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SFC Casey O'Mally
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If you buy $1,000 in stocks, and the stock price shoots up to $10,000, and you hold on to that stock how much money have you made? If you answered $9,000, try again. The answer is $0. Because you have not yet sold the stock, you have not actually made any money. Your net worth has risen, true. But you have not actually made any money, yet. Because the stock could fall back to $1,000 tomorrow - or even to $0. Once you sell the stock, THEN you have made money.

I don't have the text of the bill in front of me, and I am not going to research it because it changes every 2 - 3 days. But from the article it sounds like the "billionaire tax" (which is likely being dropped) is an attempt to tax rises in stock prices, despite NO ACTUAL MONEY BEING MADE.

Under the current system, stocks are taxed when sold. Now, we can argue about the capital gains tax rate vs. the income tax rate (and, personally, I think that is a very good argument to have). Switching to a taxation on increasing prices is going to make things really scary really quickly - and really confusing.

Imagine I have no job at all. The only money I make is made based on speculating on the stock market. Today, I have a $10,000,000 portfolio and tomorrow it is worth $12,000,000, and the day after it is back down to $10,500,000, and three months from now it is at $10,000,001. I have, over the course of three months made $1. But if you snapshot at just the right time, I made $2M. So do I pay taxes on the $2M? Am I allowed to write off the (almost) $2M loss? Since there is no other income, and I just straight lose $2M from the high point (which was taxed as a gain), will the government pay me back those taxes on the $2M I just paid them? Keep in mind that this is all without the stocks ever being sold, without the stock owner ever having a dime go into their bank account (or their pocket), just through market fluctuation - which happens daily.

This is why the taxes should remain focused on when the stocks are actually sold (as well as dividends paid out). Merely owning a stock which appreciates does not actually equal income. Getting dividends from that stock and/or selling it for a gain, does.

Yes, billionaires have a ton of money in stocks. Yes they accrue wealth through stock appreciation. But that does NOTHING until the stock is actually sold - or they get dividends from their shares. All of that "net worth" is not actual spendable money.
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CWO4 Terrence Clark
CWO4 Terrence Clark
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SFC Casey O'Mally MSG (Join to see) You are talking about taxing Unrealized Capital Gains. One would be very naive to to believe only billionaires would be in the cross hairs. Anyone with a 401-k, IRA or other investment vehicle has exposure to this scheme. Heck, it already happens every year and spins me up. We bought our house for $XX. Pima County taxes us on their assessment that our house is worth $XXXX. That's the hoodoo money you're talking about. Taxed Unrealized Capital Gains.
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MSG Civilian Investigator
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CWO4 Terrence Clark -
I'm not taking a stand either way. My point being, that Democrats have been talking about taxing the wealthy throughout the Trump admin and Biden's admin. There was a lot of talk by liberals including here on RP about paying the social spending bill completely with taxes on the wealthy. So far, the Democrats are looking to do away with a tax on the wealthy and have backed away from another plan to tax the wealthy.
At this rate, the only ones left to pay the bill are the middle class.
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PFC David Foster
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Edited >1 y ago
All but two Democrats in the Senate have already signed on with everything months ago lol... Manchin And Sinema
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MSG Civilian Investigator
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Both of them and some other Democrats in the Senate have stated that the bill the House passed will not be the one they vote for.
You can expect the Senate bill to have fewer items and the cost lower that the House's.
Some things that are likely to be dropped is the immigration (Parliamentarian), family leave (if passed, will have restrictions on it), and some of the climate provisions. At this point, with Democrats dropping the tax for Billionaires and trying to do away with the SALT provisions for the wealthy, there are fewer things to tax that can pay for the bill.

The Democrats who voted for the House bill placed budget gimmicks on some of the provisions to make it look like it would cost less than it does. Some of the items such as paying people for each child they have is supposed to run out in a year. Other items last 5 years such as childcare. Liberals are hoping that once these are passed, the public will demand that they be renewed (kind of like giving someone crack for a year and then cutting them off-they will do anything to get more). If they were renewed and ran for a year, the CBO is estimating that the 2 trillion-dollar bill would cost 3 trillion dollars.

Add to the fact that inflation has risen to 6.8% this month, the highest it has been in 39 years, and the prospects for the bill to resemble anything that the House passed is slim
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