If you thought Kamala Harris's price controls scheme was straight out of the Book of Nicolás Maduro, wait till you see what she has in stores with her proposal for a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains.

According to Americans for Tax Reform:

The Harris-endorsed budget calls for an annual 25 percent minimum tax on the unrealized gains of individuals with income and assets that exceeding $100 million. Once in place, it won’t be long before the threshold is lowered to hit more and more Americans.

Americans overwhelmingly oppose taxes on unrealized gains, by a factor of three to one, including 76% of independents. Americans know that a “gain” isn’t “real” until it is actually realized, in hand.

What that means is that if you bought a house for $60,000 in the 1970s, and saw its value go up to $1,000,000 on Zillow last year (which isn't uncommon in places like California), you'd be on the hook for taxes on a million-dollar property, which would be more than you actually paid for the house, even though it's the same ordinary house you bought in a middle-class neighborhood back in the '70s and you haven't changed residences.

The same could be said of any homeowner, you'd buy a house for $300,000, but as its value rises to $1.2 million, your tax bill would clock in for a $1.2 million property, and not the $300,000 tract home you bought a few years earlier. If the market value went down by the time you sold, to say, $250,000, you will have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on taxes while actually earning just $250,000 on your investment.

The same could be said of stocks, or crypto, or any asset, it's not just homes. You'll pay the huge taxes, but if the price goes down, as it inevitably will on some assets, you'll have gotten nothing but the huge tax bill already paid.

It's insane. You'd be desperate to see that the value of your home doesn't go up, maybe kicking in a few doors out or knocking a wall down, letting the paint chip and fade, leaving the gutters uncleared, throwing trash in the garden, growing weeds out front, letting the gophers multiply, inviting the illegals over spray graffiti, or releasing some rats. You'd do anything to keep the value of your home from going up.

And while that presumably wouldn't apply to anyone except the rich, as the measure claims to target those with $100 million investments, that's unlikely. The hundred mil is just the camel's nose under the tent, because this horrible idea is not practiced anywhere in the first world other than in the fevered minds of leftists.

One nation, Norway, did try it -- and didn't like its result:

Has anyone told her how taxing unrealized gains worked out for Norway?

Norway expected an additional $150M in annual tax revenue, but caused $54B in wealth to flee the country, costing them $600M in annual tax revenue.https://t.co/lozGbnigmo

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) August 20, 2024

Experience is telling here. We all know that the Harris-Biden tax hikes, supposedly to hit those making $400,000 or more, actually raised taxes on those making as little as $20,000. It's unlikely that this bacillus of an idea, would stay in its tube and hit just the rich guys. It would move. It would be out there.

But even if it did hit just the very rich, that's hardly good news for the poor.

As ATR noted:

This unprecedented tax would give even more power to the IRS, encourage taxpayers to move assets overseas, and will only expand to hit millions of Americans over time.

They'd do what John Kerry did with his yacht -- move it to a lower-tax state, or in this case, country. With a lot of assets then moved overseas, you can bet there will be little money for investment in new companies, new projects, new jobs for Americans. The incentive would be to get the hell out and let other nations use the money.

The corruption potential here is amazing, too -- think of the pump and dump activity in the markets to manipulate the tax setup -- up or down -- with investors seeking to undercut their rivals by manipulating prices, or asset values artificially devalued in time for tax assessment day, pulling millions from the markets and the little guy's 401(K). Imagine the bribes to be paid at Zillow.

The bad impact of this is enormous, with some in the market saying it's the end of the American dream.

I don't like to get into conspiracy theories, but one wonders if this is some kind of scheme from Blackrock to scarf up all the American homes and put Americans into tiny rented rabbit warrens where they will be forced to take public transportation and become good Democrat voters? Is it a plan to redistribute the American dream of owning one's own home to illegals?

It seems utterly inimical to home ownership, to free markets, and to growing one's wealth through savings. Whatever it is, this bad idea needs to be strangled in its crib, or rather, its test tube before it can get out and about. Nobody should vote for this candidate Harris, bearing this monstrous poison to our economic future and American way of life.

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