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Bezos and other rich people are sitting billions of unrealized gains. 1. Bezos gets lucky and turns $100 of founder shares into $100 billion of unrealized gain

by m_ke 5y ago

Bezos and other rich people are sitting billions of unrealized gains. 1. Bezos gets lucky and turns $100 of founder shares into $100 billion of unrealized gains. 2. Bezos goes to the bank and gets a loan for $500 million to invest in a diverse portfolio of early stage startups knowing that only a tiny fraction of them will account for majority of his returns. 3. Every year a portion of his portfolio fails, allowing him to sell a portion of his original shares to offset the losses and show a net gain of 0, allowing him to pay no taxes. 4. He hits a Google or Uber and 10xes the original $500mil but gets to continue this scheme of not realizing the gains unless he has losses to match while his control of the universe continues to expand. https://startupflux.com/jeff-bezos-investment-portfolio-owns-lot-amazon-subsidiaries/ https://startupflux.com/jeff-bezos-investment-portfolio-owns... "Jeff Bezos Investment Portfolio is very large and diverse. he owns a stake in several Very Very large companies that you’ll be surprised to hear. Bezos was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998. That $250,000 investment resulted in 3.3 million shares of Google stock worth about $3.1 billion today."

Chris2048 5y ago
> his control of the universe continues to expand presumably because he's disproportionately funding "the universe"? All that money on failing start-ups probably lose him more than whatever the stock-disposal tax rate is. What isn't going to the government is directly seeding the economy. The 10x payoff is taxed. You seem to assume that would still have happened anyway - who would have funded it? Bezos investing in a portfolio created that wealth. Assume he breaks even: He had to burn through 10$X in order to have $X shares in that 10x company. The tax he would* have paid if not offset against losses, is the same he pays on the unicorn. i.e He gets credited tax on the 10$X, but pays tax on $(10X).
bawolff 5y ago
And that's a bad thing? AFAICT, the main objection is he has an obscene amount of money (which fair enough, he does). I'm not sure what your objection to this scheme is in general. Would you still object if a small business owner did the same thing (which I'm pretty sure is common, just not with startups)?
- ksec 5y ago
  He is not objecting it.

by m_ke 5y ago

Chris2048 5y ago

> his control of the universe continues to expand presumably because he's disproportionately funding "the universe"? All that money on failing start-ups probably lose him more than whatever the stock-disposal tax rate is. What isn't going to the government is directly seeding the economy. The 10x payoff is taxed. You seem to assume that would still have happened anyway - who would have funded it? Bezos investing in a portfolio created that wealth. Assume he breaks even: He had to burn through 10$X in order to have $X shares in that 10x company. The tax he would* have paid if not offset against losses, is the same he pays on the unicorn. i.e He gets credited tax on the 10$X, but pays tax on $(10X).

bawolff 5y ago

And that's a bad thing? AFAICT, the main objection is he has an obscene amount of money (which fair enough, he does). I'm not sure what your objection to this scheme is in general. Would you still object if a small business owner did the same thing (which I'm pretty sure is common, just not with startups)?

ksec 5y ago
He is not objecting it.