No, it’s not “anyone who invests”. The change is only for capital gains above $250,000. If you’re reporting $250k or less in capital gains each year, you see no change whatsoever.
What retail investors are making those kinds of realized returns?
We can already see the opposition’s false equivalence rhetoric take hold. Here’s the difference:
Say you had 1M$ a couple years ago to invest (lucky you, was it a gift from your parents?). Say you didn’t do much research and invested in a stock that was pretty low at the time and you sell after the new tax at which point you see a return of an extra 25% (you were pretty lucky to beat the market with little effort). This means you get back 1.25M$ before taxes. The extra amount of money you have to pay with this new tax is exactly 0$ more than before! This is because your gains are 250k$ and you still haven’t reached the new limit.
If on the other hand you were even luckier and somehow managed to get 30% extra (!!!). You’re only going to pay the increased rate on 50k$ that’s above the 250k$ you made.
Now if you’re starting out with 10M$ and get the same kind of return that new tax is going to bite.
Ask yourself though, who is playing with that kind of money. It’s not the vast majority of “people who invest”. It’s going to be the extra rich.
Don’t forget you only get taxed extra if you realize all those earnings in the same year. So not only do you need to make more than 250k you also need to have a reason to take it out all at once rather than a little bit each year as you typically would if it were retirement income or something along those lines.
It doesn’t apply to returns from selling your primary residence, even.
The only people outside of the ownership class (landlords, and people who own and peddle stock for a living) who are going to get caught in this are people who inherit an extra house.
I’m in favour of this new taxation structure, but there is a narrow group of people with modest means like my parents who will be disadvantaged by this new tax structure.
They live in the middle of buttfuck-nowhere with a large plot of cheap rural land. Principal residence only covers up to a half hectare of land, given you don’t meet certain niche exceptions. The actual house they live in is of little value; 100+ years old and probably to be demolished upon sale. The majority of the property value is in the surrounding land. Not a fortune or anything, but definitely more than $250k, which they’ll now need to pay at 2/3 capital gains (they bought it for next to nothing decades ago). Not gonna throw them into financial ruin or anything, but it will somewhat affect what they can afford to move into when they go to sell their place.
Again, I’m in favour of this tax structure, but just wanted to include this anecdote given the idea that this only affects billionaires.
So they changed capital gains? Because before it subtracted through years lived in compared to value
Not even house sales, really. None of us are lucky enough to gain a quarter of a million dollars through home ownership.
Unless by “us” you mean non-homeowners like me I strongly disagree. In my area (Vancouver Island) it would be extremely unlikely you wouldn’t see at least a $250k gain for anyone who purchased their single family home 10+ years ago, even 5 years ago for a lot of homes. I can’t say for sure, but I’d imagine the situation is quite similar for all but the most rural parts of BC.
