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The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
(www.propublica.org)
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Normal people regularly owe taxes on unrealized gains. That's what property tax increases are.
Not sure what point you were trying to make here, lol. There is no type of unrealized gain that "normal people" are taxed on (federally or otherwise), but Buffett isn't.
I had hoped the point would be pretty obvious. Most people's homes represent a significant part of their net worth, often a majority of their assets. The unrealized gains on that are taxed.
Billionaires generally (are there even any counterexamples?) do not have the majority of their net worth stored in assets that are taxed the same way. It's a meaningful difference.
It is kinda weird that real estate gets taxed just for existing and being held, but stocks, which supposedly represent a fraction of a mass of real wealth too, don't get taxed while just being held.