President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

There have been reports today that Biden's tax plan will propose raising the capital gains tax to 39.6 percent for anyone earning more than a million dollars (which will be the same as the top tax rate in the plan). That was supposed to be the worst case scenario. But the plan supposedly keeps the 3.8 percent Obamacare tax on investment income, so the top cap gains rate would actually be 43.4 percent. Which is more than double the current rate.

No other country in the world taxes cap gains anywhere near that. A place like Singapore, where a lot of former Americans have gone to avoid the madness, taxes them at 0.

If you live in California your total tax rate in that bracket would be close to 58 percent. In New York, more than 52 percent.

I have no idea what the odds of it getting through are. But the reports (which shouldn't have really been a huge surprise) are kind of shocking people today. The thought was that they will settle at the old 28 percent level on cap gains, but this number is so big that it woke some people up.

What gets lost in these discussions today is that most cap gains are a form of double taxation, which is why having one in the first place was always a fight, and why they were taxed at a lower rate than income. Now that distinction is completely lost on people with the all the "fair share" populism.