Prospects look dim for legislation to cut the capital gains tax on home sales before the midterm elections, despite the advice from some conservatives that it would provide relief to families and give a political boost to Republicans. President Donald Trump has reportedly weighed calling on Congress to cut capital gains taxes ahead of…
Page F4From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 2 September 2026
Billionaires sent Montana prices soaring; Congress considers cutting capital gains taxes on houses before midterms.
As it ran on the front
The New York Times asks whether Democrats can capitalize on billionaires sending Montana prices soaring. Fair question. Here is the filing on the other side of the ledger: Washington Examiner, same week, asking whether Congress can cut taxes on capital gains on houses before the midterm elections.
Run those two documents side by side and the arithmetic does itself. Story one: home prices in Montana have gone up because people with enormous, portable fortunes decided the state was worth owning a piece of. Story two: the policy response under active discussion in Washington is not a tax on the people doing the buying. It is a tax cut on the people doing the selling — meaning, mechanically, whoever already holds the appreciated asset.…
…(cont) That is not a contradiction. That is a system working exactly as filed. When an asset class gets more valuable because outside money floods in, the people sitting on that asset before the flood get to sell high; a capital-gains cut on housing simply lets them keep more of the difference. It does nothing for the renter watching the flood arrive. It does nothing for the buyer priced out by it. It is a tax break sized to the gain, and the gain is sized to the billionaires named in the first story.
Hon, we checked whether this is a coincidence of timing. It is not. The capital-gains conversation is scheduled, per the Examiner's own reporting, "before the midterm elections" — meaning the relief lands on the calendar precisely when it can be pointed to as delivered. The Montana price story has no such deadline. There is no proposal on record capping how much price appreciation a single buyer can produce; there is a proposal on record capping how much tax a seller pays on the appreciation once it's happened.
So the gap, reconciled: the input — billionaire money entering a housing market — is unregulated and undated. The output — a tax cut on the resulting gains — is regulated by a legislative calendar and aimed at people who already own. Two stories, one week, one column heading toward the same address — and it isn't the renter's.
“Prices go up because rich guys decided Montana was cute this decade, and the fix on the table isn't rent control or a tax on the guys doing the buying — it's a tax cut for whoever sells. Follow the exemption: it's never aimed at the people getting priced out, it's aimed at the people cashing out.”
“This is simple pro-growth tax relief for homeowners who've built equity over decades — everybody benefits when you unlock capital, that's just — okay, it mostly unlocks capital for people who already have a house worth cutting taxes on, but the growth trickles, it trickles eventually.”
The receipts
For years, Democrats have failed to harness the anger of Montanans contending with out-of-state wealth driving up costs. This year, a smokejumper thinks he can succeed.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.