[a_c_s]

Not really, nobody goes "ooh, the stock price is up 5% this year, we can hire 5% more employees!"

Most stock wealth isn't doing anything for the company. If the stock price of Apple went down by 90% tomorrow for no reason, the main effect on Apple would be... almost nothing.

The employees who get equity compensation would be mad but they don't use their stock value to fund R&D or expansion or salaries.

[Detrytus]

But if you have "unrealized gains" tax you should also have "unrealized losses" tax deduction.

Also, instead of Apple try imagining NVIDIA: their stock went up like 1000% in two years, they are now a trillion dollar company. If they had to pay tax on that it would bankrupt them. Or, they could use all their cash + borrow some money against the stocks to pay tax. But then the stock can suddenly crash 90% and the lenders, seeing how their collateral is now 90% down might start demanding repayment of the loans, again, bankrupting the company.

"Unrealized gains" tax simply does not make sense. It's just greedy government attempt to squeeze more money from businesses.

[a_c_s]

You aren't arguing against what I wrote: an investor currently pays no tax on their own stock going up.

I'm suggesting if an investor in NVIDIA uses their $100 Million in stock that they bought for $10 Million to get a loan they would have to pay capital gains on that $90 Million capital gain. Just like they would have to pay capital gains when they sell the stock. No stock sale has to occur - the investor could pay $18 million in taxes out of their loan.

When we decide to tax things is inherently arbitrary: I'm suggesting that we count "borrowing" against an asset as a taxable event which is a simple and straightforward change that makes buy-borrow-die more equitable: government gets taxes at the same time as the investor gets the benefits.