Taxing Capital Gains: Policy Options and Research Directions

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Abstract

Capital gains have become one of the biggest drivers of income, wealth, racial, and gender inequality in the United States, and yet their measurement and taxation are piecemeal at best. Recent research, however, is starting to solve long-standing methodological challenges in this area, presenting a fuller picture of scale, distribution, revenue potential, and historical trends, including the role discrimination has played in creating our current system. A number of new proposals have also been developed to tackle the tricky task of taxing capital gains, including efforts that address indefinite deferral, retirement accounts and other carve-outs, foreign ownership, charitable gifts, stepped-up basis, trusts and other estate-tax workarounds, and borrowing against equity. Unrealized capital gains in particular raise critical legal and economic questions that scholars are being called upon to answer. Finally, cutting-edge empirical work has also begun to demystify the macroeconomic impact of capital gains and the various approaches to taxing them, at times resulting in findings that counter what would be predicted by classical economic models. This panel will convene experts in all these areas in order to have a wide-ranging conversation that illuminates future research directions and policy options.

Subject Area

• Inequality and Distribution/Macroeconomics and Fiscal Policy

Moderator

• David Mitchell, dmitchell@equitablegrowth.org

Panelists

• Jacob Robbins, University of Illinois Chicago

• Robert McClelland, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

• Zachary Liscow, Yale Law School

• Amy Royce, National Women’s Law Center

• Ignacio Gonzalez Garcia, American University