Policymakers have suggested a number of proposals to impose surtaxes on high-income taxpayers. Several of the proposals have focused on increasing taxes on long-term capital gains on those with an income above some threshold. However, many taxpayers only occasionally have incomes above the threshold. Others only exceed the threshold because of their capital gains realizations. This brief investigates the ability of those taxpayers to avoid a surtax by timing the realizations of their capital gains to keep their incomes below the threshold.