Manchin and tax on unrealized capital gains

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6. I agree. Futures contracts are also marked-to-market.

It's not only possible but entirely reasonable to tax people on their accrued capital gains, at least for investments where there is a readily available, liquid market.

That said, the rich just loooove evading and deferring taxes, so they would shift more investment money to things like art where no one can really say what it's worth until they actually sell it.

A good law would address this, perhaps by requiring that upon sale, a tax becomes due for each tax year it was held, as if it had gone up in value smoothly over that period of time. But in practice, this will become just another loophole for the rich to dodge taxes.