Missed opportunity:

Sometime in the 80's, the ability to offset income with capital losses was set at $3000/year (for non IRA/401k accounts). That hasn't been inflation adjusted for over 15 years, and now makes it virtually impossible to fully use, say, a $60,000 stock loss. You'd have to apply $3k for twenty years, which is a very long time. Why not increase the amount from $3,000 to $10,000?    (or more)

It has a number of virtues:

• It really helps those in the middle income ranges ($30k - $100k).
  
  
• It helps out those who have been unlucky in the stock market. Why reward those who do well? Why not show some compassion for those who "did the right thing" (i.e. participate in the market), but got burned?
  
  
• It provides a sort of compensation for those victimized by the unethical actions that took place on Wall Street. Unfortunately, getting recompense for slippery analysis and other offenses is virtually impossible. The process is expensive, takes forever, and there's no money to pay out anyway.
  
  
• It would provide some reassurance to investors that there will be some help when markets turn bad - which would definitely make the public less wary than they are today.

Alas, the Bush administration's sole focus is on winners. Losers, even those that imbibed the free-market elixir, are of no account.

posted by Quiddity at 1/08/2003 11:44:00 PM