This paper presents a new approach to the taxation of capital gains that eliminates the deferral advantage of realization-based systems, along with the lock-in effect and tax-arbitrage possibilities associated with this deferral advantage. The new method still taxes capital gains only upon realization, but effectively by charging interest on past gains when realization finally occurs, eliminates the incentive to defer such realization. Unlike a similar scheme suggested previously by William Vickrey, the present method does not require knowledge of the potentially unobservable pattern of gains over time. It, thus, is applicable to a very broad range of capital assets. Copyright 1991 by American Economic Association.
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Volume (Year): 81 (1991) Issue (Month): 1 (March) Pages: 167-78 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Jeremy I. Bulow & Lawrence H. Summers, 1984.
"The Taxation of Risky Assets,"
NBER Working Papers
0897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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