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IRS records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax

• Cantinflas 5y ago
  "We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period." That's not how income tax is calculated, the whole article doesn't make any sense at all
  • andrepd 5y ago
    > That's not how income tax is calculated, Yes, and that's the problem (one of the problems).
  • blunte 5y ago
    It’s just one way to attempt to compare since wealthy people typically don’t have “income” like normal workers do. It is an imperfect approach, but it does at least give some way of comparing.
    • lazyjones 5y ago
      It would be a valid comparison if it was compared to the average person's wealth increase (e.g. the value of their house, 401k) vs. their income taxes.
      • deleted 5y ago
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      • jon-wood 5y ago
        It is.
      • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Interesting point. Yeah, my house went up last year, and so did my 401k, and I didn't pay any tax on either one. So do people have a problem with that? If not, then it's kind of hypocrisy to have a problem with it when it happens to a billionaire, but not have a problem with it when it happens to you and me...
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  TLDR: They avoid it by not realising capital gains and gaining so much wealth through capital gains rather than income. Also, if you are rich you will have less need to sell assets and can hold on to them in perpetuity. IMO: Perhaps a fairer tax system would tax these gains and in turn reduce income tax. That would put more tax on “lazily earned” money.
  • instance 5y ago
    This would increase the cost of capital and potentially reduce investments, would it not?
    • andrepd 5y ago
      Yes, because capital ownership is private. Perhaps we should rethink that?
      • fastball 5y ago
        Why?
      • chii 5y ago
        > Perhaps we should rethink that? hasn't it already been tried, and shown to fail?
        • andrepd 5y ago
          There's a universe of possibilities between unrestrained globalised hyper-financialised capitalism, and murdering people who wear glasses and making everybody work on agriculture a la Cambodia. Ideas like Georgism allow us to retain the most useful features of a market economy while taming its brutal, violent, undemocratic features. That's the premise of market socialism in general.
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    Taxing realized gains has the obvious advantage that’s there’s no question as to what the value was at the transaction. Unrealized gains have to be estimated/appraised; you get into minority ownership issues as well. (How much would you personally pay for 10% of a business where I control the other 90%? If most of my wealth is tied up in a business I’ve created, given that, how do I reasonably raise the cash to pay the tax on a gain that hasn’t been realized?) Similar questions for a house that I’ve paid off prior to retiring. It doesn’t make sense to me to have people paying imputed capital gains on some number that Zillow or a government version thereof decides is right.
• tomp 5y ago
  TL;DR: unrealised capital gains aren’t income, so they’re not subject to income tax. Also this article is 100% stupid. There’s a lot of proposals about wealth taxes, which have their problems, but apparently the author of this article expects capital owners to be taxed in income as a share of the growth of the value of their assets... should they get money back when/if the markets crash? This is a completely unrealistic proposal.
  • thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > the author of this article expects capital owners to be taxed in income as a share of the growth of the value of their assets... should they get money back when/if the markets crash? Sure, and people paying inheritance taxes should get their money back when they produce new heirs.
    • itake 5y ago
      They need to get rid of the step up basis.
  • blablabla123 5y ago
    The issue is quite complicated. I think a common denominator is to have a single tax that gets taxed once, which is pretty much how it works in Germany but I guess similarly in most OECD countries. (At the same time there are calls for a tax per transaction like the Tobin tax.) But what happens is that "traditionally" business owners buy things effectively tax-free (or at 50% less taxes) through their companies that they use at home. I think this is now even widened towards self-employed or even just more or less regular remote employees who work for a company in a different country. Practically all companies that I recently talked to that do remote in a different country would require me to found a separate company. As mentioned elsewhere, if you are in a higher income segment (to be realistic even a medium one suffices) you have access to a proportionally much wider range of tax discounts. > should they get money back when/if the markets crash? This is a completely unrealistic proposal. Still it hits a nerve. If you happen to be one of the upper 0.1% you are likely to have (not very profitable) assets like real estate that survive practically any market crash. For most people it makes no sense at all to invest in such assets unless you want to go ultra low risk and accept even loosing money over time while prevent a total loss - even without the tax. In fact in London many completely overpriced real estate objects are known to not be inhabited and bought by very wealthy people that just want to secure their money. Unfortunately this practice drives prices up even more and damages the market.
• throw737858 5y ago
  Most people can do this sort of tricks. Come and live offshore, some countries in EU have real taxation 5%-20% on income between 50k-1M/year. Absolutely legal, with all obligatory contributions like social and health insurance. There is no crime, goverment is not bullying you, and rent is 600 euro/month. You can really have a family on single income, if you want to...
  • anonymoushn 5y ago
    US people have to get a second citizenship and renounce their US citizenship before they can achieve the tax rates you mention.
    • throw737858 5y ago
      Not true, there is an exception for income under 80k/year. Over that person can operate via LLC with dividends etc. Most people renounce because it is difficult and frustrating to deal with US tax system.
      • aww_dang 5y ago
        Self employment and social security will still take 15%
  • swift532 5y ago
    Can you name a few such countries. I live in the EU, but when you have a business in my country you are always breaking some rules no matter what, and a lot is up to the discretion of the tax people.
    • throw737858 5y ago
      For self employed devs Slovenia has 80% expense flat rate, so final tax is like 10% under 100k with zero administration. Bulgaria has LLCs with 10% income tax. If you have to buy property to get residency, there is Greece, Cyprus, Portugal...
    • 5y ago
• hurril 5y ago
  Stakes in business like these can never be realised to nominal value so their present value is much lower than their nominal.
• K0balt 5y ago
  Unless you are a wage or salary earner, it is trivially easy to avoid having to pay taxes, at least in the USA. Same with the much lauded “inheritance tax” and even, to a lesser extent, sales taxes. It costs about 4000us a year to maintain the legal structures required to pay essentially no taxes, except sales taxes in some locations. In many cases, for lower levels of income, just having a small business can negate income tax burdens. Taxation always has been, and continues to be, a burden for the servile class to bear. The rich or enterprising pay taxes only when they are ill prepared or choose to, often to reduce scrutiny. The " I should pay more taxes" rhetoric from the wealthy is merely virtue signaling, it is totally legal to pay more taxes than you owe, and you can even reclaim the money later if you need to. There is nothing preventing anyone from paying the taxes that they feel that they should owe, in excess of legal requirements. By and large, sales taxes are more evenly applied, but that too is far from perfect.
  • md_ 5y ago
    I think “I should pay more taxes” is generally understood as shorthand for “all people in my financial situation should pay more taxes.” It’s a bit like saying “I should be required to have fire protection”, “I should be required to carry health insurance,” or “I should be required to use standard turn signals on the road.”
    • refurb 5y ago
      Are you saying that people who say “i should be required to have fire protection, carry health insurance or use turn signals” should be able to not do those things and not look like a hypocrit?
      • solveit 5y ago
        You're being obtuse. The point is that it's perfectly reasonable to be willing to pay more, but only if all the other rich people do too.
        • ericmay 5y ago
• Xcelerate 5y ago
  I’m not sure why this is considered some giant revelation. Anyone who owns and holds stocks that do not pay dividends is aware that you only pay capital gains taxes when you sell. Why is this a surprise? I’m not against heavily revising the tax code, but I’m not sure a wealth tax is the way to do it. I’d rather we tax the utility of money rather than the quantity (e.g., a billionaire who spends millions on cancer research will not have that money taxed, but one who spends millions on yachts and super cars will pay 90% tax). Society could then vote to determine what things should have high and low taxes.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • willj 5y ago
    Taxing a quantity is way simpler to implement, and maybe more effective, than making a huge list of items to tax, thereby creating loopholes.
    • endymi0n 5y ago
      This. > yachts and super cars will pay 90% tax Oh really? But car parts are just 20% so let‘s just cut the Veyron in half before delivery. And the yacht is better privately rented from that Serbian shell company whose business model it is to just own one boat and rent it to a single person. Rich people are smart and greedy. And if they aren‘t, so are their tax advisors. There is a massive case for simplicity in tax code, even if it does not fit perfectly. Minimum gloval tax, revenue tax, Tobin tax, high inheritance tax (with significant tax free minimums) and a land value tax would be way harder to cheat and easier to implement.
      • ericmay 5y ago
        The only one you can’t actually cheat is property tax. The government can send someone there and seize the asset. Everything else can be avoided or fought. I think what we are seeing is the beginning of the slow destruction of the nation state which was built to fight existential and total wars. The only thing higher tax rates are going to do is push wealth out of some countries and into others, unfortunately. Why doesn’t the U.S. just invade the Bahamas and stop tax avoidance? Once you realize why, you’ll realize that just taxing more won’t work. Whether we like it or not, I think the standing down of the nation state from wars in the past is going to lead to a collapse of welfare states and social programs (I don’t use these terms negatively so don’t assume I’m “against” these programs), and continued fragmentation of large national and international organizations. Some people are very happy with their nation (Norway or Switzerland or something), others aren’t (United States, China). Those who aren’t are going to move their wealth to somewhere that is advantageous to them. Even China doesn’t stop this. Wonder why housing prices are so high in Vancouver? Most people for most of history haven’t lived in anything approaching a nation state. It’s a new thing, and it is likely in my view to be temporary. It’s hard for us to see because it’s what we were born into and our perspectives are short term.
• koheripbal 5y ago
  Summary: 1. Capital Gain taxes are delayed until you actually sell the stock. 2. Corporate taxes are being reduced because companies are moving profits to foreign jurisdictions. 3. Estate taxes & income taxes are being avoided by the creation of charitable foundations. The 2nd and 3rd points are very valid, and I wish the author had spent more time on them. Unfortunately instead, the author spends much more time on point 1, conflating wealth with income, and avoiding the obvious argument that capital gains are eventually taxed - the rich are not escaping that. ...unless point 3 (foundation) occurs. And that should be the main story. Squabbling over a wealth tax is not useful. The real issue is that the super rich create these personal "foundations" that act as never-taxed income holes, and then use them as personal and political tools. In total, there's nothing very revealing about this article. It's everything we've already known. IMO, we need to curb foreign tax havens, and severely limit tax exemptions for charitable donations. A more interesting question is how did ProPublica get a copy of Jeff Bezos' tax returns. Seems like a leak at the IRS?
  • danso 5y ago
    > It's everything we've already known. > A more interesting question is how did ProPublica get a copy of Jeff Bezos' tax returns. Seems like a leak at the IRS? Yes the actual tax records are what make the story interesting, even if the data only confirms what “everyone knows” — at least there’s actual data and empirical analysis of the scope. According to this accompanying explainer, the leak is anonymous: https://www.propublica.org/article/why-we-are-publishing-the-tax-secrets-of-the-001 https://www.propublica.org/article/why-we-are-publishing-the... > A second question certain to arise is the motives and identity of the source who has provided this data to ProPublica. We live in an age in which people with access to information can copy it with the click of a mouse and transmit it in a variety of ways to news organizations. Many years ago, ProPublica and other news organizations set up secure systems that allow whistleblowers to transmit information to us without revealing their identity. > We do not know the identity of our source. We did not solicit the information they sent us. The source says they were motivated by our previous coverage of issues surrounding the IRS and tax enforcement, but we do not know for certain that is true. We have considered the possibility that information we have received could have come from a state actor hostile to American interests. In particular, a number of government agencies were compromised last year by what the U.S. has said were Russian hackers who exploited vulnerabilities in software sold by SolarWinds, a Texas-based information technology company. We do note, however, that the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration wrote in December that, “At this time, there is no evidence that any taxpayer information was exposed” in the SolarWinds hack.
• cheph 5y ago
  https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/ https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/ When summing up top earners: - Top 1% of earners paid 24.3% of total income tax. - Top 5% of earners paid 40.6% of total income tax. - Top 20% of earners paid 66.4% of total income tax. Guess their efforts are not that good.
  • Yizahi 5y ago
    Anyone looking at these numbers should remember that % of income tax number is a flat one, linear, meaning that 20% + 20% = 40% etc. But top % of earners is exponential, meaning that second percentile of earners doesn't equal first percentile, it is actually several orders of magnitude different.
  • rorykoehler 5y ago
    These figures are meaningless without also stating what % of income the top x% earned. for example if the top 1% earned 99% of all income then paying 24% of all tax doesn't look so good.
    • cheph 5y ago
      > These figures are meaningless without also stating what % of income the top x% earned. No they are not. But those numbers are also in the link, and it is more or less the same, top 1% earned 20.9% of all income.
      • rorykoehler 5y ago
        Those numbers are ridiculous if you think about them for a second. The bottom earners probably have zero excess earnings but somehow pay similar tax per dollar earned as the top 1% earners who have pretty much only excess earnings, even when not accounting for inflated lifestyle inefficiencies. That is just insane. Here is another view on the mess of income inequality in the US (with Europe for comparison): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjRkWPeU8AIeWtG?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjRkWPeU8AIeWtG?format=jpg&name=... Indefensible really. Digging your own grave.
• pembrook 5y ago
  Extremely disappointed to see Propublica (typically a place of important journalism) resort to clickbait headlines and disingenuous charts like this. Here’s the TL;DR of main reason why Bezos, Musk, etc don’t pay taxes: Unrealized capital gains. This is not some evil nefarious “tax avoidance” scheme. When you create a business, and the entire world starts wanting to buy your products, and the business becomes extremely valuable (sometimes temporarily since the market is arguably in bubble territory)...AND you don’t sell any of that ownership stake, no, you obviously don’t have to pay taxes on that theoretical increase in wealth. You haven’t sold, thus the gains aren’t even real. Tesla stock could drop by 90% next week and so would Musk’s wealth. The fact that propublica is including unrealized gains in these charts completely undermines the reputation they once had for me.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • jon-wood 5y ago
    As they point out in the article though, its possible for them to take out very substantial loans using that stock as collateral, effectively giving them a way of realising those gains without having to actually sell the stock and pay capital gains tax on it. They even get to offset the interest on those loans for what income tax they do pay.
    • pembrook 5y ago
      Then the author should have written an article focusing on the stupidity of allowing loan interest deductions, not charts of unrealized capital gains trying to conflate it with income. Doesn't matter if you take out loans against those gains, they will be taxed eventually when sold.
  • rvense 5y ago
    But these people aren't even paying income tax on their normal salaries.
    • deleted 5y ago
• ISL 5y ago
  The devil is in the details. Should one attempt to tax unrealized capital gains, what is a workable way to do so? Would there be massive credits for paper losses? How does one value illiquid shares? Minority shares of private companies? The capital-gains step-up definitely is worthy of reconsideration. It is unclear to me why an asset's basis should change simply because someone died. If heirs don't sell, they won't owe the tax, but it makes sense that they would at the time of sale. Buffett has thought long and hard about these questions -- how to address inequities in tax burdens without breaking industry. Don't miss his reply to ProPublica (cited within the article): https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20798866-buffett-statement-june-2-2021 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20798866-buffett-sta...
  • 1980phipsi 5y ago
    I'm sympathetic to your point on step up basis, even though I don't have an issue with the current US exemption on estate tax.
  • md_ 5y ago
    Some countries do not tax capital gains except on professional traders (the criterion being something like, "is it your main line of work") but do tax wealth. That seems like a model which results in a meaningful tax on the ultra-rich while avoiding the complexities you mention. (For some reason, people always say, "But wealth taxes are really hard to enforce," which is really baffling to me since the US, somewhat uniquely, already requires citizens to go through a rather arduous reporting process for foreign assets.)
    • IkmoIkmo 5y ago
      The Netherlands is an example of such a country which effectively taxes wealth, not income. Technically it does tax income, but it's an assumed fictitious income based on your net wealth that's taxed, regardless of actual investment income or the nature of your investments. There's definite pros and cons to this. The obvious pros is that it's relatively easy to administer as you don't need to record investment income or losses. You only need to measure net assets periodically, which is not easy but definitely a lot easier. It also means fewer loopholes are possible. On the other hand, those loopholes aren't set in stone, they're a human construct. Choosing to tax wealth instead of capital gains is a choice, just like the deductions and valuation rules and carryforwards and carrybacks are choices for capital gains taxes, which can be changed. But in general again here, taxing wealth is the simpler approach. The obvious cons is that it goes against basic principles of taxation that many people agree with (but seem to let go, at large amounts). The basic principle is: only if you earn money, you're supposed to share some of it to taxation to fund public goods and the less fortunate. That's why we tax added value, or profit, but not turnover. Taxing wealth means those with losses or no-income, still get taxed and lose money. In the Netherlands there've been many court cases against the state precisely because of this. People with $200k in savings, a zero-appetite for (risky) investments in stocks or bonds, are losing their own money (for which they've already paid either income tax or inheritance tax to gain) to taxes without any income. But it's more than that, even those who have large investment returns would feel it. (although here I would say, that's okay and entirely the point. Still it can be surprising to what extent). Paul Graham has written about how a small seemingly innocuous wealth tax (e.g. 1% per year) can really bite you over-time here: http://www.paulgraham.com/wtax.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wtax.html This is true essentially regardless of your average level of return, whether it's 0% or 5%. What the wealth tax does do is push you into riskier investments. If you pay 1% and have say a 1% savings account, your effective investment income tax is 100% and you slowly lose purchasing power to inflation. It almost forces you to invest in higher return, but riskier assets, like stocks. At the same time, people like me who average 20% returns per year so far, are very much undertaxed by a tiny 1% wealth tax (as there's no other capital gains tax in the Netherlands). It also very much favours leveraged investments, as it's a tax on net wealth, favouring heavy use of debt (particularly popular in Dutch real estate markets). Suppose you somehow borrow 99%, invest 1%, and average only a 1% net return on your total investments, you're still earning a 100% return which is then taxed at just 1%. It's a strange system indeed, not sure what system would be best, but wealth tax systems have some obvious flaws as well.
• heipei 5y ago
  I don't understand why so many people applaud hefty inheritance taxes, with some far-left voices demanding inheritance taxes well above 90% or even 100%. It feels to me like this is sending the signal to "use it or lose it". While everyone is talking about cutting unnecessary consumption you're effectively telling people to spend all their money on frivolous luxury items because they can't pass it on to their children anyway. As someone with children, my main motivation is living within my means and keeping the rest of my assets as a retirement/rainy-day fund, or, after my demise, to have it passed on to my children. If you tell me I can't do that I might as well just buy an expensive sports-car tomorrow...
  • Joeri 5y ago
    In our modern economic system wealth accrues more wealth. If you don’t actively redistribute the wealth, not just the income, then you end up with wildly unequal societies, in essence what we have today. Wildly unequal not just in terms of resources but also in opportunity. If you believe that equal opportunity should be a birthright of everyone then a sensible way to deliver a more equal opportunity for each new generation is to redistribute the wealth tied up in inherited estates from those with a lot of opportunity (the inheritors) to those lacking opportunity. Do you understand it better when put like that?
    • manuelaljibes 5y ago
      I don't care about society at large, I only care about my own.
      • emc3 5y ago
        And... you're a piece of shit, thanks for sharing!
        • dang 5y ago
          Obviously you can't do this here, and I've banned the account. Could you please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• antr 5y ago
  It's disappointing to see how these sort of articles mix "wealth growth" (i.e. a paper gain such as the increase in the value of your house), with income tax. How easy it is to mislead people to take a side on the rich vs poor politically-driven fight.
  • xbpx 5y ago
    Since the 80s Raegan era cuts, inequality has grown massively owing to reduction of wealth, capital gains and inheritance taxes. The end result is a much more unequal society with the attendant effects on politics, happiness and social stability. The rise of the nativist right, the skewing of Dems to educated progressive elite and the abandonment of the bottom 50%. If it is income, wealth tax, capital or some new form, the outcome has been clear. This article shows the process of rising inequality. Income tax or not.
    • antr 5y ago
      >> If it is income, wealth tax, capital or some new form, the outcome has been clear. In 1980 the US Govt collected $517 billion in taxes ($1.68 trillion in 2020 terms). In 2020 this number was $3.71 trillion. So then, the US Govt is collecting over 2.2x in taxes and inequality keeps getting worst. How can it be that with more tax revenues, people are worst off?
    • hemantv 5y ago
      And US has become global powerhouse with world technology companies on its soil due to incentives provided by government to setup new businesses. Would you prefer a world more of these tech giants were in China
• hallqv 5y ago
  As many poster already pointed out the article is absolute rubbish due to conflation of wealth gain with income. Would love to get my hands on the actual IRS data though. Any ideas?
  • hasbot 5y ago
    What would you do with it?
• _nicelaris_ 5y ago
  This article is written by a complete economic illiterate. Imagine thinking that it's a good idea to start taxing people's existing stock holdings prior to selling. These people think that Jeff Besos being worth 99 billion somehow means that he actually has 99 billion in gold coins in a swimming pool in his mansion. It's utter nonsense.
• deleted 5y ago
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• dgan 5y ago
  This article does not conflates income and wealth, stop saying that. This is NOT what it says. Thats' the whole damn point, they say that the system "tax the income" is flawed because it allows to borrow as much as your wealth allows, and live your life exactly as if you had that in income, without ever paying the income tax. I am quoting "Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell"
  • deburo 5y ago
    What about all the common folks that do the same? You don't have to be a millionnaire to benefit from this "trick". It's merely proper planning.
    • pessimizer 5y ago
      I assume you mean "common" as "not royal," not "common" as "not wealthy enough to live off their investments."
    • dgan 5y ago
      Is this even serious? "what-about" them? It seems pretty obvious that they don't have as much wealth, so the issue is less relevant. Again, that's the point of the article.. Common folks didn't see their wealth skyrocketing
      • mardifoufs 5y ago
        It depends on what your definition of common folks is. Even here in Montreal, where housing prices have been historically depressed VS the US and the rest of Canada, I know plenty of families with very modest salaries who bought 200-300k $ homes 10-20 years ago that are now worth well north of 1.5m+. Obviously a lot of people didn't get richer, but a huge proportion of the population did (at least on paper). By any definition being worth more than 1m$ is a lot of money, especially here. But it seems like the goalposts keep getting moved to the point where saying "what about the millionaires" is seen as an attack on the working class because billionaires exist. I've seen people argue that Bernie wasn't rich because he is just worth less than 2m$(!!). Sure, billionaires have a lot more wealth than your average millionaire but I'd bet even taxing them at 100% would bring so much less revenue than raising the tax rates on the "lower millionaire bourgeoisie" by a few percentage points. Yes we can do both, but it's not going to happen considering the complete focus on the mega wealthy sometimes coming from other rich people in denial.
• williesleg 5y ago
  Surprise! Well actually not.
• Proven 5y ago
  I'm happy for them, at least somebody manages to avoid taxes. Shame on Pro Publica for conducting and publicizing anti-public research, by the way. Involuntary taxation is a crime against the people.
• breck 5y ago
  1. Great scoop. It would be nice if we didn't have this issue but we have it and so this is an important dataset. 2. I like Buffett's response (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20798866-buffett-statement-june-2-2021 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20798866-buffett-sta...) 3. I don't see a model on how changing tax policy will fix anything. My stance is we need to give people Intellectual Freedom, that is, the right to reshare ideas, and repeal Intellectual Slavery laws (copyrights and patents), which are both chains on the poor and gravity for the rich. 4. That being said, it would be nice if we removed unnecessary complexity from the tax system. I have a way.
• kristjansson 5y ago
  Besides wealth growth being something totally other than income, the very wealthiest people have very concentrated holdings. They want/need the associated voting power and believe in their business. So the position that accounts for basically all their wealth growth is the one they sell as little as possible. Even besides that effect, that the dominant mechanism TFA found was ‘they don’t sell’ shows capital gains tax working as intended. Growth is reinvested to compound, which benefits everyone invested in those companies. If the state wants to capture more wealth creation should participate in more of the risk - say by automatically buying 1% (or whatever) of every IPO conditional on the rest fully subscribing, and committing to a long (say 10+ year) lock up. Not that there aren’t bugs to fix (step up basis), or opportunities for fraud (insufficient audit resources) , or loop holes. I’m sure they’ll find and publish plenty that won’t amount to much. But rich guys’ side bets netting -zero while they sell ~none of their primary holding isn’t shocking
• jfasi 5y ago
  > America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell. So if we're going to tax them in years when their wealth increases, I presume we're also going to issue tax refunds when their wealth decreases?
• boringg 5y ago
  How the f did they get the documents? That seems to be part of the story that is missing. Seems pretty sketch to me to get tax documents for all of these people.
• boringg 5y ago
  Does this author understand capital gains? It seems they are conflating unsold equity paper value vs sold. Ie that the individuals gained a lot of money on paper but haven’t sold it and this haven’t yet paid taxs. It seems very inflammatory not to mention the very shady nature of accessing illegally irs documents.
• boringg 5y ago
  This makes me very uncomfortable about giving information to the IRS in that they have clear security gaps.
• hasbot 5y ago
  Very interesting article. Reading through the comments here, it's clear a follow up article is needed to explain why Propublica's analysis is legit and accurate.
• beckman466 5y ago
  > “The release of a private citizen’s tax returns should raise real privacy concerns regardless of political affiliation or views on tax policy. In the United States no private citizen should fear the illegal release of their taxes." the capitalist system is a real hoot.
• jkhdigital 5y ago
  Stratospheric wealth inequality is much more a consequence of monetary policy than tax policy. When the apparent goal of policymakers is to prevent large sustained drops in the value of financial assets, then those who primarily own financial assets will see their wealth effortlessly increase while the majority of the population who trade labor for money will remain in place.
• WhompingWindows 5y ago
  To target ultra-wealthy individuals, I like the idea of a value-added tax (VAT). For a car for example, this would tax the steel producers, the components producers, the Ford plant, the dealership, and the consumer...but adjusting the VAT to be progressive, you can make it so the consumer doesn't bear much VAT at all, if you prefer. Would this work in financial industries? I can see it working with products that value is added into, but for financial instruments I'm not sure how that'd operate.
• bkirkby 5y ago
  why do these "how much they really pay" exposés always stop short of the full comprehension of taxes paid by these business owners? they conflate "wealth as resource allocation" (business ownership) with "wealth as consumption" (personal individual gain) to show that these people aren't paying their "fair share." in this case, propublica has the chart showing the "true tax rate" by conflating the two different kinds of wealth. shouldn't the "true tax rate" account the payroll taxes and business taxes paid by these businesses? if we are going to allocate the ownership of business as part of the wealth calculation, then shouldn't we also allocate the taxes paid by these businesses to the individuals as well?
• Havoc 5y ago
  These low % media likes kinda only tell half the story because it ignores the fact that it's largely a deferral rather than avoidance. e.g. >Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell. This isn't some evil billionaire trick. Anyone can load up Robinhood, buy some shares, not sell and they too can achieve this 0% tax paid miracle. Mostly because the 0% is a complete misrepresentation of what's happening. It's counting the gains now, and ignoring the tax you'll be paying later. And that's true for billionaire and man on the street. The difference comes down largely to the extent to which wealth drives options available. Buffett doesn't need to sell shares because his car broke down or to put food on the table at month end. i.e. Largely an inequality issue granting those with wealth way more options & control over actions and thus the resulting tax outcomes. Doesn't change the outcome - working class pays disproportionately, but that imo is a wider and more serious inequality issue. One that isn't helped by noise from "evil billionaire tax dodger" articles like these
  • ip26 5y ago
    I can't find the quote now, but I heard something before along the lines of "a tax deferred is a tax avoided" as a principal for business. I'm not the wealth class, but at the time I understood the idea was if you can kick the can down the road indefinitely through a never-ending stream of tactics, you can carry on with things & never actually pay taxes. In theory you have not escaped them... but in practice you have. Like-kind exchanges are a good example. You can defer taxes on the basis of your rental properties for your entire life (and then your children can enjoy a step up in basis)
    • Havoc 5y ago
      > "a tax deferred is a tax avoided" Once you get into more complicated tax structuring then yes you can defer it for very long. The extent to which that very long becomes indefinite depends largely on the country's tax laws. Some are more open to the concept of handing down wealth through the generations than others. Deferral opportunities are available to more normal people too. As per your rental example. Or self managed pensions in some countries etc. Or tax wrappers for stocks. Either people don't know enough or they've get their hands forced by paycheque to paycheque realities. The only stuff really out of reach for normal people is genuine offshore stuff. The overheads on that are quite chunky so you need millions for it to make sense.
• bestcoder69 5y ago
  Bezos claiming the child tax credit is gold. Bernie got finger-wagged in the primaries for wanting universal benefits, because others said the rich shouldn’t be able to take advantage of them too. Well, guess what, CTC is a means-tested program - millions of families have to go through BS paperwork to prove they’re deserving of it - and the richest man on earth is somehow able to claim it too! Hilarious.
• deleted 5y ago
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• temp10298385 5y ago
  Seems that the most common retort in this thread is to hammer down on the principle that unrealised gains should not be taxed. This is directly addressed in the article. Unrealised gains can still work as collateral for loans. The spending habits appear as if your unrealised gains were bonafide income. At what point does the distinction between wealth and income become arbitrary? There seems to be a large amount of "missing the point" in this thread. As a wage labourer my wealth growth is significantly hampered by taxation. For the small group of people with net worth tied up in financial assets, taxation doesn't slow their growth in any meaningful capacity. If we ignore any ideological predispositions and instead simply ask what limit this system is approaching I think the answer seems terrifying. A common sentiment here is that inequality is not a problem in and of itself. "How does Bezos wealth possibly impact me?". Having seen the difference in equality in Scandinavia, USA, and South Africa I would beg to differ. Inequality eats at a society at all levels. The rich I met in America seemed less happy than the poor in Sweden. In South Africa even more so.
  • somethingAlex 5y ago
    Could you explain what you mean by inequality eats at society at all levels? Obviously if inequality gets to a certain point, where you don't have a solid middle class anymore - that's problematic. I'm just curious about your stance because I too feel like Jeff being rich doesn't really make my life any worse.
    • temp10298385 5y ago
      It erodes social cohesion. When I went to elementary school in Sweden I shared a classroom with both a child that came to our country has a refugee and another whose parent sat in parliament. Different social classes intermingled frequently. While there are clear class divisions in Sweden, the distances are not so great. There is a sense of security that comes with a more equal society that I think can't be replicated by any other means. I think that once you've lived in a fairly equal society, though Scandinavia does have its shortcomings, it is hard to excuse inequality. How does Bezos harm you? I don't want to put the blame squarely on his shoulders but I would like to point out an apparent dynamic. When a class of people are decoupled from the issues the majority faces the outcome is resentment. Recordbreaking growth for billionaires while many are suffering their most trying year to date is creating tension. There is definitely a narrative that can explain why Bezos fortune is rightfully his down to the last cent and why he is a net positive in this world. And it wouldn't necessarily be incorrect. However you can't avoid the fact that his wealth is manifasted as unaccountable power. A society plagued by unaccountable power, which is what I believe that inequality ultimately is, is not healthy.
• larrydag 5y ago
  So let me understand that ProPublica is calling a "true tax rate" as the rate they paid income taxes divided by the value of wealth? For instance I'm having a hard time reconciling this paragraph. "In that year, Bezos, who filed his taxes jointly with his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, reported a paltry (for him) $46 million in income, ..." That year reported $46MM in taxes yet the article keeps claiming the Bezos earned billions a year. I believe the article is conflating reported taxable income and wealth. The US tax system is based on taxable income and wealth is a totally different asset. I suppose the article writer is proving the difference in rate of taxable income vs wealth but that same comparison needs to be done in all other income brackets as well. Perhaps I'm missing it but I'm not seeing the "true tax rate" across different household income profiles.
• metabagel 5y ago
  This is why the top income tax bracket should be taxed at the rate of 70% or thereabouts. Also, increasing the corporate tax rate would capture some of the gains which currently go to increases in stock valuation. Basically, bring back the pre-1980s tax regime.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    You cannot rely on strictly taxing income if capital gains and asset inflation are free rides.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rybosworld 5y ago
  Wealth hoarding is a source of lost productivity. I don't care how you slice it. And this is not inherently a bad thing. People are entitled to save. That is until the amount that's being hoarded is disproportionately large. It's difficult to come up with an agreeably fair solution. But with decades of inaction, the problem is only growing. It's to the point where an objectively bad solution might be better than the continued inaction.
• Scandiravian 5y ago
  My knowledge of the American tax system is limited to "I know it exists", so I hope someone can enlighten me on this: If it's possible to use your investments as collateral for a loan, is there anything stopping you from reinvesting that into the stock market which (if your investment is large enough) will push up stock prices? This would increase the value of your position and allow you to take out additional loans, rinse repeat I'm not suggesting "targeted" market manipulation or even malicious intent, but with enough wealth accumulated by a small group, it seems that as long as everyone has diversified their investments broadly, everytime someone invests with borrowed money it enables someone else to do the same Am I missing something here? Edit: the relation to the American tax system wasn't clear in the original post. My thinking is that this could create a unsustainable loop, where tax-free wealth increases are created by a circle of debt accumulation
  • kristjansson 5y ago
    > reinvesting that into the stock market Yes! Certain classes of loans against securities (e.g. pledged asset line[0]) cannot be used to buy more securities. Margin loans, on the other hand, can be reinvested to add leverage, but come with higher interest, more regulations, limits on borrowing relative to equity, etc. Of course, like many things, the Very Rich can get around some of those limits viz. Bill Hwang doing (apparently) very much what you describe. [0]: https://www.schwab.com/pledged-asset-line https://www.schwab.com/pledged-asset-line
• nemo44x 5y ago
  The trick is to have enough assets so that you don't have to sell them for money. You get a loan against your assets (which in today's climate very likely has a smaller interest rate than you'll see in appreciation of your assets) to live off of, which is tax free. You pay that loan back over 10 years and each year you sell a small portion of assets to limit your tax and/or you take out other loans to help pay for previous ones. Imagine you have $2,000,000 in liquid assets that appreciate around 6% annually on average. You borrow $100k at 3.5% over 10 years. In year one you'll pay back ~$13,500. So you sell %13,500 in assets which won't even be taxed. In year 2 you borrow another 100k and sell some assets that lost value during this time using tax loss harvesting and/or you borrow even more money to help pay back interest and principal on older loans. You can continue this indefinitely as your compounding assets are returning much more than your loan interest. In essence, with enough in assets you can easily create a perpetual income machine that has no or little in terms of taxable income. With clever accounting, tax loss harvesting, and smart deductions/credits you can avoid paying taxes more or less through debt-as-income.
• greyhair 5y ago
  And Republican Senators have declared opposition to a world wide 15% minimum corporate tax.
• goinfar 5y ago
  Even more striking would be to compare wealth growth of average wage earners vs. lifetime politicians.
• hemantv 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Give me extra motivation to learn about these and do better plans for future. As much as people want to cry about it, nothing will change on ground. Too much money at stakes. Also people forget these were incentives for people to start companies, because of this US is leader in global technology. China will really appreciated if you guys take away these incentive so they have most enterprise people which in turn make them Global leader in technology.
• boringg 5y ago
  Anyone else notice the hit list of wealthy individuals is all democrat supporting (maybe except Elon). These feels like a political hit job wrapped in a moral righteousness trying to shake the foundations of America. I really can't believe ProPublica published this - the security aspect is deeply concerning. FWIW I don't believe the tax system is working properly etc but theres some real fallout from IRS leaks/state level security breaches at this level. How can you possibly feel safe supplying the IRS with your personal information if it was all leaked to the internet. Very unsettling.
  • jl2718 5y ago
    > anybody notice ... ? YYYYYeeeeeepppppp..... That feeling of uncomfortable self-awareness that came over you after writing that first sentence... keep going.
• wonder_er 5y ago
  Feels like the real interesting figure is that average americans seem to have ALL OF THEIR INCOME GROWTH taxed away: > It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  I've asked this before but never got a proper answer. What difference would it make if the rich paid more tax? If the top 10% of richest people had to pay twice as much tax, they'd still be the top 10% richest people, they'd just have fewer zeros in their bank accounts. But there would still be the same number of yachts and Rolls Royces to go around, so the price of those would just come down. But still only the top 10% could afford them. Similarly, if the bottom 10% of people now have more zeros because they pay less tax, there would still be the same amount of food and low-end luxury goods to go around, so the price of those would go up.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Add the time element. Think of a bunch of bowls, with a flow coming in the top, and a drain or spillway. The rates of filling and draining matter. Most especially if the rate of draining is dependent on the quantity of water in the bowl. If drain rate increases with volume, the size of bowls tends to remain reasonably equal with time. If the drain rate decreases with volume, large bowls get ever larger. The present tax scheme in the US (and in many other locations) is the second model. Large bowls get larger.
    • globular-toast 5y ago
      I didn't ask for an "ELI5" style explanation, but thanks anyway. I still don't see why it matters. So the rich get richer. But it's just more zeros. What practical difference does it make?
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        At a given point with enough draining, the rich stop getting richer. You've made a mistaken assumption.
• adolph 5y ago
  Theory: there is an equilibrium between cost of tax and cost of tax avoidance. Some of the tax avoidance costs are amortized over a broader time period than any particular tax and this requires the provision of specialist knowledge and skills. Once a tax avoidance service provider is engaged there is an incentive for the provider to go after remaining tax even if the avoidance to tax cost ratio is not as favorable as the base reason to engage the provider. The result of this is that once the avoidance to tax threshold is passed there is an larger affect on tax payments than the arithmetic amount of tax over the initial threshold.
• jppope 5y ago
  As a tangental point, I would like to point out that the United States has ~5 trillion in tax revenue annually. From which we spend the most per capita in categories such as education, and healthcare. We are continually rated worst in the developed world in those categories per dollar spent. We don't really need any more tax revenue. There can be an argument for redistributing the tax burden, but it's really a secondary argument to the poor value of our money once it hits the public sector.
  • mrkurt 5y ago
    We don't spend more per capita on education and healthcare _from federal tax money_. These costs are mostly born by wage workers paying either property taxes (again, taxing their primary means of wealth generation) or paying through their employer for health care.
• socialist_coder 5y ago
  I don't get the stuff about borrowing. I think I'm missing something. It seems too easy: you borrow money against your assets and then use the borrowed money to finance your life, and then pay down the loan with pre-tax money? Is it really that simple to avoid paying taxes? How do they pay down the loan with pre-tax money?
  • NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    They pay down the loan (which will have some hilariously low interest rate because they're good for it) with income, and then - to rub salt in the wound - they get to write off the interest paid on their income taxes. These guys do have substantial incomes, but through "charitable donations" (to charities they control) and interest paid, they often pay little or no income tax on it.
• Black101 5y ago
  wow, only one top-level comment on the first page of comments... Maybe HN should load all comments minimized by default, and only load them when you expend them.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    You can send suggestions to hn@ycombinator.com I'm aware that there are several enhancements to comments display and especially large-thread display, in the works. Yesterday's load-induced outages were probably related to this. More graceful presentation of large threads is something HN could improve. It's a hard-ish problem, though there've been some elegant solutions elsewhere. Kuro5hin progressively auto-collapsed threads as size increased. K5 itself is dead, though the Scoop CMS it ran on still has a site up and the behaviour can be seen here: http://www.scoopdev.org/main http://www.scoopdev.org/main (Go to a discussion, toggle the display mode between Threaded, Nested, Minimal, Flat, Flat Unthreaded, at the bottom of the page, JS required.) On Reddit, the default UI accepts a "?depth=<count>" argument, which can make large threads more readable. Reddit Enhancement Suite has a "hide all child comments" feature. (I've forwarded your suggestion BTW.)
    • sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Seconded about loading all the comments. Or at least change the color of the “more” instead of “reply”, so that you can quickly see from toplevel where the additional comments are. But it’s a tricky problem.
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  A better way to structure the article would be: - explain how much tax evasion took place - explain how the tax evasion happens - who is doing it - what to do next. Only then, compare the situation to the average person. Everyone knows how much they pay in taxes themselves. This video does a better job at explaining the tax loophole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pBPZMUcsh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pBPZMUcsh0
• rexreed 5y ago
  I also don't understand how wealth and income can be conflated like this. We have an income tax, so, no duh, we tax income, not wealth. Criticizing the income tax because it doesn't tax wealth is like criticizing sales tax because it doesn't tax property values. They aren't the same. I don't get how ProPublica can take such a stance. Either it's intentional, which is bad, or it's unintentional, which is even worse?
• throwawayffffas 5y ago
  The thing that ticks me of most about this article is that the invented "True tax rate" obscures the fact that Michael Bloomberg had an effective income tax of 2% in the period they are talking about. My point being the selected group of people is already paying effective income taxes at rates lower than a lot of people you don't need to make shit up to show the system is busted.
• jl2718 5y ago
  Hmm.. I wonder why we have problems. Well, maybe it's because we're taking half the money and giving it to the billionaire class. And no, your new tax idea won't work. If you plan to take anything from anybody, you're going to have to use force or threats of violence. This only works against the powerless, not the powerful. That's tautological. I don't care what your 'solution' is. However, there are plenty of organizations that easily raise money without coercion. They are called businesses. They do this by selling stock and borrowing cash. The government also does this. They print dollars and sell bonds. No difference![1] This is not theoretical anymore. T-bill issuance has been sailing along at nearly $2T per month for the last year.[2] That's 100% of tax revenue in two months. And yet, CPI is hardly affected. No, it can't go on forever, spending must be controlled, but tax revenue is actually irrelevant. Inflation occurs when supply exceeds demand. Demand for dollars comes from economic growth and investment. Eliminate the tax burden and dollar demand will soar. The only difference is that we will no longer be subsidizing the untaxed foreign and domestic users of the dollar economy. So just stop collecting it. It's obsolete. Stop forcing productive people to fund the ultra-rich, and let the wealth naturally accumulate to those doing the work. No 'trickle-down' economic theory needed if you don't force everybody to carry it to the top in the first place. [1] for a tighter analogy, consider Eth as legal tender for smart contracts [2] https://www.sifma.org/resources/research/us-treasury-securities-statistics/ https://www.sifma.org/resources/research/us-treasury-securit...
  • pineaux 5y ago
    This is a blind spot for Americans, but the main reason you can print so much money without a penalty, is because foreign entities that hold dollars as a reserve currency, have a vested interest in keeping the dollar stable.[1] They buy up dollars to increase their reserves and keep the dollar inflation low. America can do this because they can protect their world reserve currency status by show of force. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex-currencies/092316/how-us-dollar-became-worlds-reserve-currency.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex-currencies/09231... [2] https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/when-currency-empires-fall/ https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/when-curr...
• nullc 5y ago
  Comparison to forbes numbers is super duper spurious, a move that is only justified by the fact that it generates shocking headlines. The article fails to substantiate its main thesis-- that the taxes on cap gains aren't eventually paid.
• cletus 5y ago
  There's lot of detail here. I wasn't really surprised at anything. Of course this is going to be a game of whack-a-mole but arguing they'll just avoid it in the end is no reason not to try. I'd focus on three areas to begin with: 1. Property taxes. They're simply too low on ultra high end property. A $100m condo in Manhattan only pays about 10-14x the property tax that a $1m condo does. Additionally, property taxes should be significantly higher if the property is owned by a corporation/LLC; 2. Debt. In the era of zero interest rates, the ultra-rich borrow money at near zero cost rather than repatriate money they would then have to pay taxes on. The worst case here is that they're deferring taxes indefinitely. This should apply to companies too. 3. Withholding taxes. Pretty much any asset sale not associated with an SSN should have taxes withheld at source by the holding institution. We have some of this already. We need more of it. One final point about dividends. This system actually needs to be reformed and it's bizarre to me how easy this is and that no one in America seems to see it. Currently, if a company makes a profit they pay corporate taxes on that profit. If they then pay a dividend it counts as income and that person then pays taxes on it again. This particularly hurts smaller businesses and was a big motivation for the complicated passthrough rules introduced in the Trump tax "cuts". In Australia, we have a system of franking credits. IIRC the corporate tax rate is 30%. If a company makes a profit of $10,000 they pay $3,000 in taxes. The company then decides to distribute those profits to shareholders as a dividend. So if you own 10% of that company you receive $700 as a dividend. But you also get a tax credit of $300 (being 10% of the $3,000). That means that when you do your annual personal return, if your marginal tax rate is <30% you'll get a partial refund. If it's >30% you'll need to pay a little more. These are called "franking credits" and in this example the dividend is "fully franked". There are partially franked and unfranked dividends but they are uncommon. This completely solves the double taxation of dividends problems and I don't understand why we're doing crap like passthrough entity allowances to work around it.
• drobert 5y ago
  In the video attached to the article they mention the rich loan money and live off that. They don't explain how they are paying that loan. https://youtu.be/8pBPZMUcsh0 https://youtu.be/8pBPZMUcsh0 I felt the article was not very inspiring since it emphasised the tax the rich pay in relation to their wealth not their income. Which is irrelevant. Of course they are not going to spend all their wealth and pay tax on it.
  • NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    >I felt the article was not very inspiring since it emphasised the tax the rich pay in relation to their wealth not their income. Which is irrelevant. Of course they are not going to spend all their wealth and pay tax on it. They didn't though. They show how much they paid as a fraction of their increase in wealth over that period. The real tax isn't calculated against total wealth wealth, but the increase in wealth over a fixed period.
• relaunched 5y ago
  I not an advocate of a wealth tax, but there was something brought up in the article that is very interesting and requires more discussion. If you own a billion dollar in stock and you want to spend $8 million this year, let's assume long term capital gains and a cost basis of 0. You sell $10 million worth of shares and are taxed 20% federally, costing you $2 million in taxes. Giving you $8 million to spend. Or You get a credit line $8 million, against your stock, without selling it, at a 3% interest rate. I draw down the line of credit and pay $240k per year to the bank. Before the new mortgage interest deduction was capped, you could get a credit line against your house and deduct the interest, thereby potentially only paying a portion of the $240k, because you'd get about 1/3 back in deductions; let's say $160k. When tax professionals see that you could pay $2 million in taxes this year or $160k in interest per year, it becomes a no-brainer. It seems like the answer is to close that different or live with the loophole.
• ericjang 5y ago
  I'm curious how many people take advantage of the "borrow money against equity to finance lifestyle" approach. At what net worth / amount of equity does this strategy start to make sense? 100k? 500k? 10M? I've heard that wealth managers offer very competitive (sometimes zero interest!) rates because what they are getting in return is your social / professional network's business.
• nevinera 5y ago
  There's an angle I'm not really seeing talked about - any wealth vehicle that allows the wealthy to defer their tax burden to a substantially later point in time creates massive incentive for those individuals to push for reduced taxation on that vehicle in the long-haul. It's one thing to want reduced taxes because it'll save you 8% on your %6M income each year, but another to want reduced taxes because it'll save you 8% on 30 years of deferred taxes.
• Shorel 5y ago
  Being into scientology.
• bronzeage 5y ago
  It all comes down to the fact that the rich don't sell their assets - and that comes down to the fact that stocks keep getting rescued again and again by the Fed. If the rich keep getting bailed out every single time and don't feel they have an incentive to sell (because stocks only go up), you'll never get to tax the rich on their assets. That's why the ultra rich keep pushing to postpone the natural economic cycles - because they don't want to sell.
• rowland66 5y ago
  How about adjusting the tax rate that is paid on income based on wealth? This would absolutely complicate the tax code for wealthy individuals, but it would certainly increase the tax paid by the wealthy on the income that they do have.
• disabled 5y ago
  The Financial Times just put out an article on the front page on FT.com stating that the USA is going to investigate the leak of the records. Michael Bloomberg is angry, and he says that he is going to use "every resource possible" (loosely quoted) to figure out who leaked this information.
• eperez123 5y ago
  The best part of this: "Musk responded to an initial query with a lone punctuation mark: “?”"
• dennis_jeeves 5y ago
  Here we go again. My lord, what a blood thirsty crowd here, baying for the blood of the rich.
• kaminar 5y ago
  The article is such click bait and so disingenuous...disgusting how they infer something is amiss, and that we should be alarmed. The info could easily have been presented in a much more authentic and positive light. The author is obviously an ahole.
• pachun 5y ago
  More on this if you have a WSJ subscription: https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-is-investigating-release-of-tax-information-of-wealthy-americans-11623179470 https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-is-investigating-release-of...
• lumberingjack 5y ago
  Every generation there's a story like this you live long enough and you just roll your eyes when you see the same issues crop up like every 20 years but nothing ever happens
• CryptoPunk 5y ago
  The income tax is a massive violation of privacy rights. You are forced, under pain of imprisonment to disclose this intimate information, only for it to be leaked to journalists who disclose it.
• zaptheimpaler 5y ago
  I think the understanding of wealth as a huge number doesn't make a lot of sense. Basically they have enough money to buy whatever they want (which seems fair enough given their contributions) , and if/when they do they will be taxed on it. If not spent, it's just a number going up, and it doesn't take anything away from anyone else. Even the dynastic power argument is not so strong. Bezos power comes from running a hugely important company, not money. As public companies, his children won't inherit Amazon and its power, the people who worked hard alongside him will. There's plenty of multimillionaires with no power. Money can't buy that level of power. The companies themselves should not be allowed to dodge taxes. But the focus on their personal wealth is driven by envy IMO.
• amai 5y ago
  Relevant video: Davos 2019: Historian Rutger Bregman berates billionaires over tax avoidance: https://youtu.be/r5LtFnmPruU https://youtu.be/r5LtFnmPruU
• amai 5y ago
  Why not simply tax loans and debts ? Then nobody can avoid tax simply by taking big loans.