Bitcoin Forum

People will not have an incentive to HODL if they have to pay taxes on unrealized BTC capital gains yearly. They would have to sell to pay the taxes. This will not be a good development for Bitcoin and others imo. What do you think?

www(dot)wsj.com/articles/top-democrat-proposes-annual-tax-on-unrealized-capital-gains-11554217383

WASHINGTON—The top Democrat on the Senate’s tax-writing committee proposed taxing unrealized gains in investment assets every year at the same rates as other income, offering an idea that would transform how the U.S. taxes the wealthiest people.

The proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is the latest plan from Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates for boosting taxes on the wealthy to address economic inequality and provide funding for their policy agenda. While this specific proposal has little chance of becoming law soon, such ideas could quickly gain momentum if the party succeeds in next year’s elections.

Under Mr. Wyden’s concept, capital gains would be taxed annually based on how much assets have gained in value. Now, by contrast, gains are taxed only when assets are sold and at a top rate of 23.8% instead of 37% for ordinary income.

“It would be a huge change,” said Lily Batchelder, who was a tax-policy aide to President Obama. “It would be a really big shift in our income-tax system.”

I'm not sure to get it correctly.

Does it mean, for example, I bought bitcoin in 2020, on January 1st 2021 I own 15 BTC. I do nothing during the whole year, don't sell any sats. On December 31 2021 I still own the 15 BTC so. I will still be taxed even if I didn't make any sales with gains in 2021?

2022 the same scenario, on December 31 I have still the 15 BTC with me. I will be taxed AGAIN in 2023 for my investment ongoing in 2022???
2023 I decide to sell everything, with let's say a 150% ROI. AGAIN taxed in 2024 for the profits I have realized in 2023?

That's sounds crazy, people take the risks and the government takes the profits. Taxing unrealized capital gain... without knowing it will be a gain or a loss for the person. What if it ends in a loss and not gains? I guess they won't refund the taxes paid.

You would be taxed on the dollar value gains.

For example let's say your 15 BTC is worth $30,000 each on January 1st for a total of $450,000. On December 31st Bitcoin is worth $60,000. Now your portfolio is worth $900,000. Your capital gains for the year were $450,000 in dollar terms even though your BTC holdings remained at 15. If the law changes to where the government can tax unrealized capital gains you would now have to pay taxes at the going rate on your $450,000 profit. And this would be the case every year! This would force you to sell some of your BTC to cover the tax bill. Not a good situation at all!

https://www.c[Suspicious link removed]m/2021/01/20/oaktrees-howard-marks-on-unrealized-capital-gains-tax-janet-yellen.html

Taxing unrealized capital gains is not practical and will hurt sentiment among investors, said Howard Marks, co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital.
Unrealized capital gains refer to the theoretical increase in value of assets that an investor is holding onto.
Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, said she would consider taxing such unrealized gains to boost government revenues, reported Reuters.

that WSJ article is from april 2019, btw.

wyden's tax plan never materialized into anything. it was never even written into a bill AFAIK, and now we're in a brand new legislative session. biden has proposed an increase in capital gains taxes (typical democrat) but i think wyden's plan was always dead on arrival.


it depends on your income/assets---the proposal only applies to those with income in excess of $1 million or assets exceeding $10 million.


yes, that was the basis for a lot of criticism of his plan---it would crash the markets according to tax deadlines, and this could be particularly harmful in more illiquid markets.

Nothing better can be expected from these Democrat lunatics. Now they have the trifecta power and they would go for rising taxes right, left and the center. Although the proposal was put on hold, I expect it to be back in reckoning in the near future. Democrats are known for wasting trillions in welfare payments. And for their policies, they need additional revenues in the form of tax receipts. Income tax is already at 40%, and now the best option seems to increase the capital gains tax. BTW, this new tax would rather resemble wealth tax, rather than capital gains tax.

Nothing came from it but it was only a year ago. Since then Democrats have now gained control of the House, Senate and White House. And many people believe there was massive election fraud. Their actions were very suspicious. The Democrats are also acting like real dictators by suppressing free speech, surrounding themselves with thousands of troops. It is so obvious they are guilty as hell. But they own the media, big tech and courts. So this worries me because if they can steal an election and get away with it then anything is possible. They are now emboldened and will steamroll their way forward passing anything they deem fit.

I would be very concerned about whatever comes out of this tax proposal. Yellen just recently brought it up.

I have to agree with you, no matter the political party that you are in, it is all a shitshow because they all want to stay in power. Hopefully that this regulation does not come back to get reconsidered because it will only struck the medium range income earners and those below them, it will not affect the rich people as they say it on paper, rich people can always pay 0 dollars in taxes if they want to, I think the best course of action for this kind of farce is to specifically target the high income earners with a higher taxation without any possibility of writing it off or any other way.

That's always the case. A tax is announced for "the rich" and in the end it is paid by the middle class, when it doesn't end up being paid by the whole population. People who have many millions have great ease in moving around and moving their capital. If in the end this law is approved, it will not affect them.

The main goal of all these proposals is the final destruction of the middle class. 

To destroy the middle class, it must be deprived of its property.  Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are middle class property.  Asset gains tax is a blatant attempt to rob the owners.  The government does not plan to compensate them for losses.  At the same time, investing in cryptocurrencies is a high-risk activity because the price of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies is very volatile. 

Currently, the United States has virtually one political party because the Republicans suffered a crushing defeat. 

Therefore, it is highly likely that Bitcoin holders will face repression.

It would truly be a disgrace if such a thing was to be introduced.

In fact, it would be a blatant discrimination against BTC for absolutely no good reason. AFAIK, there are no governments that currently charge CGT on any other asset class - equities, precious metals, property... You name it.

Imagine the outrage for retail and institutional investors alike if a similar tax was proposed on unrealised P/L on the NYSE/NASDAQ. Absurd.

I honestly don't think that this proposal will go past the ideation phase, as it is too drastic of a measure and not very enforceable whatsoever.

i think it's being presented as a radical proposal so everyone will be shoehorned into accepting the moderate democrat position---biden's tax plan. https://taxfoundation.org/joe-biden-tax-plan-2020/

that would reverse the trump tax cuts and increase payroll taxes for high income earners, and it would increase the corporate tax rate.

the wyden plan would be absolute madness and would wreak havoc on the markets. legislators just aren't that interested in rocking the boat and changing the status quo. it's a dog and pony show.

The united states may tax unrealized capital gains to further kill advancement, jobs and innovation it could have benefited from under crypto.

While nations in europe and asia offer tax cuts and incentives to crypto HODL to further develop and benefit from crypto sector gains.

These negative crypto trends making headlines apply only to america and the USA.

The rest of the developed world need not worry.

The so called "moderate democrat position" is essentially a radical socialist one coated as a "center-left" proposal. The Biden proposal plans to tax long-term capital gains and dividends at a rate of 40%. Nowhere in the world, the capital gains are taxed at such insane levels. The second major proposal is to increase the corporate tax from 21% to 28%. The corporations may pay the higher taxes, but in the end it is the employees and consumers who will suffer from lower wages and high prices for various products. These two policies have the potential to bring market down to the pre-Trump levels (during the Trump term the stock market indices rose by almost 72%).

Looks like we're going to start seeing more and more cases of lost Bitcoin over the next four years.

If this proposal passes then we'll have bigger things to worry about, it's not just crypto that it's affecting, it's going to affect the entire landscape. Stock markets will be hit the hardest.

Time to find a new home if this passes.

Well, this is not specifically about bitcoin because it is usually about stocks and other investments however I can see how one would consider it bitcoin as well. There are two things about this that makes this a good thing.

The first is the fact that most rich people in USA is not rich in cash, you think Jeff Bezos has that much money? Dude just has stocks that gained value and that's it, same goes for almost the entire billionaire class, they do not have that much money but the things they own worth that much, so when that goes up, taxing them would be a great way to make sure that they pay their fair share or it will not be possible for the nation to continue surviving.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk got 150+ billion richer in the last year combined whereas people are evicted and homeless and do not know where next meal will come from, that's not fair. Second good thing is ; we are in btc, just keep it hidden until you want to sell and you will be fine.

This is funny and out of logic. Well, it could be implemented in the days to come, who knows? But it does not erase the absurdity of such policy. I mean, how could you tax something which is just on paper, unrealized? Meaning to say, it does not amount to anything yet. Now, what if the following year you are losing big? You won't be taxed, of course. But then the following year, it has recovered, so you will be taxed again? In the long run, there might be no one who will end up profitable.

I guess a related issue which probably needs more focus is on the realization of gains. Wealthy elites must have known a lot of ways to handle gains without necessarily selling them outright therefore untaxed.

Jesus fuckin' Christ....that's the way it should be.  You haven't actually realized a profit until you've sold, and nobody should have to pay the government just because something they own went up in value.  Would this include real estate?  Stocks? 

This democratic idea is so asinine that I hope it just dies on the floor.  If the government truly wants to address income inequality (not a new problem, by the way), this is about the worst way of going about it that I could think of.

I bet you this is their plan to pay for all of this stimulus money that's being handed out like monopoly notes.  I'll have to keep an eye on this.  Thanks for posting this, OP.

Yeah time to get the *** out of the economy. Didn’t see it coming.

Republicans propose death penalties for abortions, democrats want to tax unrealized gains. Such crazy laws have no chance of getting passed, they are used as a tool for negotiations or for rallying their voting base. Sure if such law would pass it would be devastating to a volatile market like Bitcoin, but instead of worrying about something that won't happen it's better to look at something that might, like the recent proposal about self-hosted wallets.

but the problem with this method of taxation is that if they start it with bitcoin then they have to tax everything else that is similar to bitcoin. if you have anything that gains value then you end up being forced to pay taxes on it and since you won't be able to comply you'll have to sell all your belongings to be able to pay those taxes.
that simply can not happen. not to mention that putting a price on something that is not yet sold is not possible.

what will happen (or rather continue to happen) is that whenever that property is converted to fiat and the profit is calculated, then you'll have to pay the tax on that sale.

Someone explained that this was an old proposal which never actually made it to even a bill. This sounds pretty much a mad plan. People would stop buying real estate, stocks and would basically stop owning ANYTHING, lest they need to pay taxes.
This would still align with another radical vision about a future when everything will be rented and nothing will be owned by the people. They are all pretty happy working and earning paychecks while everything has become a "service". I doubt any government can ever implement something like this without having a total revolution of sorts.

This is a Hot Potato for many years. People try to put a tax on bitcoin so as not to let people have advantages from the decentralization. Well, the most painful thing is that they do not recognize bitcoin in the ways we want but they just want to steal more money from us

It is not a big issue though if you know how to bypass the centralized system. There are several ways to buy bitcoin in the black market as well as different sources. IN my country, it is hard to trace back people who buy bitcoin since we go through many layers of the market before receiving money/bitcoin

It would be bad for all investment classes, not just crypto.  However, the way the tax code is now where you can defer taxes for decades (or entirely through estate planning) is not sustainable and the rich have absolutely raped the wealth of the nation as a whole by exploiting the tax loopholes in the system to never pay their fair share.

Realistically, taxing unrealized gains isn't going to get passed, not for crypto, not for stocks.  Not only because it will necessitate asset liquidations which will drive asset prices down, but because the rich don't want to pay more taxes and they get what they want.

Do not be worried, it is still like that in the current system and it will still be like that for crypto in the future as well, this is just "lets say something bad about democrats". We all know that Republicans will not care about anything but money, when you look at their defense of Trump all they say is there is "record breaking low unemployment" which somehow they believed when told during a freaking pandemic, obviously that is a lie but they care about that, when you point out to the record breaking debt they ignore it.

This is also another situation where wealthy people buy and hold same stocks for decades and get richer thanks to that, for example Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk got so so so much richer this year, you think not paying a single cent for that is understandable? I think that is not acceptable, so this will make sure there is tax payments for those people who got billions of dollars richer by simply holding stocks.

This is kind of a silly idea. The rich are not going to stop buying assets because they have to pay tax on appreciation. Asset appreciation is how they build wealth, you don't just stop building wealth because it's taxed. What will happen is that taxing unrealized gains will cause assets to need to be liquidated to raise cash to pay the tax, and that overall will drive asset prices down.  However, considering asset prices are largely inflated because the economy borrows money from the future to finance the US government debt (i.e., tax rates are lower than they should be so as not to slow down economic growth), this would only be a step towards reverting towards the true value of the current economy.

I really hope this will not gonna happen since it's very like to force those with bitcoins sell them, which will help the monopoly of bitcoins by the government. If it does happen, we bitcoin holders must stand together to resist it!