Think back to January 2021. A new President was sworn in; Twitter was obsessed with “Bean Dad,” and the term “Meme Stock” entered popular culture. A previously obscure subreddit called “Wall Street Bets” began making front page headlines. Average Americans took their “Stimmies” and invested them into unpopular companies, some on the verge of failure, and started making double digit percentage gains per day by pitting their collective holdings to short squeeze institutional investors.
Companies that no analyst listed as a good buy, such as a retail video game store (retail is still a thing?), a movie theater chain (in the middle of a pandemic) and multiple cell phone companies (that don’t produce Apple or Android phones) all began to skyrocket overnight. As of this writing, GameStop Corp. ($GME) was up nearly 2000 percent in the last year. It’s likely while riding the adrenaline rollercoaster, most investors were not thinking about taxes. There are no taxes on the moon, but it’s not too late to plan for tax consequences here on Earth.
