Dutch Lawmakers Approve a 36% Tax on Unrealized Crypto, Stock, and Bond Gains

[stevenalowe]

Taxing imaginary gains on anything - land, stocks, crypto, comic books, etc - is illogical class envy.

[lifestyleguru]

They're all invested real estate, and want the rest to invest in real estate as well.

[aaomidi]

You can always sell to pay the taxes.

More liquidity is good, actually.

[exabrial]

Absolute travesty. Nobody should be forced to pay a made up number, let alone under the duress of having your door kicked in if you refuse.

[Tyrubias]

Many ultra-wealthy individuals borrow against their holdings to avoid having to sell their assets and therefore paying taxes. They shouldn’t be allowed to have their cake and eat it too. Relying on “realization” for taxation stops being reasonable when access to cash is basically the same as income. If anything, not taxing unrealized gains essentially punishes people who labor for income and unfairly favors people who use asset appreciation as a form of income.

[saikia81]

And nobody should go hungry, and nobody should lack basic healthcare. But here we are balancing the scales.

[mikestew]

Have to sell your stock because you can't otherwise pay the taxes? Yeah, well, fuck you because the government is having budget shortfalls, and it's easier for the government to do it that way.

"State Secretary for Taxation Eugène Heijnen acknowledged during parliamentary debate that the caretaker government would have preferred to tax investment returns only when they are actually realized, but said this was not feasible by 2028, as taxing unrealized gains would avoid billions in budget losses and is easier to implement." <emphasis mine>

[KellyCriterion]

do you have a link to that quote in the second paragraph?

[MonkeyClub]

I expect this will be challenged and overturned as unconstitutional as the similar effort was in 2021, however it's insane as it stands, especially coming from a caretaker government.

[9864247888754]

The theft will become more and more egregious until the regimes collapse.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

Me thinks they are factoring in a high % of evasion under 100,000 euros per year gains.

This leaves as potential taxpayers only those who cannot afford or don't want to structure their holdings via offshore entities

[lifestyleguru]

> Me thinks they are factoring in a high % of evasion under 100,000 euros per year gains.

Paultry individual investors have it the hardest to evade and optimize the taxes actually. Oftentimes they pay double dividend tax (WHT, only partial write off because of bilateral treaty, local dividend tax) while financial institutions were receiving... double refund of WHT (CumEx scandal).

[KellyCriterion]

The first test balloon in one of the smaller EU countries: Take a bed that this will be considered a blueprint and will be rolled out across other EU countries.

[keernan]

RMDs force me annually to liquidate stocks to pay US Government taxes. I'm not complaining; merely observing feasibility.

[barelysapient]

Given how volatile crypto is it seems like a bad deal for equity holders.

[CamperBob2]

I get downvoted to goatse.cx territory every time I point this out, but: Kamala Harris's threat to tax unrealized gains just prior to the election is probably why we have Donald Trump in office today. Even if you support such a tax, it was sheer insanity to propose it in the months leading up to the election. Did she honestly think people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong would allow their media outlets to endorse her after that, or that people like Musk wouldn't react by throwing everything they had at Trump?

Hopefully the Dutch political scene is a little less volatile than ours was in 2024. Otherwise a tax on unrealized gains will be a massive self-own for Dutch progressives, just as it was in the US. Failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of concentrated media ownership will just lead to the same results, again and again. Progressives who want to tax unrealized gains need to first get elected and then float their proposals.

Those of us who are against such taxes can then argue from a position of principled opposition, instead of having to deal with the myriad of other consequences and side effects that happen when far-right demagogues win elections instead.

[BobbyTables2]

I realize people want to tax the rich but seems to me that taxing unrealized gains would seriously penalize investment.

That’s a huge blow to the natural compounding that occurs as stocks appreciate over time.

Wouldn’t that kill their stock market? Who would invest with such taxes?

Seems like people would just pour their investment funds into real estate rentals or such where only “realized” income would exist to be taxed… (ignoring appreciation of the property)

[kstrauser]

You might be right. I’m sure it didn’t help her case.

A crummy idea is a crummy idea, even if you otherwise like the person having it.

[petre]

> Hopefully the Dutch political scene is a little less volatile than ours was in 2024.

They have 3-4 party coalitions and all of them want markup on your wallet. This is how tax the rich ends up, everyone else gets hit with taxes.

[kevinfiol]

> Kamala Harris's threat to tax unrealized gains just prior to the election is probably why we have Donald Trump in office today

It was not a good policy and was unpopular with many Democrats, but I think there were several other more major contributing factors to why as Trump won (ex. general displeasure with inflation post-COVID, high emphasis on the asylum crisis/trans issues, plus only having 4 months lead-up time after Biden's withdrawal).

[Tyrubias]

Even if what you’re saying is true, this just goes to show how badly we need to rein in the ultra-wealthy by taxing their unrealized gains. Like I’ve pointed out elsewhere in the comments, letting billionaires (some of whom will soon be trillionaires) get away with having tax-free spending power disenfranchises the many people who labor for a living. The very fact you so casually say “their media outlets” just goes to show how their concentrated wealth threatens the public discourse. As a society, we can’t allow people to use their wealth to influence government and civilization as a whole without at the very least being able to tax said wealth. The solution to taxing the rich isn’t to downplay the issue for electoral convenience. It is to educate and build a grassroots movement that can oppose the power of concentrated media ownership. The very points you make kind of undermine any principled opposition to taxing unrealized gains.