system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: You shouldn't have to pay tax when you sell something unless you have a real profit

By real profit, I mean "inflation adjusted profit."

For example, say you buy a necklace for $1,000. Inflation averages 2% a year, and 20 years later, you sell the necklace for $1,486.

You would be required to pay tax on the $486 of "profit" but in reality, when you adjust for inflation, $1,486 buys the same amount of goods and services that $1,000 did 20 years ago.

So really you would be paying a tax on a break-even sale, which turns it into a *loss.* I think this is unfair, and all capital gains tax should be automatically offset by inflation over the duration that you held the item.

Also this is not counting sales tax for this CMV, I'm solely talking about capital gains tax.
gpt
Consider if you hadn't bought the necklace and just hid the 1000 dollars under the floorboards. After 20 years of inflation that same money would be worth 667 of today's dollars, so you actually did make a profit by buying the necklace even after paying a capital gains tax.