Tax Derail From Musk/Twitter Thread

[Elixir]

and neither are they getting refunds on unrealized losses.

I guess you've been asleep.
Trump, who never had 900 million to his name, invented a 900 million dollar loss one year and has been living virtually tax free ever since, while the IRS has been trying to unravel the tangled mass of lies and misrepresentations that constituted that "loss".
Anyone who can afford enough lawyers, can manufacture paper losses against actual gains. But considering your willingness to throw money away on delusional epidemiological predictions, your fiscal naivete should come as no surprise.

 

[ZiprHead]

People pay taxes on income, including realized capital gains.
They do not pay taxes on unrealized gains, and neither are they getting refunds on unrealized losses.
Not you. Not Musk. So your calculation is off because you are using the wrong basis.
Now, Biden wants to change that (for billionaires), but it has little chance of passing. And neither do I think it should.
Better to close down existing loopholes than to add fundamentally new taxes.

If banks consider it an asset gained, which they do, then the government can and should do so too.

 

[Harry Bosch]

People pay taxes on income, including realized capital gains.
They do not pay taxes on unrealized gains, and neither are they getting refunds on unrealized losses.
Not you. Not Musk. So your calculation is off because you are using the wrong basis.
Now, Biden wants to change that (for billionaires), but it has little chance of passing. And neither do I think it should.
Better to close down existing loopholes than to add fundamentally new taxes.

If banks consider it an asset gained, which they do, then the government can and should do so too.

I just think that taxing unrealized gains would be so unwieldly and fraught with problems. The IRS can't even crack down on all the existing tax cheaters with existing rules! A far simpler solution is to simply tax loan proceeds that were secured with stocks. Treat is as income. That would be easy to track, easy to implement. Problem solved.

 

[Elixir]

I still don’t get exactly what he bought or why. It’s easier to imagine bad things than good things coming from it. The best thing would be nothing. Or nothing more than another opportunity for Musk to bask in the glow of public attention. Maybe he’ll lose interest in it when that fades, and will trade the highly leveraged Twitter to Donald Trump for an assortment of slightly less highly leveraged golf courses and deduct forty billion dollars of future earnings from tax liability.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People pay taxes on income, including realized capital gains.
They do not pay taxes on unrealized gains, and neither are they getting refunds on unrealized losses.
Not you. Not Musk. So your calculation is off because you are using the wrong basis.
Now, Biden wants to change that (for billionaires), but it has little chance of passing. And neither do I think it should.
Better to close down existing loopholes than to add fundamentally new taxes.

If banks consider it an asset gained, which they do, then the government can and should do so too.

I just think that taxing unrealized gains would be so unwieldly and fraught with problems. The IRS can't even crack down on all the existing tax cheaters with existing rules! A far simpler solution is to simply tax loan proceeds that were secured with stocks. Treat is as income. That would be easy to track, easy to implement. Problem solved.

So long as you put in the provision that repaying such a loan is negative income.