Have to sell your stock because you can't otherwise pay the taxes? Yeah, well, fuck you because the government is having budget shortfalls, and it's easier for the government to do it that way.

"State Secretary for Taxation Eugène Heijnen acknowledged during parliamentary debate that the caretaker government would have preferred to tax investment returns only when they are actually realized, but said this was not feasible by 2028, as taxing unrealized gains would avoid billions in budget losses and is easier to implement." <emphasis mine>

Given how volatile crypto is it seems like a bad deal for equity holders.

RMDs force me annually to liquidate stocks to pay US Government taxes. I'm not complaining; merely observing feasibility.

I get downvoted to goatse.cx territory every time I point this out, but: Kamala Harris's threat to tax unrealized gains just prior to the election is probably why we have Donald Trump in office today. Even if you support such a tax, it was sheer insanity to propose it in the months leading up to the election. Did she honestly think people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong would allow their media outlets to endorse her after that, or that people like Musk wouldn't react by throwing everything they had at Trump?

Hopefully the Dutch political scene is a little less volatile than ours was in 2024. Otherwise a tax on unrealized gains will be a massive self-own for Dutch progressives, just as it was in the US. Failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of concentrated media ownership will just lead to the same results, again and again. Progressives who want to tax unrealized gains need to first get elected and then float their proposals.

Those of us who are against such taxes can then argue from a position of principled opposition, instead of having to deal with the myriad of other consequences and side effects that happen when far-right demagogues win elections instead.