Spot the Logical Fallacies - Tax on Unrealised Gains

cvs · March 2, 2026, 2:30pm

Here’s a quick test for your ability to detect when you are possibly being manipulated.

How many logical fallacies can you spot in the following post ?

0 logical fallacies in the post below.
1 - 5 logical fallacies. Quite a few.
6 - 10 logical fallacies. Quite a lot.
10+ logical fallacies! A complete dumpster fire.

0 voters

Unrealized gains tax for Gen-Z:

You buy a Pokémon card for $50.

Someone offers you $500 for it. You say no. You love that card. You’re keeping it.

Government: “Cool, but that card is worth $500 now. You owe us $100 in taxes.”
You: “…I didn’t sell it.”
Government: “Don’t care. Pay up.”

You don’t have $100 lying around.
So you’re forced to sell the card you love just to pay a tax on money you never received.

Next month? That card drops back to $50.

Your card is gone. Your money is gone. And the government shrugs.

That’s a wealth tax on unrealized gains. They don’t pay you back the tax…

Now picture this.

Your mom calls you crying.
She has to sell the house she raised you in.
Not because she can’t afford it. She’s lived there 30 years. It’s paid off.

But some website says it’s worth more now
and the government says she owes $15,000 she doesn’t have.

So she sells your childhood home.
The kitchen where she made you breakfast.
The doorframe where she marked your height every birthday.

Gone.

To pay a tax on money that was never real.

Now picture the opposite.

Your dad put everything into his small business.
For 20 years he built it from nothing.
One year the business is “valued” at $2 million on paper.
He owes a massive tax bill. He empties his savings. Sells his truck. Borrows money. Pays it.

Next year the market crashes. His business is worth $200,000.

He lost everything to pay a tax on a number that doesn’t exist anymore.

Does the government give him his money back?
No.

Does the government give him his truck back?
No.

Does the government care?
No.

They sold this idea as “taxing billionaires.”
But billionaires have armies of lawyers, offshore accounts, and trusts.
They’ll be fine.

You know who won’t be fine? Your mom. Your dad. Your neighbor with a small business.
The farmer down the road who’s had the same land for four generations and now has to sell it because dirt got expensive.

You’re not taxing wealth. You’re taxing people for owning things.

It’s like getting a parking ticket for a car you might drive somewhere someday.

They want you to own nothing and be happy.
To fund the fraud, waste and abuse of the welfare state they created.

There is enough money. More tax isn’t needed. It’s all a lie.
But you’ve been gaslit into believing this is a rich vs poor debate.

I hope you understand what’s at stake.

Source: Post randomly found on Twitter/X. Images found online.

Hint: Here’s a handy link with a List of fallacies - Wikipedia with several common patterns/examples.

SpacemanSpiff · March 2, 2026, 5:27pm

Plenty of problems, but some truth here and there too. Few that really need solutions to be an acceptable tax.

I do think unrealized gains is a loophole that clearly favors the rich. But something like this perhaps should also come with reduced tax rates everywhere and/or better basic services and protection that Nordic countries i think give. ( I would be very doubtful in India sadly )

This is something i see as the biggest issue. Big money will find ways to evade. But everyday people get caught in yet another tax. Not every country will tax this.

This also seems to be a problem when taken to extremes. Granted i face the same thing in trading and have to pay tax every year not knowing what will happen next year.
But with business its going to be more complicated esp if there is a cash crunch. Maybe it can be managed with some financial stuff dunno.

Another big issue that i read was that it had an arbitrary start date ( Netherlands). So people who already made money this way get to keep the gains ( ofc else its retrospective … ) while for young guys / new investors it will be much more difficult to compound.

Dunno, i hope it gets a reasonable and fair implementation. Ideally taxation should be on net worth gain, but its not so simple. Maybe some way to defer it ( but keep compounding the tax ) makes better sense ? Or some sort of averaging over multiple years.