" There are a lot of ways to slice the dataset to support whatever interpretation suits one's interests, but trying to be objective, I don't see a strong relationship between increased maximum CG rates and decreased CG tax revenue as a fraction of GDP (which is all that's present in the numbers here), or evidence that higher CG taxes deter people from selling "at all" Good morning, for those of us who raised venture capital in the real world in America, WHO would have offered the seed capital for crazy longs shots like amzn, tsla, msft etc, if LT cap gains didn't get preferential tax treatment ? Smart guys like Buffett didn't invest in these long shots with the tax incentive, would others have IF the potential gains were taxed as ordinary income ? Academics belong in the classroom, they shouldn't be proposing tax policy. They haven't got a clue. I'm still waiting for someone to share a coherent article on how these tax proposals would actually work in the real world ?