Elixir
Made in America
I might not be opposed to some sort of tax on wealth or unrealized gains, at least as an alternate when it would be higher than the income tax. A disadvantage of this is that new accounting rules (and opportunities for tax fraud) would arise.
That's the thing though, by calling it an unrealized gain makes it seem like it has no value when in truth it's extremely valuable. It should be considered income based on its value the day it was given, the same as the car in my post above.
In other words, you bought their deception hook, line and sinker.
Nothing was given. The "income" they are pretending happened is he founded Amazon and holds a lot of shares of it. They are saying he receives "income" when the share price goes up.
The market has shot up, there has been a lot of this crap recently. Never mind that much of the gain is just the market recovering from the shock of Covid. Take a different window and you get a very different picture.
Instead of paying taxes on income, the very wealthy borrow against non-liquid assets. They accrue and save up losses against the day when they must pay back those loans. But for most of their lives, they don't have to - sometimes for generations. They can just keep extending the loans as long as their "worth" keeps increasing. For pocket money, they can cash in a little, paying little or no tax on the income, because they're deducting loan interest...
It's not a cheat, it's just extremely unfair to actual taxpayers. And there is no simple remedy AFAIK that wouldn't also impact some people who are not "taking advantage".