Taxes on unrealized gains

[shinnosuke]

So many questions.
1. What is the tax treatment for unrealized losses?
2. What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

How would the denizens of this website react to the news that the Trea$ury Dept is using AI to track down precious metal purchases here. Wouldn't be hard to know who bought/sold just using the Feedback system.

Or, more directly, just showing up at your house to confiscate PMs based on an FDR-style Executive Order. If you say you got none, then let's audit your taxes for the last 5 years and see the flow, in & out, of cash and metals. Did we declare everything properly?

Resistance is futile.

[Recyclersteve]

The potential for taxes on unrealized gains is a VERY SCARY thought. Let’s take Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world. I’m gonna make the assumption that he owns a LOT of Tesla (TSLA) stock and has many billions in unrealized gains.

He could easily be forced to sell a bunch of Tesla stock to pay his tax bill. This could cause a huge collapse in the price of Tesla stock. I would say the same for Nvidia (NVDA). Apple (AAPL) and many more. In fact, this could cause the market to collapse.

Let’s take it one step further. Let’s say this is based on a snapshot of stock prices on 12/31 each year. Well, I imagine some enterprising person might tell a few friends to create bad rumors about your own stock (to depress the value temporarily and reduce tax liability).

Accountants everywhere are probably licking their chops just thinking about the added complexity and tax prep revenues.

This one really has got my blood boiling! Even my wife, who doesn’t follow the stock market much at all, thinks this is beyond stupidity.