A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness found that America’s richest families accumulated $8.5 trillion in untaxed capital gains in 2022
America’s wealthiest families held an astounding $8.5 trillion in untaxed profits in 2022. According to a report from the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness, which analyzed Federal Reserve data, “one in every six dollars (18 percent of the nation’s unrealized gains is held by these roughly 64,000 ultra-wealthy households, who make up less than 0.05 percent of the population.” The report comes as the Supreme Court gears up to decide a case that could preemptively block any efforts to tax the wealth of billionaires.
The data looks at “quiet” income generated by “centi-millionaires,” Americans holding at least $100 million in wealth, and billionaires through unrealized capital gains. Those gains accumulate, untaxed, as assets and investments like stocks, real estate, bonds, and other investments increase in value. If those assets are not sold — or “realized” — they are not taxed, yet America’s wealthiest families can leverage that on-paper value increase to secure favorable loans with low-interest rates in lieu of using taxable income to finance their lifestyle.
“Of the $139 trillion in America’s national wealth, almost three-quarters (73 percent) is held by the richest 10 percent of households, over one-third (35 percent) by the richest 1 percent, and an astounding 11 percent — $15.2 trillion — is held by the handful of fortunate households that make up the billionaire and centi-millionaire class,” the report says. “The wealthiest 1 percent of households hold 44 percent of national unrealized gains ($21.2 trillion), with billionaires and centi-millionaires alone controlling 18 percent ($8.5 trillion).”
This is how you get nobility. Before Reagan, wealth typically dissipated by the third generation. We are heading toward the old European model, where families are rich for a millennium.
Exactly. They may not call themselves nobility but their influence is the same if not more.
When has the US turned into a regime led by the supreme court? All my life, whenever something was up, you heard what the president did or tried to do or whatever. Nowadays, all headlines about the US are about something the Supreme Court with it’s undemocratically elected judges gets to decide over all lawmaker’s heads.
The Supreme Court has been powerful for a long time.
Since the early 19th century.
https://www.history.com/news/supreme-court-power-john-marshall
The solution here isn’t to tax unsold goods, it’s to tax the banks on all the income they’re getting from these loans.
The solution here isn’t to tax unsold goods
Why not? People are taxed for unrealized gains on a house. Why should stocks be any different?
One argument could be that anything that incentivizes people to sell their stocks isn’t a good thing
The more people buying and selling at any given time, the more volatile the price could become, it’s so easy to buy and sell stocks that we already have to have high frequency trading disincentives by having a really high capital gains tax on stocks that were held for a short period of time
Property is a lot less volatile, and there’s already a rather large natural incentive to hold on to it for long periods of time (moving is a pain), and taxing unrealized gains on it (essentially, paying estimated taxes on a theoretical future sale) is unlikely to really motivate anyone to sell their house
This is just pearl clutching for billionaires and an economy that doesn’t work for the majority of U.S. citizens.
roughly 64,000 ultra-wealthy households
Get your forks and knives ready, fam. We’ll be eatin’ good, soon.
There are only a bit over 3,000 billionaires. That would hardly fill us up.
But afterwards, I’ve heard…we eat cake.
