[BobbyTables2]

I realize people want to tax the rich but seems to me that taxing unrealized gains would seriously penalize investment.

That’s a huge blow to the natural compounding that occurs as stocks appreciate over time.

Wouldn’t that kill their stock market? Who would invest with such taxes?

Seems like people would just pour their investment funds into real estate rentals or such where only “realized” income would exist to be taxed… (ignoring appreciation of the property)

[Tyrubias]

Whenever I bring up the idea of taxing the rich via unrealized gains, people oppose it by saying it’ll hurt investment. The reality is that years of huge stock market returns haven’t made life easier for the vast majority of people who actually do the work that makes companies successful. At least in the US, wages haven’t kept up with housing, healthcare, or basic costs, and I’m sure European workers face these kinds of problems too. At some point, it’s fair to ask why protecting unlimited tax-free growth for the top 0.1% should matter more than the financial stability of the workers actually doing the hard work to drive that growth. If the Netherlands finds that people avoid taxes by investing into real estate rentals, then maybe there should be laws covering those loopholes too.

[spdionis]

But if the alternative becomes more real estate investment than we already have won't that be even worse?

Investing in the stock market at least in principle is investing in businesses that use that money to increase productivity. We should discourage investment in vehicles that do not optimize for productivity (real estate, bitcoin, metals and similar).

[aaomidi]

Selling your investment to pay taxes for unrealized gains forces more liquidity and movement in the market and might have a huge impact on preventing bubbles forming.

[fuzzfactor]

How does that work when some of the most outstanding ways remaining to make money are from a bubble?

[aaomidi]

I am not sure if you're agreeing with me or not lol

[lifestyleguru]

You are somehow romanticizing the hard workers who build the real economy. No one works hard anymore. Within EU it's all about real estate and leveraging it to buy even more real estate, and then a small studio for short term rental on top of it.