No. of Recommendations: 2
Most people who are successful in business provide a ton of value to their customers, investors, and employees. They all have to pay taxes on the money they earn. There's no reason to let a handful of people escape paying the same type of taxes on their earnings as everyone else has to pay (who are almost all also contributing value) just because of the form in which they earn that money.
For the record, the majority of American families experience home ownership and/or retirement account ownership. Both home ownership and retirement account ownership are very much involved in having "unrealized gains" that are not taxed. So the question is, do we want to let almost everybody who has unrealized gains "avoid" paying taxes on them until they are realized, but force only rich people to pay that kind of tax?
I say suck it up and be willing to wait till people either realize the gains in order to spend their winnings, or they die with the unrealized gains still unrealized. Death and her midget twin sister Estate Taxes will come for all the billionaires eventually, at least if we have more than $11 Million, which all billionaires do.
Meanwhile, the gov't is collecting A LOT MORE in taxes by leaving these investments in the hands of people who know how to grow wealth before taking their cut. 40% of Elon's Paypal payout is pocket change compared to the $11 billion in income taxes Elon paid the year he bought Twitter. That's $11 billion the federales would never have gotten because it wouldn't have been created if unrealized gain taxes were levied on a young Elon. Multiply that by Bezos, Buffett, Jobs, Page, Brin etc. and you see a big hole in tax revenues at the federal level for taking invested wealth from potential billionaires early.
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