Politics Reporter, HuffPost.

He told HuffPost the tax would only apply to people who own more than $1 billion in assets or who earn more than $100 million annually for three consecutive years.

The wealthiest Americans pay much lower effective tax rates than everyone else thanks to lower rates for capital gains — the increased value of an investment when it’s sold — and the wealthiest families can avoid even those lower rates completely when the people who hold the assets bequeath them to their children after they die.

“If public reporting has it right, the Democrats are so desperate to raise taxes that they are now proposing to tax money the American people haven’t even made yet,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lamented in a speech on Monday.

Now Democrats want to tax money you haven’t even made yet.”.

Democrats initially rejected higher capital gains taxes on inherited assets as part of the Build Back Better plan, but have returned to the idea of taxing unrealized capital gains because Sen.

“Why would we want to destroy investment in America and punish success in America?” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told HuffPost.

Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told HuffPost he’s all for new taxes on unrealized capital gains, but that he favors ideas that have been around for longer, such as discontinuing the “step up in basis” that eliminates most tax liability when someone dies.