Chris Wilson

Kamala Harris supports a tax on *unrealized* capital gains & here’s how that will trigger an economic calamity: Currently, if you own an asset (stock, house, land, etc.) and it goes up in value, you don't pay taxes on that appreciation until you sell it. Makes sense -- you haven't actually made any money yet. Biden and Harris want to change that. In 2022, they proposed a "minimum tax of 20 percent on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains.” In 2023 and 2024, they bumped that up to 25%. This never became law, but the Harris campaign shows no signs of disavowing it. Imagine you’re a family farmer or small business owner whose property goes up in value. Or consider a startup founder I know. He’s the kid of a middle-class family who had a brilliant idea for a consumer technology company that’s worth a lot on paper. But he doesn’t have spare cash because he poured his savings into launching the business -- which is growing and likely to succeed. The only way it would fail is if he has to sell shares prematurely. And that’s exactly what this tax would force him to do. The IRS doesn’t care that your newfound “wealth” only exists on paper. They want cash. The same goes for someone sitting on long-term capital gains in their public stock portfolio: they *have to* sell in order to pay taxes, even though they otherwise wouldn’t have wanted to. This creates a vicious cycle of what's known in capital markets as "forced selling” - you have to sell off assets to pay your tax bill, but so does everyone else at the same time, triggering a downward spiral in asset prices. It's the best formula for triggering a politician-made market crash. It’s significant that even thoughtful Democrats won’t support this policy on the merits, they just insist it’ll never actually happen. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.