In an earlier comment, Dominic Pino notes that the slump in Meta’s share price could make something of a mockery of the absurd (my word, not Dominic’s) American Innovation and Choice Online bill, a piece of legislation that, if passed, will improve innovation and choice online by about as much as the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation.
But there’s something else to think about. President Biden and congressional Democrats have been pushing the idea of a tax (for the very richest Americans) on unrealized capital gains. It’s a bad idea for any number of reasons, but consider what it would have meant for Mark Zuckerberg had that tax been in force in 2021. He would have had to pay a large bill on paper “gains,” many of which were to evaporate within months.
The New York Post:
Mark Zuckerberg has seen his net worth plummet by more than $100 billion in the last 13 months as the stock price of his company, Meta, nosedived Thursday.
Zuckerberg’s real-time net worth was pegged at $38.1 billion as of 11:26 a.m. Eastern time, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index — plunging him out of the top 20 on the list of wealthiest people in the world.
The justification for taxing unrealized gains is “fairness.” The way it could work is anything but.