No. of Recommendations: 4
Publicly traded stocks are easy to value, but is it fair to single them out?
And whether or not it's fair, is it advisable to single them out? People respond to incentives. If you tax public stocks differently, and more onerously, than ownership shares in private companies, at the margins you'll see fewer public companies and more private ones. Which presumably is a bad thing. We like companies to be publicly traded - they're more transparent and more easily investible by the average joe. And there's more conventional avoidance - putting your shares overseas, putting ownership of your shares in non-taxable entities, etc. All of which reduces the amount you bring in from the $250 billion that you might nominally get per year.
