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I would find it totally fine to do a 50% estate tax for anything over 10M I would get behind + end stepped up basis.
In this post-woke "you need to work to get your money" world, ending rich people welfare (aka inheritance) should be a priority.
Progressives will never support increased inheritance taxes. They are relying on Mom and Dad's house to fund their great novel.
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="73" height="73"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out ![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="800" height="418"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
You could do this going forward, but people have not been keeping their cost basis records. What did grandma pay for that GE stock back in the 70s?
I am for this, but I am really really for this starting in 30 -40 years god willing.
Capital appreciation distorts the economy. A business should have earnings and distribute those earnings to its owners. Otherwise, what is its purpose?
Biggest tax loophole, money-wise. I advise elderly clients all the time to not sell highly-appreciated assets as they will pass tax free to the next generation. If they eliminated it, there would be an avalanche of tax revenue.
Someone's gotta explain it to us lay people. I'm not exactly well versed on tax policy.
To be fair, the Biden budget plan endorsed by Harris does also mention eliminating the step-up basis.
Better oversight on valuation r.e. step-up would more reasonable too. It’s common to artificially inflate valuations on alt/illiquid assets to avoid capital gains later.
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
Quote
Max Schatzow
@AdviserCounsel
Replying to @AdviserCounsel
Stepped up basis? Simply dying eliminates taxes owed on assets with built in gains. Someone is getting an asset for free. Why isn’t it taxed?
If you do this the Du Pont family mafia will have you boiled in a vat of their (high quality!) acid
Better solution for a dynamic economy is to eliminate income taxes altogether and move a consumption tax. There is zero surface area for gaming and govt cannot dole out special perks. Just exclude groceries.
Sounds good. Estate taxes and no step up.
Now, please tell them to remove this horrible, terrible, stupid taxing unrealized gains idea from the blob-borg brain before someone gets hurt.
Na. That’s bullshit too. Stop trying to grab every fucking dollar and let’s start controlling spending.
My understanding is what politicians & wonks are mad about is >1b wealth individuals borrowing against their unrealized gains to use as living expenses while not recording any "income" for tax purposes
In which case unrealized gains taxes are a hammer when a scalpel is needed
I struggle to wrap my head around this stuff...is there a basic explainer out there that you or someone else has?
I have conflicting views on this. I don't think taxing unrealized capital is a good idea, but I also don't have sympathy for people that have $100 million+...
What these proposals never seem to address is the effect of the forced selloff on the price of the stock and on the market at large, and (even more importantly) who is going to be buying all of that stock (and with what money).
So much ink spilled in the thread and it doesn’t cover the core arguments against unrealized taxation, it assumes valuations only go up and that the market is always rational.
Taxing unrealized gains is a great way to turn the next stock bubble into the next Great Depression.
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
It's worth nothing that this seemingly innocuous proposal would be, effectively, a near doubling of the estate tax up to 70% or so.
Canada has realization @ death & it doesn't work. They still have extensive lock-in & raise little revenue bc it's easy to beat deemed realization with "freeze" transactions. Talk to some lawyers.
I can see the Fox News chyron already:
HARRIS CALLS FOR NEW DEATH TAX
The affluent kids from fancy colleges who are struggle to afford their desired lifestyle in the big city want “billionaires” to pay for some of their expenses (eg, free transit, free healthcare, etc.) but don’t want to jeopardize their own upper middle class inheritance.
List A, those against unrealized gains proposal.
List B, those against ending stepped-up basis.
Assess relative abilities of A & B to make members miserable.
For those on both lists, give them a Sophie's Choice, see which they'd surrender.
Do the math: Which is most passable?
I wonder how much the tax unrealized capital gains people like the refund unrealized capital loss part?
Exactly! Even Bill Ackman said to just tax the personal loans. There are keyhole solutions to this problem that don't involve nuking venture capital.
Why not just do a Federal sales tax with maybe a couple exemptions (groceries, etc.)? Promotes investment, but if billionaires wanted to piss away their money on lavish expenditures, Uncle Sam gets its cut.
Am I wrong in thinking that some of America's fiscal problems could be solved by taking the US Navy's 4th fleet on a little Caribbean tour threatening to flatten the capitals of small island nations if they don't enforce taxes on financial transactions?
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
For context, the annual revenue loss due to the step-up in basis is generally estimated to be between $40 billion and $50 billion per year.
A change you could probably get a decent amount if bipartisan support for if paired with, say a few permitting reforms...
You can end basis step up for 50 years and have a loophole for it for 1 (as there was 15 years or so back) and have accomplished nothing. Old money is patient.
And make borrowing cash against certain categories of appreciated assets be a realization event, for ultra high net worth individuals.
Large, untaxed unrealized gains are only problematic with step-up basis give-away. I’m curious what social purpose the step-up on tradable assets provides. I understand (but don’t agree with) the rationale for step-up on eg an illiquid family business/farm.
It’s so much less costly and clean to administer. And once you remove the idea that “it never gets taxed” because assets can just step-up basis through multiple generations, I think you would see more dispositions well before death.
A few years back I made a proposal to tax margin loans.
As much as I'm excited the idea's getting traction, this seems boring, obvious, and normie, too.
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
My home state of WA starts death tax at 2.2M. Help explains, in part, why founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos moved to FL. The wealthy will always tax arbitrage. Also tax was tried & failed in Europe.
Yes! No more step up. Smaller estate exemptions. No more like kind exchanges. Problem solved.
Heck, inherited capital should have a $0 tax position.
It was so obvious as to practically be written on the sky itself
(I read the thread and didn't understand it)
Forget all that. Time to tax ALL unrealized gains - stock portfolios, private and public corporations, stock options, EVERYTHING. Right now it's just on real estate, time to turn the tables on the wealthy Yimby elites and start taxing THEM on their unrealized gains on everything.
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
Not ignored by those with eyes to see.
Quote
Romain Lacombe
@rlacombe
Replying to @dsiroker
Just get rid of the step up in basis. Simpler and more fair.
Don't estates have to pay taxes before transferred to heirs? If not, that is criminal.
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
What's the logic behind the step-up basis? Why is it there in the first place?
Few people know of stepped up basis. Rich people do, but they aren’t rushing to tell poor people they are going to get the biggest tax break imaginable.
The cap gains thing is unrealistic. It’s for show. Stepped up basis is realistic which makes it scary and therefore unsuitable as part of candidate’s platform.
The step-up basis is important for producing generational wealth, one of Harris’s key economic goals.
Inheritance taxes are not fair, you have paid income tax all along the way on that income, you should own it and be able to do whatever you want with it, giving it to children or etc. To me this just seems like jealousy of rich people, like they have no right to what they made.
Dems shouldn't have strong-armed an idiot onto the top of their ticket.
Same with student loan bankruptcies vs. forgiveness. It would be nice if one day we could see the actual debate in the public sphere rather than a bunch of primates throwing poop at each other.
What is the policy reason for the step up in basis at death? You don't want to pay Cap Gains AND Inheritance Tax / Estate Tax? Is that the idea? But if Estate Tax basically doesn't exist anymore... so what?
What's your crypto exit strategy?
I track 30+ indicators that have successfully marked the top of a bull run in prior cycles.
My logic is simple.
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out
Hold blue-chip assets during the bull run
Avoid a -70% drawdown by selling near the top.
Check it out 
Even better: a lookback charge that adjust capital gains tax rates based on how long the asset was held. That has the same effect without presenting any liquidity problems
The government doesn’t need any more money.
It’s not the governments money.
Stop advocating for theft.
No, it isn’t.
The normie position is never “tax me more.”
The normie position is stop blowing money like a drunken sailor (“we need higher taxes because it’s important to hand out money to college graduates and South Americans pretending to seek asylum.”)
How about this - people die- so billionaires untaxed and unrealized gains get taxed when they die, at 50%, which is in part why they give their fortunes away.
yup. You're a genius. I honestly don't understand why the dems don't adopt this more common sense approach.
I’m about to revoke your economist card. Anyone that says we should end step up basis without mentioning the estate tax doesn’t understand the subject.
Yeah, I don’t get it. Matthews says as much, but then tries to pooh pooh it as being “administratively complex” and not raising cash fast enough. It’s about as straightforward as you can get, and opens no new cans of worms. FFS.
eliminate step up but keep estate tax?
you die w 100e6 mostly gain heirs sell 100e6, pay 40e6 tax for gain. now they pay estate tax 40e6. 20e6 (20%) remaining.
I can see if you under estate limit (13e6) you pay 0 estate n no gain. But remember this is sold as >1006 case
the "normie" reference is bandwagon fallacy
That would dramatically impact and attack the vast majority of Americans. Stepped up basis is how middle class families build wealth
Why give the UHNW a fair option? Their brazen avoidance of tax code’s intent shouldn’t be met with something fair and reasonable. If they didn’t want unrealized taxation on the table, they shouldn’t have unilaterally used the buy borrow die scheme. So why play nice? UHNW wont
Nah Kamala knows what she's doing.
She'll push it and push it until in 2025 patriotic saviors Senator Brown and Tester gut the unrealized capital gains tax.
National heroes. Then just pass whatever tax bill you actually want.
