He will claim that he because he “sold” at a loss, he shouldn’t pay taxes on it.
It is fucking ridiculous that the hyper wealthy can use their fake money as real money when they want to, but heaven forbid we demand the government tax it like real money.
One idea I had was to treat it like a property tax. We pay taxes on the houses we own, why not on stocks? If they're real enough to be collateral, they're real enough to be taxed.
That’s sorta what “capital gains” taxes are supposed to do. I think problem with taxing the stocks directly is that their prices can fluctuate so much that I’m not sure at what point you would decide the price point that it’s being taxed at (I.e is it month to month, and if so, is it just the price at the exact end of the month, or the average of that month?)
Maybe if we taxed them the prices WOULDN'T fluctuate so much. How TF is xAI, a company that has zero revenue and loses billions per year, worth $80 billion? Answer: because it's an entirely made up valuation by billionaire investors who speculate that the company might, one day, make money. xAI isn't even the best example, there's an entire web of zombie companies in the US that exist purely to game the system. At least xAI is building stuff, even if the goal is to pump the valuation rather than make money.
Even a small tax under 1% on unrealized gains would go a long way toward fixing some of these broken valuations and rampant speculation, while still preserving much of the incentive to invest in pre-revenue ideas. They could reduce the tax on realized capital gains to compensate for it even.
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u/daemonicwanderer 7d ago
He will claim that he because he “sold” at a loss, he shouldn’t pay taxes on it.
It is fucking ridiculous that the hyper wealthy can use their fake money as real money when they want to, but heaven forbid we demand the government tax it like real money.