VERY: How concerned investors should be about Biden’s tax proposals.
What effect would these taxes have on stock market behavior? It’s complicated, but Dan Wiener, who runs the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors and is chairman of Adviser Investment Management, says the impact on investors from a capital gains hike may be more limited than many think. “The people who will be most concerned are high-end active traders and some hedge funds,” he said. “Much of the stock is with pension funds who have no tax liability; 401(k) and IRA accounts are not taxed until the money is taken out.”
Raising taxes on the wealthy will also revive the old debate that hiking taxes would not necessarily provide a dramatic increase in revenues.
A recent study by the Tax Foundation concluded the Biden tax proposal would raise $3.3 trillion over the next decade, and that raising capital gains taxes would raise only $469.4 billion over the same time period, a fairly small sum of money. Most of the increase would come from raising the corporate income tax rate and the Social Security payroll tax increase.
A separate 2010 study by the Congressional Research Service examined what it called “behavioral responses” to changes in capital gains taxes. The capital gains tax discourages capital gains realizations because capital gains are taxed only when realized. Because of this, “investors may be encouraged to hold suboptimal portfolios or forego investment opportunities with higher pre-tax returns.” In other words, when capital gains taxes are high, investors will likely respond by holding onto stocks rather than selling, which makes the market less efficient.
People will realize lower returns but Washington won’t collect much more money.
Biden hasn’t even been sworn in yet and I’m already tired of all the losing.
