There is a *lot* of confusion about the Biden-Harris Admin's "unrealized capital gains tax" proposal. Who endorsed it? Who does it affect? Caveats? I have studied it in detail and will explain it here thoroughly and *neutrally*. At the end, I'll offer my opinion... FACTS: The proposal appears in the document "General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2024 Revenue Proposals" published March 2023. This is an official document reflecting White House & Treasury policy - and *general* requests to Congress for revenue. But Congress retains tax authority. It's just a proposal. Here it is: "The proposal would impose a minimum tax of 25 percent on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth (that is, the difference obtained by subtracting liabilities from assets) greater than $100 million." Those are the basics. If the IRS determines you are worth at least $100 million, you should pay a minimum tax of 25% on your income, including on your unrealized capital gains. That could be your house going up in value, your stock, etc. Your annual minimum tax is 25% times your annual income, realized and unrealized. But there are some key technicalities. TECHNICALITY 1: The unrealized gains tax payments are treated as a PRE-PAYMENTS on future *realized* gains taxes. So you are not going to pay taxes on the same capital gain twice.* *TECHNICALITY 1.5: You can get a refund upon realizing the gain if you have "uncredited payments" (unrealized payments that haven't been counted against an actual capital tax) and those uncredited payments exceed what you'd pay in long-term capital gains. This is especially important if you end up selling for a smaller gain than you were "unrealized" taxed for, or if you actually lose money. You aren't paying unrealized on the gain and nothing on the loss. You can get refunded. TECHNICALITY 2: You don't have to pay it all at once. The first year of minimum tax can be paid in 9 installments. Future years' minimum liability can be paid in 5 installments. TECHNICALITY 3: if you die, your estate pays the federal death tax and then you get refunded to the extent you "overpaid" unrealized taxes. One thing that has been confused is that this proposal is not *just* applicable at death. It's applicable at all times. TECHNICALITY 4: if you are "illiquid" i.e. less than 205 of your wealth is in tradable, liquid assets, then you can have only tradable assets count. BUT you have to pay a penalty or "deferral charge" on the gain of of your illiquid assets up to 10% ANALYSIS/OPINION HOW WOULD THIS AFFECT SOMEONE LIKE ELON MUSK? Musk's current net worth (mostly in Tesla public stock, SpaceX private stock, and X private stock) is assessed at $250B. The "unrealized gain" portion of that (on which he hasn't paid taxes) is likely much more than $200B. But we'll be conservative and say $200B. That would mean a year-one estimated minimum tax would be at least $50 billion, which could be spaced into 9 payments of $5.55 billion and would be credited against future capital gains taxes, and refunded versus future capital losses. But right now he would owe $50 billion that he would never have owed unless he sold ALL OF HIS ASSETS. That's why this policy is extreme. You could perform this analysis on other billionaires. My opinion: it is a confiscatory policy. It is extremely unethical, unworkable, and would cause complete chaos even with the technicalities that have been included. But it is specially designed to target mega billionaires with a large percentage of their wealth in publicly-traded stock. Elon Musk. Warren Buffet. Mark Zuckerberg. Larry Page. For those people, it effectively is the simple 25% confiscation that bureaucrats have been dreaming of forever. For people in the $100M-$1B range AND ESPECIALLY PEOPLE WHO ARE STILL ACTIVE ENTREPRENEURS it would be a nightmare of bureaucracy and compliance. It would terrify people, and in my opinion - discourage further entrepreneurship because they'll try to steal 25% of your ephemeral gains up-front, rather than when you actually earn the income. HAS HARRIS ENDORSED THIS POLICY? 1. She's the Vice President of the United States. Joe Biden is the President. It's their administration. Unless she says otherwise, it's safe to assume she's on board. a. Maybe that doesn't mean she would do it herself as POTUS 2. Semafor reports the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget as saying: "The campaign specifically told us that they support all of the tax increases on the high earners and corporations that are in the Biden budget" That's pretty clear. The unrealized tax was a Biden budget proposal. And unless VP Harris specifically says otherwise, I believe we should assume this is her plan, too. CLOSING NOTE. Biden-Harris Admin says: "Preferential treatment for unrealized gains disproportionately benefits high-wealth taxpayers and provides many high-wealth taxpayers with a lower effective tax rate than many low- and middle- income taxpayers." There is no "preferential treatment" -- it is REALITY treatment. Gains on paper are not income so they are not treated as income. They say this is unfair. It isn't. Treating unrealized and realized gains both as income is lunacy.