Here's a quick explainer about President Biden's tax proposal. A lot of outlets are reporting that he would increase the top marginal rate on personal income to 39.6% and the top rate on capital gains to 43.4%. It's common to argue that the capital gains rate should be the same as the top income rate, but why would Biden want to make it higher?
He doesn't and he isn't. Obamacare levied a 3.8% surtax on top marginal income, so the real top rate is 43.4%. Biden is simply matching that on the capital gains side.
This has been today's edition of Fun With Tax Rates®.
OH MY GOD, if he does this it will cause a MASSIVE INFLATIONARY SPIKE!! Prices for EVERYTHING will SKYROCKET, and JOBS will be LOST by the MILLIONS!! AIYEEEE!!!
(Um, no, arguably higher taxes if anything reduce both spending and investment, so if it has any effect, it might be deflationary rather than inflationary.)
OH MY GOD, if he does this it will cause a MASSIVE DEFLATIONARY CRASH!! Investment will CRASH, businesses will CLOSE, and JOBS will be LOST by the MILLIONS!! AIYEEEE!!!
No doubt about it ... we're ALL GONNA DIE!
(eventually)
“Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case.” - William Saroyan
Why did I read that name as Sauron?
Axl Rose has entered the chat.
Welcome to the jungle.
It's okay, the BLS and the Fed will figure out more ways to hide the inflation. They've dropped the ball a little bit with lumber prices recently, but I bet soon their indexes will say that particle board is the same as yellow pine and will be adjusted accordingly.
That's not right - the 3.8% surtax is specifically on investment income, so the top tax rates will be 39.6% on regular income and 43.4% on investment income. In other words, the tax on investment income will be higher than regular income.
As I said in the last thread, that strikes me as perverse to tax the income from savings and investment higher than regular income. Future income is already discounted, so the effective tax on investment income will be higher still. That's not something we've ever done before in the US - even during the 1950s ultra-high regular income brackets, the capital gains rate was much, much lower than that.
It also means that unless they (hopefully) don't do Mark-to-Market, you'll see a lot more capital gains being held until a future date when Republicans take power and probably lower it again. That's a problem with more short-term assets and startups most of all, since the latter especially require early investors to transfer out as the firm grows - and this makes it much more expensive.
And of course that's just the federal taxes. It should be interesting to see how this affects California and New York without the SALT provision - they'll be looking at effective capital gains tax rates close to 60%.
Although of course like most US high tax policies, if they actually do pass it they'll carve it up with loopholes to avoid undesirable effects on politically connected industries. Can't wait to see the lower capital gains tax rate on coal/gas investment!
While we're on the subject, the one that _you_ brought up, people paying on regular income have been getting screwed for umpty-odd years. That's by your logic understand.
Look, the mere fact that a tax code exists, period, is going to create winners and losers. To treat that as singular effecting an argument in a specific instance is ... not the best strategy.
I'm not understanding why a boost on "investments" held for less than a year affects startups. Time between initial and second seed rounds in VC appears to be 12-18 months.
If you are going to use that sleight-of-hand, might as well include FICA...
The employer side should have to pay all payroll taxes, no limit and on all forms of compensation including stock options.
If there is to be no limit on contribution, there should be no limit on benefit. Otherwise, we should stop pretending it is anything other than a redistribution mechanism rather than "insurance."
Uh, I thought we were treating is a a redistribution mechanism. Which it can't help but be, by it's very nature.
Not you, but note: in the future, we require all contestants to do their heavy lifting on-stage.
In fact I just read a report from Bloomberg that explained it correctly as capitals gain + surtax = 43.4%