[synchronise]

They have something similar in Aus called the Capital Gains Tax and it is something that is inherrently political, unfortunately you can't uncouple the government from as they provide the public service that maintain and collect taxes. Honestly the public service should be answerable to parliament, not government.

Not to mention CGT been tweaked to ineffectiveness by previous governments by excluding assets from its calculations, notably housing, which has skewed CGT away from its original purpose and it's now more of a stick to whack at industries that aren't cozy with the current government.

[Taniwha]

The US has a CGT, capital gains are taxed at your normal marginal income tax rate unless you hold them for a minimum time in which case you pay a slightly lower rate. Though they do provide some exemptions for the family home. Not all that political thing.

In fact in many countries CGT is only used to refer to the LOWER version of the tax ... after all you should pay income tax whether you make your income digging ditches, house flipping, or day trading