The current code taxes labor reliably while allowing capital, wealth, perks, and inherited appreciation to escape or defer tax. The Accord taxes progressively by broadening the base, applying higher rates at the top, and pairing broad consumption taxation with monthly rebates and luxury surcharges.
Today's basis step-up at death is the largest single loophole in the federal tax code. An asset bought for $1M and worth $500M at the holder's death transfers to heirs at a $500M cost basis — meaning the $499M of accumulated appreciation is never taxed by anyone. Combined with borrowing against unrealized gains during life (the buy-borrow-die loop), the architecture allows decades of capital growth to pay zero income tax in any year and zero capital-gains tax at transfer.
Repeal of step-up is canon: 1976 Congress legislated repeal; 1980 Congress reversed before it took effect under accounting-complexity arguments. The accounting infrastructure has improved since 1980 by every measure. The repeal is now feasible.
At death, the decedent's holdings are deemed realized at fair market value. Accumulated capital gains are taxed at the decedent's marginal rate (subject to the lifetime-cap convergence: gains above the $10M CGAL pay ordinary, gains below pay the favored rate). The capital-gains tax is computed and paid by the estate before the post-tax wealth flows to heirs and before estate-tax settlement. Heirs receive the assets at fair market value as their basis going forward.
Liquidity protection: illiquid-asset realizations at death may be deferred to estate settlement at statutory interest, parallel to the estate-prepayment liquidity-protection rule. Family-business succession, farm-family inheritance, and closely-held appreciated assets are not forced into fire-sale liquidation to pay the realization.
Estates with substantial accumulated unrealized appreciation. The combination with the lifetime CGAL cap means small-saver estates (home appreciation, modest retirement-account gains, small-business equity below the lifetime cap) keep the favored rate. Large estates with multi-decade equity accumulation see the appreciation actually taxed once before it transfers.
Estates below the wealth threshold pay only the favored rate (or zero, where the gain falls inside the home-sale exclusion or other existing safe harbors). The personal residence, ordinary retirement accounts, and household goods follow existing exclusion rules. Family-business and farm-family heirs use the liquidity-protection deferral; the architecture refuses to force liquidation as a settlement mechanism.
Pending canonical scoring — paired with capital-gains convergence.
Death-realization is the closer for the wealth-and-estate architecture. Without it, the lifetime cap is bypassed by holding until death; the estate tax prepayment is paid forward but the income-tax base never sees the appreciation; and the estate tax runs on a post-cap-gains base that was never priced for income. With death as a realization event, accumulated gains pay income tax once, the estate tax prepayment reconciles, and the estate tax settles on the post-tax wealth.
See tax ladder · fiscal scoring
- Buy-borrow-die
- Borrow against unrealized gains during life; basis steps up at death and the lifetime appreciation escapes income tax forever. Closed: death is realization.
- Trust-based step-up
- Grantor trusts that historically passed assets to heirs at stepped-up basis are realigned to the decedent-realization rule.
- Late-life gifting around step-up
- Lifetime gifts of appreciated assets follow gift-tax parity rules (carryover basis or substance-tested treatment); step-up is not preserved through last-minute structuring.
Step-up routing closes through deemed-realization at death.
- Lifetime cap on capital-gains preference
- Death-realized gains run through the same CGAL: below the cap, favored rate; above, ordinary marginal.
- Estate Tax Prepayment Plan
- Estate-tax-prepayment installments credit against estate-tax liability after the cap-gains tax has been computed and paid. Sequencing: cap-gains tax → estate-tax settlement.
- Estate tax
- Estate tax is computed on the post-cap-gains wealth at transfer. The two instruments price different things: capital-gains-at-death prices the lifetime appreciation; estate tax prices the transfer.
- Buy-borrow-die elimination (loopholes)
- The loopholes-side closure is the operational rule against borrow-against-gains; this stream is its income-tax-side complement.