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Showing posts from August 23, 2020

My Big Idea: Radical Capital Gains Tax Increase And Restructuring

 I'm going to refer my Catholic readers first of all to CCC, 2406 as the ethical basis for this idea. I did some digging to find out just what the capital gains tax rates were. To say that what I found surprised me is a bit of an understatement. Here's your summary moral judgment: the rates are too low, and the thresholds are too high. I am not certain that a Christian society would entertain any sort of economic instrument whereupon people could make money for doing nothing, but let us suppose that we can tolerate the stock market as it is, for the sake of argument. Capital gains are profits or dividends, if you like, from stocks and similar products. In the United States right now, capital gains are taxed at three rates: zero, 15%, and 20%. I will leave the policy wonks to handle single versus married, in these calculations. But my idea is to have four tax brackets for capital gains: zero, 15%, 35%, and 70%. The zero bracket ought to go from zero-$30,000. (If we want to give