Answer
Aug 14, 2025 - 10:55 AM
I'm referring specifically to situations where you could sell an asset like a stock where that investment has already been subject to multiple layers of taxation along the way. And then you sell that stock and then you're hit again with capital gains tax on the sale of that stock. And more importantly, you're you know, for a lot of assets, what we call appreciation is really just inflation. And so, you know, the double taxation refers to the fact that you're getting hit one last time as you're walking out the door metaphorically with this asset upon sale on an asset that you've already, you know, been taxed in various ways on. And then on top of that, you know, being taxed on, in many cases, the tax is just simply an inflation tax. If you have a property of any type, but let's just say a rental property, and it improves, you know, 3% per year over a 15-year hold, well, that's, you know, then you haven't outperformed inflation with your capital appreciation. You know, obviously, if you own a California property, hopefully over that time it performed better than inflation. But for our folks in the Midwest and other places where property values don't accelerate at the same pace as they do sometimes on the coast, and then you're paying a capital gains tax on the appreciation that averaged 3%, almost all of that appreciation was really just the property keeping up with inflation, and you actually – In real dollars, you didn't actually realize any gain on the sale of that property. Because that property, in terms of the original dollars of when you bought that property, didn't go up at all. Because of the accounting for inflation. And I think that's the most egregious aspect of the capital gains tax, is the fact that you're being really taxed on fees. on fake appreciation. It's an inflation tax.
