President Joe Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate now want to tax unrealized gains in order to raise money. WSJ‘s Editors are being generous when they call the move a mirage.

Unrealized capital gains are gains in the value of an asset that are thought to have accrued between the time of acquisition and the present time, but that haven’t been “realized,” the asset hasn’t actually been sold and a profit actually collected. That’s just one aspect of the concept of unrealized gain, though.

Another aspect is especially critical: who makes the assessment of value increase? For instance,

A tax court this year ruled that the late entertainer Michael Jackson’s “likeness and image” were worth about $157 million less than the IRS claimed.

That’s Government making the assessment of the present value of an asset before the asset has been sold and not the free market making an empirical assessment based on the actual sale price. This time, Government was caught out and reversed. But under the Progressive-Democrats’ latest tax scheme? Asset owners might not be so lucky.

Progressive-Democrats are living in fantasy land in terms of what average Americans want from our economy and for ourselves.

Now the Progressive-Democrats want the IRS to move into fantasy land with them. Unrealized gains are just that—they don’t exist, they’re purely fantasy.

Separately,

The IRS will have to hire many more auditors [to make such assessments]….

Of course it will. It’s part of the Progressive-Democrats’ Build Government Bigger plan.