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He will definitely save a bit of money on taxes. I suspect his marginal tax rate is ~24% (20% Cap Gains + 4% Medicare). So this donation will lower his net wort

He will definitely save a bit of money on taxes. I suspect his marginal tax rate is ~24% (20% Cap Gains + 4% Medicare). So this donation will lower his net worth by ~7.6B. In any case, this is a giant amount of money by philanthropic standards. I doubt more than 4-5 people have ever given as much for all of the things they support.

ocschwar 7y ago
Normally I'd resent the $2.4 billion tax dodge, but given who receives the money right now, I'm okay with.
- deleted 7y ago
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- Znafon 7y ago
  I'm not sure it's a "tax dodge", he just won't pay income tax on the money he donated.
  - tomp 7y ago
    Finally someone that gets it. Feel free to complain about "tax loss" as in the government getting less money than they would otherwise, but it's definitely not a "tax dodge" - tax dodging only makes sense if you actually end up with more money than you would otherwise - i.e. you "earn" $100m but then you "dodge tax" to pay only $10m tax instead of $20m, and end up with $90m after-tax income rather than $80m. Multiple ways of doing that - the obvious one is moving your tax residence to a 0% tax haven, the less obvious one is to artificially inflate the value of an asset (e.g. a work of art) and then "donate it" and write off that from tax (e.g. buy it for $10k, donate it when it's "worth" $10m, write that off as a "loss" and pay only $10m tax instead of $20m).