This is the Kater Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 12,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's a wish list item for many in Congress taxing

unrealized income. It was one provision signed into law by President Trump as part of the

2017 Tax Cutts and Jobs Act. Now the Supreme Court may decide if taxing your gains before you sell your investments is once and for all

a non-starter.

Kato's Tommy Berry comments.

Tommy, what is income?

I realize that this seems like a very simple question, but when we think about income for the purposes of taxation, what is it?

Well, like most things, it's a simple question until you ask a lawyer and then it gets complicated.

So income to a tax lawyer is essentially money that has been realized.

And it's sort of hard to define that

without looking at tons of case law,

but in a nutshell, it's you've gotten a benefit.

So the most obvious would be you got the money itself

in your bank account, say you got a dividend from owning a

stock or you sold a stock and you got the profit from however much someone paid

you for that stock. There are a few other examples. Perhaps you gave a gift, perhaps a stock matured or some other ownership

stake matured, and you immediately gave it as a gift.

That act of gift giving is treated as a benefit to you so that's treated as a

realization event but the key point is that up until now the federal government has

always said if you don't get any money or any other benefit that has not

...