- Sep 15, 2012
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There are taxes on capital gains. They need to be raised!
If you want to stop growth, that's exactly what you do.
The reason capital gains taxes are not ridiculous is to encourage investments in the US. If tax rates are too high, the risk of making money is not worth it. Investors would rather invest in tax-free bonds or off shore investments.
So now we make capital gains taxes 50%. You purchased your home in 1990 for 150K. Today you sold it for 250K. You made 100K from your long-term investment. But now you owe government 50K of that for capital gains taxes.
The United States has one of the lowest tax rates in the world in terms of a revenue collected per year as a percentage of its GDP. U.S. tax revenues are only about 22% of annual GDP while in a country like Norway, they amount to nearly 60% of GDP. Is business and investment dead in Norway? Nope. Norway has a strong economy.