White House not weighing capital gains tax change

Bloomberg

The White House isn’t actively considering the Treasury Department’s push to issue a rule that would slash tax bills for investors who have investment income, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the New York Times earlier this month that his agency was looking at whether it could sidestep Congress to allow capital gains to be indexed to inflation. The change has appeal to some segments of President Donald Trump’s base, but White House officials are aware it would face an immediate legal challenge and has a narrow chance of being sustained, said the person who requested anonymity.
Trump hasn’t yet decided whether he supports the idea and the administration isn’t pursuing the matter as an urgent priority, another official said. Treasury hasn’t set a deadline for when it will reach a conclusion, the official said.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly hadn’t been involved in deliberations, a White House official said, another sign that consideration is still largely confined to the Treasury
Department.
The idea of changing the tax treatment of capital gains started generating buzz in March, when Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said he wanted a second round of tax cuts to include lowering the capital gains rate and indexing the original purchase price of an investment to inflation. The treatment of long-term capital gains was left untouched at 20 percent in the tax overhaul Trump signed in December.
“There has been a great deal of interest in the provision for a long time,” Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email.