>The thing is, who freaking cares. He can literally go to his grave without paying taxes. That shouldn't happen. So yes, you can borrow to pay taxes. And you c

>The thing is, who freaking cares. He can literally go to his grave without paying taxes. That shouldn't happen. So yes, you can borrow to pay taxes. And you can borrow to defer taxes. But that is limited by how many assets you have. Households across the country do something similar when they borrow to buy a house -- they do not pay taxes on the mortgage loan as if it was income. And, unlike Bezos, the mortgage interest paid by households is often tax deductible. But Bezos' loan does not deprive the government of taxes, because the rate on government borrowing is always going to be lower than the rate charged to Bezos. So if Bezos defers by 10 years, with the debts accruing at some rate r, then the government makes up for that by deficit spending with its debt accruing at a lower rate. Thus when these are settled, the government will make a profit. > Why are you even defending him? Your position is morally untenable. I guess the first mistake here is to try to view public policy from a "moral" perspective first and "not caring" about the details of what is actually happening. The second mistake is automatically decide who is good or evil based on some atavistic criteria and deciding the details don't matter if you are sufficiently outraged. Because at that point you've already lost. I suggest it's better to actually care and run the math before deciding whether something is good or bad for the Treasury. And questions about what is good or bad for the Treasury should be the ones you ask when determining tax policy, not whether you are really angry at a public figure or not. Bezos' motivation is not to pay fewer taxes across his lifetime, because he doesn't. It's that the interest rate he is charged is less than the rate of return on his stock. This has absolutely nothing to do with tax avoidance but exploiting spreads.