All income should be taxed on the same scale, capital gains included.

[Jacobtm]

Should tax law be changed so that income tax applies to ALL income, whether you earn it as a salary, capital-gains, a bonus, etc?

Right now, income from capital gains is taxed at a much lower rate than income from wage-labor. It shouldn't really matter what you think optimal tax-rates ought to be; whether you advocate a flat tax on income, no income tax, or steeply progressive income tax, the outcome would be to put labor and investment on a more even playing field, and to (relatively) encourage people to go into jobs where they earn salaries instead of capital gains.

I think yes, no reason why we should reward stock trading more than other forms of work. Further, with a relatively smaller share of our economy being in the financial sector, debt would be scarcer, forcing people, corporations and the government to "live within their means" more, and helping to minimize collapses based on "bad debt" like we've seen recently.

[Matt Damon™]

I agree.

[Brittain33]

One problem with taxing capital gains at the same rate as income is that income is taxed annually, with no inflationary complications that aren't already resolved by bracket shifts, while capital gains include phantom inflationary gains that are nonetheless taxed as if they were real.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

One problem with taxing capital gains at the same rate as income is that income is taxed annually, with no inflationary complications that aren't already resolved by bracket shifts, while capital gains include phantom inflationary gains that are nonetheless taxed as if they were real.

The obvious solution is to link it to CPI, and tax the resulting unearned income at a high rate (if you're in the top tax bracket).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Surprisingly yes I agree. Everybody should by taxed at 15%.

[Stampever]

Surprisingly yes I agree. Everybody should by taxed at 15%.

If you remove most of the deductions and taxed everyone above $25K at the same rate, you can get the tax rate down to 10% and still bring in more tax revenue.  Of course, I don't expect any sensible tax reform from the department headed up by a guy who can't file his own taxes properly.

[Torie]

I tend to favor the "yes" answer, actually. Tax all income the same.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I favor abolishing the capital gains tax in general.  It's a tax that requires a lot of effort and record keeping to calculate properly.  I can see taxing IPOs and the issuance of new stock (or warrants) so as to keep tax dodgers from shifting ordinary income into capital gains, but anything that potentially requires people to keep records for decades of their past purchases and expenses is not good policy.