Should unrealized capital gains be taxed?

I built my company over 22 years, and on paper it is worth enough that a tax like this would notice me if the threshold ever drifts down, which thresholds always do. For founders, most wealth is shares you cannot sell without losing control of the company your employees depend on, so a tax on unrealized gains means selling pieces of the business every year just to pay the IRS. Startup employees get hit too: engineers holding illiquid options would owe real cash on paper value they cannot touch, forcing them to walk away from the equity they earned. The Tax Policy Center has warned about exactly these liquidity crunches, and they are not theoretical, they are arithmetic. A tax bill should not force a founder to choose between paying Washington and keeping her company.