The Supreme Court rarely hears tax cases, and tax cases rarely threaten to affect the public at large. Moore v. United States, to be argued tomorrow, is that rare exception. The case raises an issue at once beguilingly simple and oddly difficult: What does income mean?
This is a question with ramifications for virtually every area of American taxation; depending on how the Court answers it, Moore could produce a chaotic ruling that casts constitutional doubt on huge swaths of the tax system. But it’s also a question that the Court doesn’t need to answer, and one that it shouldn’t.
The issue teed up in Moore may be so intellectually stimulating that nobody seems to have noticed that the case has been fundamentally misframed.
Income is when you have money coming in. Next!
Clarification: including “capital gains”, inheritances and whatever other (primarily) rich people revenue sources are taxed less because they have more expensive lobbying and lawyers.
You’re agreeing with the rich people in this case when you say that. They got none of those things in this case. They’re being taxed on money they could theoretically get.
I’m guessing you’re talking about “unrealised gains” but that’s still not accurate.
You pay property taxes for your physical properties that you haven’t sold, like your house. Why should intangible assets be valuable in the same way but not taxed in the same way?
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Don’t. Just don’t. I’ve heard all the legal fictions (in both senses of the word) and other specious arguments and you won’t convince me that something that you increase your wealth by obtaining isn’t income.
Might doesn’t make right and neither does agreeing with the most expensive lawyers and most corrupt judges.