During the supposed golden-age of high income taxes, rich people found many ways around it. For starters non-income compensation was astronomical (company car,

During the supposed golden-age of high income taxes, rich people found many ways around it. For starters non-income compensation was astronomical (company car, company house, company domestic help, company lunches and dinners, company clubs, company-paid memberships, company outings / vacations) which were replaced with normal monetary compensation when the outrageously high taxes ended. I'm not sure everyone here understands exactly what I'm saying. If you can sometime, talk to a tax accountant / estate planner who specializes in tax minimization. If you are a W2 employee with some equity compensation, none of this applies to you. But if you were worth Nx millions of dollars there is a lot that can be done fairly easily.