It’s not often we need to email you on a Monday, so if we are, it has to be for a good reason. And believe us, we have one: May 11, 2025 marked the official launch of Patriotic Millionaires Canada!
America’s Most Regressive Tax Levy: Our Tax on Capital Gains
Our current effective tax rate on capital gains shrinks as the gains grow in size and duration, inviting the tax dodge — Buy–Hold for Decades–Sell — that’s driving America’s wealth concentration.
Unlike President Trump and congressional Republicans, we’re not letting go of our proposal to raise taxes on the rich. While they may have ideas and “concepts of a plan,” we are the ones with a legitimate, well-constructed legislative agenda that will deliver real and substantive relief to working people.
At a press conference in August 2024, while standing in front of a table stacked with grocery staples, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.” We’re now officially 100 days into Trump’s second presidency, and not only did the president break that promise, but he is actively pursuing a policy agenda that will make America’s checkout lines wildly more expensive than they already are.
Tech broligarchs’ weird adoration of Donald Trump is problematic for a number of reasons, but their fears about having taxes levied on their unrealized capital gains may explain why they’re so willing to abandon the basic tenets of democracy to support their fellow billionaire.
The Economist is Wrong About Unrealized Capital Gains
I have been a subscriber to and reader of The Economist for almost 20 years. I have appreciated their balanced and intelligent coverage of world events, with a perspective of classical economic liberalism. Yet I find myself in the unusual position of taking issue with two of their recent articles: “How to tax billionaires – and how not to” and “America’s rich never sell their assets. How should they be taxed?”
We here at the Patriotic Millionaires like to use Independence Day to remind ourselves what patriotism means and why we go about calling ourselves “patriotic” in the first place. And judging by recent events at the Supreme Court, this refresher on American patriotism is sorely needed.
We’ve known for a while now that our desire for lawmakers around the world to raise taxes on wealthy people like us isn’t fringe. But now, we officially have the numbers to back it up – and a blueprint for how international leaders can institute minimum standards for taxing the global rich.
