Capital gains is weird because there are several different ways to justify the lower rate, but then how it's calculated should differ.
For example, if you bought a lump of silver thirty years ago and sell it today, the nominal price is higher, but that's basically just a result of inflation. Shouldn't we be taxing the real gain and not the inflation? But in that case maybe instead of a lower capital gains rate we should only adjust the gains for inflation and then apply the normal rate.
Then you have the double taxation argument, but in that case you should either just get rid of the double taxation or dividends should be treated the same way.
And there are several others, but what they all amount to is that the lower rate is a bad hack and we would be better off in each case to account for the thing that needs adjusting directly instead.
For example, if you bought a lump of silver thirty years ago and sell it today, the nominal price is higher, but that's basically just a result of inflation. Shouldn't we be taxing the real gain and not the inflation? But in that case maybe instead of a lower capital gains rate we should only adjust the gains for inflation and then apply the normal rate.
Then you have the double taxation argument, but in that case you should either just get rid of the double taxation or dividends should be treated the same way.
And there are several others, but what they all amount to is that the lower rate is a bad hack and we would be better off in each case to account for the thing that needs adjusting directly instead.
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