[QUOTE="radicalcentrist"]
[QUOTE="imaps3fanboy"] Why is that. 15% capital gains on ALL investment brackets? On top of not paying any payroll taxes.. You don't think it should be raised at all?radicalcentrist
The capital gains tax ought to be eliminated entirely, and the corporate income tax ought to be substantially reduced, preferably eliminated as well.
Regarding basic fairness, the money that persons earn from dividends and capital gains has already been taxed in the form of corporate income taxes. Corporations cannot deduct money that they pay to shareholders on the form of dividends, so it comes from their profit. However, ALL of a corporations profits should go to shareholders, as profits are the return on investment, ie income to capital. So the corporate income tax and capital gains tax is double-taxation.What you're forgeting is that a lot of these corporations hardly pay any corportate income tax. Like I said, we need to close the loopholes.
Second, capital gains are often deferred for many years, and in such time inflation can eat away at returns to investment.
Let's imagine that I buy a house for 100,000 and sell it 10 years later for 200,000. The annual simple interest rate was 10%, so I earned, effectively, 10,000 per year from said investment. That alone should tell you that I ought not pay taxes on such a capital gain because someone who earned 10,000 a year from wage income would pay no taxes on said income. However, simply because I deferred such income to 10 years later, I have to pay 15% taxes, so my nominal gain would only be 85,000.
Any capital income under 47k is taxed at 0% according to these 2007 rates, and if you were filing jointly then you don't have to pay on anything under 70k.
Shouldn't have deferred the money to ten years later then.
Also, you would only pay roughly $7950 of taxes. You would only be paying on the 100k-47k, because like I said, it is a marginal tax rate, meaning any ADDITIONAL dollar over that 47k would be taxed at 15%, not the 47k itself.
Now let's factor in inflation. if inflation was 10% for those 10 years, that means that the real capital gain was zero. However, since I am paying taxes on the nominal gain, I have to pay $15,000. In this tax regime, I am punished for buying a house because I lose money.
Inflation is nowhere near that high. Need a sense of proportion.
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