Hilary Clinton proposes reform on capital gains taxes
- Companies must break free of the 'tyranny' of earnings reports
- Short-term profit coming at the expense of long-term growth
- Sold focus on quarterly report is bad for business and wages
- 'System is out of balance'
Hilary Clinton this week
It's a long time until the election but she a favorite and it's an interesting take. Now, that she's proposing a nearly doubling of the capital gains tax on investments held less than two years. It's a joke of a solution.
The rich will simply invest from offshore tax havens (like they already do) while the tiny volumes of people trading on Schwab accounts will be stuck with the bill.
There is a real problem here. Companies are issuing debt to buyback shares rather than investing in workers or production or R&D. That's a real problem and it's the government's job to incentivize companies to spend.
The one worthy target she picks is stock buybacks but her solution is simply more transparency. That's not a solution. Instead of making the impossibly-complex US tax code even more difficult to navigate. Why not just tax buybacks?
Nothing she proposed today is a solution to anything, but at least she's looking in the right place and that could be good for the US economy if it proves to be a popular battle in Congress.
