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Just as current income taxes have a hard deadline in which financial assets are assessed, your extreme edge case is only applicable one day a year, rendering it ever the more trivial.

Not to mention, the calculation for wealth would probably be based on something less temporary than a fleeting moment in the markets.

Finally, the government would not directly take shares, so they would always be owned by you. Presumably with the stock price so much reduced you can simply purchase more at a pittance.




I'm not sure if I would particularly care that it was just an edge case that caused me to miss out on $99M.

They wouldn't take shares, but I would be forced to sell shares in order to pay the tax bill, because I don't actually have that money just laying around. So I had 10M shares @ $1/share, share prices go up to $100/share. I get hit with a $900M tax bill and sell 9M shares in order to pay it. Price goes back down to $1/share, leaving me with 1M shares. How exactly should I purchase more at a pittance? I spent all the money I didn't even have paying the tax bill, there's nothing left in my bank account to buy any shares.


Buy it on margin, if the price has gone down so low you can easily get it approved


Taking out a loan against an asset to buy more of that asset sounds like a horrible financial move.


You can use your existing 1M shares as collateral


Right...use your shares in XYZ as collateral to take out a loan to buy more shares of XYZ.

That sounds like horrible financial advice.


In the grim future of the strawman, many such cases abound


Still not sure where the straw man was.


Ssh. It’s okay. It can’t get to you now.




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