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).”
And yet people who want raises are the drag on the fucking economy.
And all those damned social programs.
I know I’m on one, but that’s because I actually need it, not like everyone else who are just abusing it. Mostly those foreigners who are both lazy and murderous, but also stealing my job
/s
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.
Congress being so bad at legislating has basically forced the Supreme Court to legislate. I obviously don’t agree with decisions like ending Roe v. Wade, but abortion should never have been up to them in the first place. Those kinds of decisions should be up to congress to make clear laws.
We have a completely dysfunctional congress and its been only getting worse for decades. It’s a symptom of a much larger illness in America. I remember decades ago some of my most conservative family members debating policy with some of my most progressive over coffee. Now the media has pitted them against each other so much, that they literally have their phone numbers blocked in fear that some of their ideology might slip into their bubble of an echo chamber.
Don’t worry, when Trump is reelcted, he’ll fix that glaring loophole and make himself supreme ruler.
A friend of mine used to call them ‘our mullahs’. I used to laugh him off. Now, I’m not so sure.
I do the same thing.
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
Don’t forget about the most powerful person in the world, the parliamentarian.
This has always been the case. 3 co branches of government. The fact that you hadn’t heard it much is probably either a case of you paying more attention, or it getting more attention.
But yes, republicans have politicized the court, so it’s even more divisive now.
The feeling I get is more that the famous checks and balances ceased to work and the supreme court is the branch getting the most power from this breakdown.
They wouldn’t have so much power if the legislature was functional. The majority of their ruling could be undone by Congress passing a law saying “No, that is not what we meant. Ignore this stupid ruling that willfully misinterpreted our law.”
Most of our government dysfunction comes back to Republicans refusing to compromise and weaponizing the filibuster to obstruct and prevent Congress from doing anything.
Not really because Congress can remove them from office if they get out of line. While I’ve certainly disagreed with many rulings, I can’t find any that I think are really out of line or some gross abuse of power.
There are lots of them, especially in the last 10 years. A few more if you include Scalia’s tenure. The most recent of them is the “major question doctrine”. This idea, invented by the current court, allows the court to change any law whenever the court decides that they don’t like the current law and they think it’s important enough. There is no justification in the constitution or in prior case law for such a power to be granted to the court.
Any actual example?
They literally gave you one. Look it up, failure.
They didn’t give an actual example, they mentioned a doctrine. Or is it that you don’t know the difference between a case and a doctrine?
Bush v Gore? It’s my understanding that the SCOTUS decided to take the case on their own without being asked, put a stay on the recount, then said there wasn’t enough time to count because of they stay they put. They also said essentially that because counties in Florida didn’t have a unified system for deciding how voting is done that they went against an equal protections law im forgetting the exact name of, completely ignoring that this is how it’s done all over the country so if it’s the case in Florida that it was incorrect then that means every single state has the same issue.
Didn’t matter to them, they got to stop the recount just when Bush has the slightest lead.
I mean then there’s citizens united… Corporations have the same rights as people??
It’s my understanding that the SCOTUS decided to take the case on their own without being asked
Not accurate, Bush petitioned the courts to block the count, and they stayed the decision by the Florida supreme court. I disagree with the ruling, they should have counted all of the votes, but it was on sound legal ground, even if ultimately disagreeable.
I mean then there’s citizens united… Corporations have the same rights as people??
It’s long been interpreted that the COTUS is a restriction on the state not a granting of rights to the individuals. There was a great disagreement over including the BoR at all in the COTUS because some founder were afraid that explicitly listing out some of the rights would open the door to the assumption that non-enumerated rights weren’t actually protected. They couldn’t settle this in time which is why they were included as amendments and not in the original COTUS. The ruling stems from this idea, that the COTUS restricts the statement, it doesn’t grant rights to the individual, so they can’t restrict it when it comes to other private entities as well. Again, something I vehemently disagree with and should be amended, but it’s not some ridiculous overreach, it’s based on sound legal interpretations of the COTUS.
I appreciate the detailed response in spite of all the shitty responses people have been giving you!
in spite of all the shitty responses people have been giving you!
You and I are the only ones who has responded to him so far. Did you see other replies that are no longer there now?
I mean then there’s citizens united… Corporations have the same rights as people??
… it doesn’t grant rights to the individual, so they can’t restrict it when it comes to other private entities …
But SCOTUS can define entities (if existing law doesn’t already do so, though SCOTUS can also strike down those laws if it wants to), and what it comes down to is if SCOTUS defines a corporation as a citizen, vs a business entity, a construct.
Then laws would be judged based on the entity they’re being applied to.
For example, pets are considered property in the eyes of the law, so laws are applied to them as if they were property, and not citizens.
A construct should not be a citizen, legally or otherwise. It’s not a restrictions issue, it’s an entity identification issue.
We might be conflating two things here, or I just have no idea what you are talking about.
Using your pet example, if the pets were to start spending money on politics, the court might still rule that, like with corporations, it does not have the right to limit how much pets donate to political causes.
But this has never come up, so I can’t see how you would argue that the court would not rule this way.
Technically, as they were Voted into Office by Senators representing the interests Voters, they are democratically elected via Representative Democracy.
I guess if you change the definition of “democratically elected,” then sure. Supreme Court Justice is an appointed position. It’s literally the entire point of the distinction between the two (elected vs. appointed).
If you were to consider anyone appointed by an elected official as being “democratically elected,” then that would mean that nobody is appointed. It would become a distinction without a difference.
So… are they appointed by the President without anyone having any say or is there a vote? If there is a vote by an elected body like the senate or congress, then they are democratically chosen.
Congress doesn’t pick or vote from a set of candidates… Essentially they are just confirming appointments, just like the appointed cabinet members and most other appointed positions.
Not relevant. And they can pick from whomever the President puts forward. I know because I asked Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch.
Pretty creative, I guess. Unfortunately for you, words have meanings, and you are objectively wrong about what you believe those meanings to be. The term “political appointment” is a term that is already defined in US politics, and it refers to government positions that are obtained by appointment (usually, if not always, by someone who WAS elected). Period. Those people are not elected officials no matter what weird reasoning you might come up with. That is the entire point of the distinction between the two terms.
And that is relevant to my statement, how?
Billionaires are the real welfare queens
Oh come on, Jeff Bezos needed that money, he lost money one year! Those tax returns were definately a make or break for him!
and to further clarify
/s
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.
Hopefully we can also head for the other old European model of dealing with them that the French popularized.
Exactly. They may not call themselves nobility but their influence is the same if not more.
Fortunately for the billionaire class, Clarence Thomas’ legal opinion is always for sale.
Clarence Thomas is a traitor to the human race. He’d sell us out to aliens if given the chance.
Societies should not allow billionaires as long as there are people who can’t even get food on the table. It’s just morally and ethically wrong. Some would even say unchristian.
The answer is simple. Butcher the billionaires and their fortunes. Eat the rich and use the money for social work.
They hit a billion (or really $100 million), loose all assets (aside from a small seed amount), get another star on their chest, and try to do it again. Those who care about the rat race will jump through hoops for what they value, while the rest of us are able to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
My cyberpunk solution is that once you cross the billion dollar net worth threshold, it becomes legal for a team of any size or an individual to register with the billionaire hunting office.
If a registered person or group is successful in killing the billionaire, all of their assets (including any managed by a trust on their behalf) are seized, liquidated, and distributed to the group.
Anyone paid to protect them, anyone affiliated with an organization paid to protect them, or anyone (regardless of affiliation or payment status) within a certain physical proximity to the billionaire is fair game.
Way to convoluted and will eventually hurt bystanders. Just tax all after the first billion with 100%.
But that doesn’t net us an afternoon romp staring Kurt Russell.
Does that imply that any billionaire hunter / team is also fair game for the billionaires to hunt down? Sounds like a bad plan, where the billionaires can legally kill.
As much as I understand Jesus was a socialist, even he couldn’t write rules to live by that can’t be bent, manipulated, and plain broken. Morals and ethics are a feeble reed to lean upon.
It’s a good thing ZERO Justices have taken luxurious trips and gifts paid for by these same exact billionaires that could inject literally TRILLIONS into our communities!
It’s the best Supreme Court money can buy!
Fuck that’s a big boat.
Does one person seriously need a boat that big?
Like you can have a smaller boat but it still be tens of millions of dollars and not require an army to crew.
It’s not even just the price of the boat though. It costs around 10% of the cost of the boat every year to keep it running.
Oh they have a smaller boat too. It’s inside that big one.
But just think about how many jobs that boat is creating!
That was unironically the argument when people were asking why do we have to take a historic bridge apart (again) in Rotterdam just to let Jeff Bezos’ toy out to the ocean.
Seize the yachts, make them billionaire prison boats, national guard shoots anyone who leaves
Does one person seriously need a boat that big?
No amount of people seriously need a boat that big. Not that kind of boat.
100% idle wealth tax
What about my emergency fund? That is idle wealth.
Is your emergency fund $100bn? Tax brackets exist. No one’s talking about you.
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?
Like it or not, most of the US has moved away from pension-based retirement in favor of 401k based retirement. Taxing unrealized capital gains makes it that much harder for the plebs of society. The rich will complain about the extra taxes but ultimately won’t really affect them much.
Taxing people on unrealized gains on a house is abusive and leads directly to maximum landlords and minimum home ownership. Why are we defending that?
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.
Apparently about half of Americans have money in the stock market (I would assume almost exclusively due to their 401k/IRAs)
TBF we are talking about unrealized gains. Their investments are worth more on paper, but until they sell them, the actual profit or loss will fluctuate. It would be an accounting nightmare to figure tax on unsold investments every year. I do, however, think capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as wage income.
They should be forced to sell, that is the point. Accounting is complicated because people want to hide wealth. None of this is actually complicated it’s just been made complex.
There’s a better solution. They take loans with these assets as collateral. Tax the use of collateral (as a kind of advance capital gains).
Yes that works too,
Not forced to sell. Prevented from leveraging as debt
I don’t understand. Why should someone be forced to sell an investment?
The situation is that the ultra wealthy never have to sell… Instead they get loans since that is cheaper percentage-wise than paying taxes.
I think that’s The problem though right. Don’t let Mega rich leverage their assets for loans for more assets.
I’m not economist, forcing someone sell something just didn’t make sense to me.
No, let them do that, but tax its use as collateral. It’s effectively an advance capital gains tax then, allowing them to generate cash flow from their assets but also not letting them escape income/gains taxes.
Yeah this makes sense to me.
Remove the mechanisms that allow them to perpetually amass wealth on untaxed assets. And or tax assets from a certain threshold to the point where billionaires don’t exist.
Well, if a sale has to be forced, then so does the purchase. Who are you going to force to buy an asset they may not even want?
Yeah that’s what makes no sense to me, forced to sell, but no concept of buyers. The logic is broken. Sounds cool though.
And on top of that, you’d have to force someone to buy an asset they may not be able to afford, even if they want the asset that they’re being forced to buy.
What purchase is forced?
To transfer wealth to the rest of society.
Because no human needs more than 1 billion dollars. Nore did any human come by that honest.
I get we’re discussing wealth disparity, can’t wrap my head around the proposed solution.
My only guess is that they meant if they had an investment that made $2 billion on paper that year they should have to pay the taxes on that whether or not they are required to sell off part of the investment to ensure it is paid. (Not sure, just my best guess of what they meant)
While you’re waiting you can share with us your solution if you’d like.
The solution is complex requiring every experts from multiple fields to solve and the ripples will affect everyone, even those that can ill afford it. And for those poor people, how does society go about choosing who to throw under the bus?
I think one thing that gets missed here, it that all rules and regulations can be bent and manipulated for one’s own personal advantage. It’s a part of human nature and drive to do so to gain an advantage - no matter how slim it might be.
The biggest issue that nearly everyone misses is not thinking about the longer term ramifications of “easy” solutions that seem to solve today’s pressing problem. Social media can never “see” farther than the end of their collective noses. Example: the internal combustion engine and cars. 100+ years ago, it was an apparently “good” solution to the tons of horse manure being created in every city every day and it’s attendant smell, disposal issues, and disease problems. At the time, who knew a bit over 100 years later it was not a good idea. It did seem to solve those immediate issues quite neatly at the time. And now many of us kind of regret it don’t we?
And BEFORE you jump on me and the points I have tried to make it’s not about “NOT” trying to make improved changes - changes are needed for sure. But the any changes you make must be carefully thought of and weighed against possible future unforeseen consequences as best we can. Social media platforms, (the society’s “stupid” place), ain’t it.
I don’t have one, I’m not an economist.
Anything i come up with doesn’t come from a well informed educated background.
I can’t really even grasp what a world without billionaires might look like. If their wealth was distributed to the rest of us, would that just inject trillions of cash into the economy and cause hyper inflation?
Also not an economist but inflation seems like a problem when you’re trying to maintain scarcity. I can’t see a problem if everyone can afford food and more people can afford fancy foods like Wagyu beef except that capitalists while think “I should be charging more for my fancy thing”. To me, injecting trillions into public services sounds like we hop the gap into a post-scarcity thing where we stop charging for necessities like food, shelter, communication, entertainment, and travel.
“I’m not an economist” when asked for solutions, but you sound like you understand the economy damn well when discussing it and ‘not being able to wrap your head around’ other ideas.
roughly 64,000 ultra-wealthy households
Get your forks and knives ready, fam. We’ll be eatin’ good, soon.
Guillotines
Firing squad is less disgusting
There are only a bit over 3,000 billionaires. That would hardly fill us up.
I think I speak for many of us here when I say that we are willing to take that risk.
Oh no, not to discourage anyone. Just saying we might have to stack up on snacks on the way.
Sounds like a modest proposal to me.
But afterwards, I’ve heard…we eat cake.
I heard the cake is a lie.
Just have to “fish and loaves” them.
Blind fold their eyes, give them a cigarette, and remember to compost
Oh my god, I’m horrified! Meat and bones go in the trash!
headline should read
they want to “PAY” the Supreme Court to keep it that way
$8.5 trillion in untaxed profits in 2022.
through unrealized capital gains.
Just to be clear, we’re talking about wealth taxes, not income taxes. Yes, the wealthy have all kinds of avoiding paying fair income taxes. But, this is a different issue, this is a wealth tax.
It’s important to realize, that most of the US already has a form of wealth tax: property taxes. The thing is, property taxes are a regressive form of wealth tax. Sure, the poorest people pay no property-wealth tax, because they’re not wealthy enough to own taxable property. This time they do catch a slight break. Anybody who is middle-class and lucky enough to own a home pay the highest percentage of their total wealth as property-wealth taxes, because virtually all their wealth is tied up in that property. The wealthy pay almost no property-wealth taxes relative to their total wealth because only a tiny amount of their wealth is tied up in property.
If you graph it out, at the bottom the effective wealth tax is zero, then it jumps to a much higher number, then it declines more and more as you get richer and richer.
I say screw property taxes and replace them with a proper progressive wealth tax. Along with that, an inheritance tax with teeth and proper enforcement. The grandkids of billionaires should be starting on an equal footing with everyone else.
It’s ok to just not defend the ultra wealthy that are destroying our economy and environment as a fun pastime.
A ruling against wealth taxes would be insane and would essentially overturn our entire history of tax law. But it would be especially nuts in light of the ruling in NFIB v Sebelius that the government can hit you with a tax for doing nothing. That seems utterly incompatible with the idea that the government doesn’t have the power to tax owning things and/or amassing wealth.
I guess that would mean you can tax not buying something, but you can’t tax not selling something.
would essentially overturn our entire history of tax law.
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
I’m talking about this in terms of jurisprudence. Judges are supposed to rule based on law and precedent, not just on their personal preferences and political views. It’s an essential element of the rule of law. There’s very little point in having a constitution or laws if judges just ignore them and do whatever they want. I mean, I think most people here would agree that they do not approve of this Court defying precedent and most reasonable interpretations of the law in order to impose their will on the country.
Obviously, the Court can, has, and sometimes should overturn precedent, and potentially throw out decades or centuries of previously settled law. But generally speaking, that ruling should make a very compelling case for such an action. They would essentially be saying that everyone writing and interpreting the laws for all that time had gotten it wrong (intentionally or otherwise), including potentially the people who wrote the very sections of the constitution that the ruling is based on.
The more specific point I was making was that Roberts had ruled that the government could use the tax power alone to tax “not having insurance” and that it wouldn’t run afoul of the constitution as long as it wasn’t just a head tax applied to everyone indiscriminately, as that would be a direct tax which must be apportioned among the states.* That’s the same clause that is being invoked in this case as a reason why wealth taxes shouldn’t be allowed.
A ruling against taxes on unrealized gains would not only require the Court to assert that we’ve been doing it wrong this whole time and that we only just now figured that out, but Roberts in particular would be doing a complete 180 on the issue. Jumping from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other would be a rather remarkable change, one that would be hard to reconcile without concluding that one decision or the other was dishonest and politically motivated.
* And because it had a regulatory intent, aimed at compelling people to buy insurance, it had to also not be so crippling a burden that it’s effects would need to go through police or regulatory powers.
“But what if I become rich… I should vote against my best interests just in case.”
In terms of unrealised gains, that’s kind of a tricky one. They certainly do benefit massively from unrealised gains though, like anyone would on paper.
The best quote for this I’ve ever heard is “Europeans vote like they’ll one day be poor. Americans vote like they’ll one day be billionaires.”
Do these nimcompoops realize that the existing wealthy elite, few in their number, got that way by exploiting social safetynets and taxpayer funded infrastructure for their gains?
So cleary, if we want to be able to generate more wealth and more millionaires/billionaires, better social programs and infrastructure will get them there. Imagine how much easier it’ll be to become wealthy if you don’t have to give employees insurance, or tuition reimbursement? Or if there’s an amazing system of roads, rails, and ports to move your goods to consumers? God, you could become a successful businessman and still have a conscious. Best of both worlds.
Removed by mod
Yeah and the worse thing is that if they try and tax that, the retail investors like you and me are the ones getting fucked while these people get richer because of more profitable arbitrage oppurtunities.
I’d go back in time and stop the founding of private equity.
