they haven’t directly recouped the value, so they don’t have direct access to the money that the property is worth.
Large portions of the U.S. tax code require that income be “realized” before it can be taxed, but critics say it’s an inherently wishy-washy concept that courts have just been ignoring for years due to administrative impracticalities.
Even if the court limits the scope of its decision to the specific tax referenced in the case, known as the mandatory repatriation tax, a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could cost $340 billion over the next decade, according to the Justice Department....
....MUCH MORE
There are an awful lot of capital gains that never get taxed:
Make, borrow, die, transferred at stepped-up basis.
And that's on top of the preferential treatment that got codified years ago but which no longer seems to be contributing to the societal bargain.
From our intro to a masterful old paper "TAXES, CAPITAL AND JOBS":
Over the last few years I've come to believe that all income, earned and unearned, should be taxed at the same rate, that preferential taxation of capital no longer leads to the intended policy effects of job creation and increasing capital investment in plant. property and equipment but rather is a bought-and-paid-for scam perpetrated by the financier class.
On a related point, it's time to get rid of the carried interest loophole which taxes income at cap gains rates for private equity and hedge funds.
That carried interest should not be treated as a capital gain can be proven quite easily.
Show me one tax return where a carried interest capital loss was allowed.
[you won't be invited to any of the meetings ever again -ed]...MORE
