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Greenspun would read the worst into whatever Zuckerberg did here, as seen by him starting the post criticizing the timing of Zuckerberg's marriage. Why not ass
by ganeumann 11y ago
Greenspun would read the worst into whatever Zuckerberg did here, as seen by him starting the post criticizing the timing of Zuckerberg's marriage.
Why not assume the best? Zuckerberg said he planned to give away 99% of his wealth to help other people. That's a good thing. Why criticize him now? If he ends up not doing it, criticize him then. If all he was doing was trying to avoid some estate taxes, he could have done that without any announcement at all, certainly drawing less scrutiny.
Scrutiny is important here, because the IRS could disallow the application of the LLC estate planning loophole here just by saying so. The 40% discount for non-management shares is an accounting judgement, not a law, and not one the IRS need accept if it believes the sole purpose is to evade taxes.
- bcg1 11y agoHe didn't say he would give away 99% of his wealth. He said he would use 99% of their Facebook shares to fund their agenda. And he said they would do that with 99% of his shares over their lifetime... if they were 'giving away 99% of their wealth' they could just do that today. As it happens, they can still realize significant returns from those funds in the meantime, and probably end up richer than when they started. The pattern of manipulative billionaires sheltering their legacies like this is not new; see Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, Gates, etc.
- soared 11y agoWhat the fuck? You don't even make an argument with this comment. You just bashed the rich.
- hackerboos 11y agoZuckerberg is not accountable at the ballot box the same way politicians are. If it is tax avoidance then, as a commenter above pointed out, he's robbing the treasury of billions of dollars that should be spent by government. Some of us don't have the luxury of avoiding taxes and some of us deem it highly unethical when people do.
- seunosewa 11y agoHe's not "robbing" the government unless what he's doing is illegal. He's responding to tax incentives that encourage rich people to use their money for non-profit activities. Tax incentives that the government chose to create.