Kamala Harris’s critics are totally wrong about taxing unrealized gains
I’m trying to work out if I’ve ever heard as much nonsense in such a short period of time as I’m hearing right now about the Biden-Harris plan to tax unrealized capital gains.
Under the plan, an increase in the value of an asset would be taxed as income, even if the owner hasn’t sold the asset. Right now, these so-called paper profits aren’t taxed.
Most Read from MarketWatch
Never mind that this proposal is nothing new — and is nowhere near getting passed into law anytime soon, anyway.
Or that it would only apply to the tiny number of people who have a net worth of over $100 million.
Or that it would be created to fix a very specific problem, which is that many of the superrich actually pay almost no income tax at all.
Even when I put all that to one side, almost every single thing I’m hearing against the proposal is wrong and an insult to our intelligence.
I’m not even especially liberal. I’m a registered independent, an investor and a capitalist. But these arguments are so bad they make me want to hoist the hammer and sickle and start singing the “Internationale.” Low-tax conservatives and Republicans should be cringing in embarrassment.
First, let’s start with all the arguments being made against this policy that are just arguments against taxes in general — for example, that if we tax unrealized gains, it will mean people are being penalized for owning assets, or for saving money.
By that measure, I’m being penalized for working for a living, because I have to pay income tax. I’m also penalized for owning a home, because it is subject to property tax. I’m penalized for inheriting money if I have to pay inheritance tax. I’m penalized for shopping when I pay my state’s sales tax.
What’s left? Er … nothing.
Look, I get it. These people don’t like paying taxes. Nobody does. But government money has to come from somewhere. If I want to live in an untaxed anarchy with no government, I can probably move to one of the world’s failed states and take my chances.
These people are no different from left-wing extremists who also want something for nothing. They deserve each other.
Then there are the complaints that taxing unrealized gains is somehow unfair because the investment hasn’t been sold yet, or because it would be too logistically difficult to tax it before a sale.
Phooey.
Why should I have to sell something before it’s taxable? My city taxes my home on its assessed value every year. It feels no obligation to wait till I sell it.
My mutual funds and exchange-traded funds charge me a fee based on the total value of my investment. They don’t just bill me for the funds I’ve sold. I pay a percentage of the total value, including all the unrealized gains.
If you have a financial adviser or portfolio manager, they will do the same thing.
They will not charge you a fee based on realized gains. They will charge you a fee based on total assets.
Amazing, really, given that such a calculation is alleged to be totally impossible.
I have never heard anyone arguing this is unfair or a wrong way to do business.
Once upon a time, taxing unrealized capital gains probably would have been logistically impossible. Imagine all the paperwork involved, back in the days before computers.
No longer.
I’ll bet your broker tracks your total portfolio value by day, hour and minute, even if you are just a regular customer with an online account. Doing the math on this stuff now is easy.
My favorite complaint about taxing paper gains comes from those in the hedge-fund and private-equity rackets whose businesses would be most affected. These are people who make their gazillions by charging their clients hefty fees … on their total assets under management.
No, not just the realized gains, but also all the unrealized gains.
The typical manager charges clients about 2% a year on the value of their investments, just for breathing, plus 20% of the profits (if any). It’s known — widely — as the 2-and-20 model.
Neither of these ludicrous fees is levied only on realized assets. Hand $1 million to a hedge fund or private-equity fund and they start charging 2%, or $20,000, a year from Day 1 — often before they get around to investing your money.
And if your portfolio somehow goes up, say, by 50%, they’ll skim another 20% of that — $100,000 — in extra fees. No, they won’t wait till any of those gains are realized, or “crystallized,” or whatever term they use. You’ll be paying those fees quarterly, if not monthly, as the supposed performance occurs.
If the investments then tank, even before you’ve realized a nickel of personal gains, do you think they’ll give that money back? How big a sucker are you?
And these are the same people pretending to be shocked — shocked! — by the very idea of levying a charge based on asset value or unrealized gains: “What kind of Soviet tyranny is this?”
Pass the hankies.
It’s not as if these guys have any grounds to complain about the tax code. They already get a full-service massage from the IRS every year.
Hedge-fund and private-equity managers benefit from the so-called carried-interest loophole, which might better be described as the two-Ferrari tax break.
This is a special tax break, just for them, that’s so outrageous that nonexperts simply refuse to believe it when you tell them about it.
It means they pay taxes at special low rates. And they get to defer their tax bills for years.
Try doing that at home.
It’s not even as if they are creating value. As Warren Buffett has pointed out, these funds, over time, generate worse returns for their investors than low-cost index funds.
Personally, I think we should levy a special tax on all hedge-fund and private-equity managers. How about 2% of their personal assets per year, plus 20% of your gains — realized and unrealized?
Outrageous? Larcenous? Grotesque? Sure. We learned from the best.
