You’re absolutely right - it’s this sort of dumb shit that honestly makes it more difficult for progressive directives to be passed. You sit there and lie to people about how taxes work for long enough, then someone shows them the truth in black and white and you’ve done nothing but discredit the good things you were trying to do.
The headline is a prime example: billionaires absolutely do not pay less taxes than me, and I paid more taxes last year than most people make. What is true is that often their effective tax rates are lower due to the structure of income realized, but that’s nowhere near the same as “paid less in taxes”.
It’s this sort of overt refusal to use accuracy in politics that continues to both dumb down the discourse and provide ample ammunition over and over again to those who wish to discredit these discussions.
The US has one of the most progressive tax systems of any developed nation - that is a mathematical fact, both in structure and in realized percentage of taxes paid by income earners. What’s also true is the US has the lowest taxes of any developed nation by a huge margin. This isn’t a hard discussion to have - however without fail you get headlines like the above, which is why your average Redditor is so aggressively misinformed.
Sure, but that’s not what they’re getting at here, they’re just openly lying about how the tax code works and actual burdens of tax paid to push a point.
You could sit there and make a strong logical fact based argument that at some given threshold capital gains taxation should be at ordinary income rates. That’s honestly not hard to do at all.
But rather than do that, here they’re just fabricating a reality and frankly openly lying (as in the headline is an objectively false statement) to try to accomplish the same thing.
I’ll never understand why people think this would be a useful tactic in journalism, but Reddit gobbles this shit up cuz the audience is exactly the type of person the author thinks they are lol.
Oh I know, I don’t disagree. It drives me crazy when people harp on stock loans when that’s not the issue. People do the same thing with home equity loans all the time to avoid liquidating assets.
The issue is that people who are high earners that are salaried are getting taxed more than twice the amount of capital gains. Stock buybacks and low corporate taxes exasperate the problem.
If equity had normal taxation (or even increased for certain brackets), corporate taxes weren’t decreased, tax advantaged accounts weren’t valid/available to UNHW individuals and buybacks were banned/limited, things would feel a lot more “fair”.
While it might feel more fair, it would raise costs for the middle class, slow growth (meaning overall government revenue), and slow wage increases.
The underlying problem is education: A population that doesn't understand the subject can be easily lied to by articles like this to gin up outrage for clicks.
in my opinion, equity should have preferential treatment to enable people to own stuff
a wealth cap or superprogressive wealth tax could be implemented by some inflation adjusted number if you ask me, but not more than that
however, there should be heavy taxes levied on people that inherit stuff, with the possibility to pay said taxes in installments for a couple of years in case of an inherited business etc.
here, an inheritance cap, meaning again progressive taxes from a specific number adjusted for inflation, should also be implemented
it's simply not fair to inherit stuff, but it is fair if you got the stuff yourself
this all does not change in principle unless people stop dying.
> The headline is a prime example: billionaires absolutely do not pay less taxes than me, and I paid more taxes last year than most people make
There are lots of ways we can look at taxes, but since taxes are paid as a percentage of assets, income, etc, it makes the most sense to first discuss tax burden as a percentage of assets, income, etc. The headline is completely accurate.
Your complaints about accuracy are ironically rooted in misinformation campaigns run by parties trying to confuse the tax discussion, not clarifying it.
>All social groups pay broadly the same effective tax rate today—around 25 percent to 30 percent of income, including all taxes—with billionaires having the lowest tax rate: 24 percent on average in 2018–20.
>More broadly, if one looks at the 400 wealthiest Americans, recent research shows that billionaires tend to have low individual income tax rates.
>Bezos’s total effective tax rate was just 15 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, the average person in the US pays around 30 percent of their income in taxes.
Taxation is based on rates, so any statement on taxes should assume to be based on rates, unless specifically called out.
Edit: Removed polite language that made my comments unclear. Your objections are rooted in a misunderstanding of taxation.
I don’t really know what to tell you, my statements were very simple and straightforward, if you’re having trouble understanding them then asking for clarification might be a better move than being argumentative and constantly switching gears?
The headline is a claim of absolute figures, it is an openly false claim. I can’t really make that any more straightforward. I’m sorry, but I don’t find taxes to be a difficult topic, so I’m not sure how else to convey this, and frankly I’m not sure that it’s worth the effort given that you’re choosing to manifest your confusion in the form of arguing rather than trying to learn something.
I feel like you and u/tyn_peddler are broadly reaching the same conclusion and making the same argument, but are, or have taken different avenues to arrive there.
I take your point that the sensationalist headline is clickbait and does not fully respect the reader’s intelligence because the notion that anyone who we know has paid more sales tax, property tax etc. than the 400 wealthiest Americans is circumspect at best; however, I think OP also makes a salient point thattax rates, thus, percentages and the proportion of one’s wealth—be it from capital or income— are implied when discussing taxes whole cloth.
Almost all of these kind of articles use Net Worth increases and income interchangeably. For the majority of Americans, who has practically zero dollar net worth, the weekly or bi-weekly wage is all they know. They cannot comprehend how a company founder creating billions of value that isn’t part of a paycheck. I hear more and more people demanding “the rich” make less money, implying somehow more money could flow down to them, to make it fair. Tax the rich is a much more complicated issue to explain, so just saying the 1% is paying the majority of taxes already won’t help.
Tbh, when talking about value creation, a companies stock value is tied much more to market forces like momentum, government fiscal policy, and central bank monetary manipulation.
The ceo of Micron isnt doing anything extra to creat value for the shareholders.
Micron is caught up in global ai hysteria.
Theres nothing wrong with finding a way to tax all of that extra liquidity flooding the system in order to help bring down the deficit.
Sure but if shareholders sell those shares we already tax them. So we’re already making lots of money from the buying and selling, as well as on corporate taxes (and on any dividends)
If you start just taxing companies because people are willing to pay some forward p/e what do you think the second order effects are? Why would companies list in the US vs somewhere with more favorable tax treatment?
You seem to be worried about the deficit - that’s because we spend more than we take in. but you don’t also seem to be realizing that we generate record revenues. Individual states have tax receipts larger than developed nations.
If you raise taxes or cause companies or innovators to leave, you might be permanently impairing your tax base (which is the exact critique of the California wealth tax which has seen lots of its wealth simply leave).
This isn’t a new issue either - for European nations that have tried onerous wealth taxes the same thing has happened. Unsurprisingly capital responds to incentives - and you can easily erode your tax base more than you raise
They already have offices outside of the US, what makes you think they won’t restructure to minimize US taxes?
That was the whole thing with the double Irish Dutch sandwich IP shenanigans from a decade ago, arguably most of irelands tech economy was due to tax arbitrage (which in Trump 1 if you remember we had large changes in the tax code to reshore lots of the capital that was parked overseas)
We have explicit proof given they’ve historically optimized their businesses around taxes, why would they suddenly not change?
The number one thing that goes unappreciated by the masses is that most of the wealth is not and never was their income. It’s capital gains on the value of assets, which have deferred taxation and then preferential low tax rates when they do get taxed. And compounding returns are an exponential function so deferred taxation on asset values that have historically vastly outperformed inflation is a huge cheat code that has, predictably, resulted in acute wealth concentration and inequality.
When given. But their wealth is, by a huge margin, a product of the increase in the value of those shares since.
Say Bezos got 100 shares back in 1998 for $0.1 each, so he got $10 as income. Those shares are now $270 each and have split 4 times - 400x270=108k. $10 of his $108000 wealth was ever income.
Yeah and we're talking about income taxes and income in general not gains in capital valuations. Two entirely different things.
That's more of a lesson on invest early and hold for long term instead of doing what most people do when they get equity grants which is selling it like a dumbass.
I know a guy who worked at the Tesla plant a year after they started in Cali. If he never sold his RSUs he'd be able to retire now, but he sold them to pay for vacations.
My general solution would to be to force people by law to buy equities and force them to hold them for a decade +, that andprobably transition portions of social security to superannuation
>Yeah and we're talking about income taxes and income in general not gains in capital valuations.
You were talking, as you quoted verbatim, about wealth, and where it comes from. Most, by which I mean all but an irrelevant portion, of a billionaire's wealth was never income.
You're doing the same thing the people you are arguing with up and down this thread do regularly when they post those stupid memes about how long someone would have to work to earn some billionaire's net worth, as if wealth is somehow the sum total of income (worse yet is when they think their wealth is somehow skimmed off their employees' labour). You know as well as I do that wealth is just what other people think what you own is worth, it has nothing to do with income whatsoever.
>You were talking, as you quoted verbatim, about wealth, and where it comes from.
Nope I was simply pointing out everything they have was initially hit with income taxes at some point, and then later when they sold they also had to pay capital gains on top of that. So multiple tax payments and that's not even talking about tax incidence of corporate taxes.
I was simply calling out the bullshit of conflating income taxes and capital gains taxes and the populist removal of context in regards to capital gains taxes.
We never talked about if the majority of that wealth was subject to some percentage of taxation. Which that depends on the individual, if they where an utter moron and sold shares instead of holding them yeah they'd have had a higher tax as a percentage of their total worth....but then they'd be dickless, imagine not believing in the company you founded and trying to diversify instead of going full portfolio, I wouldn't invest in such a founder.
Sure we should raise taxes via new brackets, I'd be okay with more progressive brackets in capital gains if we eliminated corporate taxes and replaced them with new cap gains and income brackets + the x tax
Saez, Zucman and Piketty have absolutely perfect data, but they get the trends right. I guess most of their estimates are somewhat over- or underestimated. But the argument that the tax code is progressive is wrong when it comes to the super-rich. They pay super low effective tax rates
But their data does show that? It shows zuckerberg paying an effective rate of 27%, higher than the working class. Sure they also say he pays some tiny percentage of his wealth as tax but no one in the US is really taxed on their total wealth that's not particularly higher or lower than the average American.
Do you mean that iceberg picture he posted? I only briefly saw it, but I thought it shows a rate of 27% on the actual income of Zuckerberg, while the tax rate based on his overall net worth is much lower, approaching 0 for stock gains
It’s a bullshit infographic because they’re using unrealized gains here. That’s not income, so it’s not taxed. Realization point is where it’s taxed.
So rather than being honest and saying “hey look, here’s his income and taxes, but like there’s room for more” they’re dishonest and manipulate the income figure to make the numerator much bigger.
I don’t understand why so many people in media rely on bullshitting people to push a point when the same point could be evidenced by the truth. All it does is changes the conversation from focusing on taxes to pointing out how much disinformation they’re using to get there.
It's ridiculously dishonest what they're doing. They know what they're doing too. But clearly a lot of people don’t understand it well enough, so they eat it up. Shameless from the author.
The average person reads at probably a 5th grade level, only reads the headlines, and believes that their life is in shambles because someone [a billionaire] sold them the cell phone they use to doomscroll.
The cruel twist is that without the doomscrolling, the billionaires wouldn't be as rich as they are.
You can absolutely tax unrealized gains. A lot of jurisdictions do that via property taxes. And I also don't think that you are going to deny the fact that those unrealized gains do eventually translate into substantial amounts of disposable capital.
You cannot do this on the federal local, no. It’s constitutionally prohibited.
And the future conversion of unrealized gain to realized gain is sorta irrelevant, this infographic represents unrealized gain as income, which it is not. If you can’t admit that’s an openly deceitful tactic aimed at fooling low acumen readers then I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself.
It is not explicitly prohibited by constitution since it is pretty evident that starting from a certain pretty high level unrealized gains do translate (of course not 1:1) to income. If dems can pack the SCOTUS, they can absolutely dismiss any constitution challenge to a potential unrealized gains tax.
No, it’s explicitly prohibited lol. The entire tax code and legal concept of income is extremely well established here, and unrealized gain is squarely not income.
A court full of RBGs would rule against this fantasy, if you wanna keep your head in the clouds that’s fine but that’s not how any aspect of the legal framework within this country works. Me personally, I’ll stick to things that can be done, not writing fanfiction.
If the GOP-led SCOTUS can rule that a president can have absolute immunity for his official actions then I don't think that a dem-led SCOTUS can't rule that unrealized gains do effectively translate to income.
Property taxes are viewed as part of the cost of maintaining the property and for funding local infrastructure. Not only that, local governments determines the value.
You can apply a similar logic to stocks as well - companies do use or benefit from the federal infrastructure, or? It is a mere expansion of the taxable base that can be done in a very progressive manner.
In that case, it makes much more practical sense to apply a tax to the underlying physical assets that the companies own. For example, a factory, data center. Like real property taxes, it can't be easily avoided.
I see the logic behind wanting to tax unrealized gains, but I don't see how it would work in practice. Unrealized gains turn into money now via loans.
When you read the chapter of the history book that says "By 2030, most of the ultra wealthy were taking out large loans to finance their tax burdens" it sounds like it's about to describe an economic implosion and not a period of gains for the lower classes.
Under a plan that taxed unrealized gains, the government would get a notable part of taxes indirectly via loans from the banks. That creates systemic issues, both politically with respect to the government and economically with respect to markets, jobs, inequality, etc.
As people default on loans, the bank starts accumulating shares. But they can't hold large equity positions, so they periodically liquidate large numbers of shares of stock in companies arbitrarily. Some guy who was an executive at XYZ corp 20 years ago and has nothing to do with their operations runs into financial difficulty and now needs to liquidate shares to pay taxes. Over time you're hitting the market with these stochastic liquidation events that are untethered to the performance of the companies. In addition to sending shocks through the market, these shares get picked up by private equity and index funds like BlackRock who begin controlling even more of the economy.
How will banking regulation work when the banks play a crucial role in paying taxes? What happens in a recession? Banks tighten lending, people can't borrow against unrealized gains to pay their taxes so you have some combination of people just not paying and people having to liquidate large positions to pay taxes. This latter puts even more downward pressure on the market during a bear market and the former means an already struggling government has to decide whether to devote large amounts of resources to trying to recover unpaid taxes from people who can fight prolonged court battles.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the IRS would have to compensate for unrealized losses in a downturn since they a already taxed the unrealized gains that weren't actually gains. So even more money is flowing out of the government when it's most needed. Suppose Jeff Bezos's wealth goes up in a boom year and the next year a recession hits. Bezos overpaid by $1 billion in the boom year. How will it look for the party in power when they cut Bezos a $1 billion tax refund during the recession the following year?
The only way I can think of from keeping the whole thing from collapsing catastrophically is if over time more and more of the government is devoted to ensuring the stock market never declines. It's basically the gilded age. The government would be constantly intervening to spend tax payer money to ensure there's a permanent floor in the stock market. And the biggest beneficiaries would be the wealthy.
Using unrealized gains is absurdly dishonest lol. I'm not taxed on unrealized gains either. It's horrible policy to enact it for obvious reasons. Using it to try and push a narrative just completely discredits them. They aren't trying to actually do a study. They're pushing an intentionally dishonest narrative.
Can't believe I'm sitting here defending billionaire taxes. Raise their taxes by all means, but at least don't intentionally mislead people who aren't financially literate enough to understand what you're doing.
The constant back and forth discussions about it always make me wonder how completely detached many people are from the concept of investing. Like purchasing any security and watching it go up and down over time you'd think someone would have the same confusion about taxing unrealized gains but no lol
We don't have all the years but this was cited in the article.
"Bezos’s total effective tax rate was just 15 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, the average person in the US pays around 30 percent of their income in taxes."
Please don’t cherry pick years, if you want to use Bezos as the example crawl through amazons quarterly filings so we can see how much he’s done over the last decade and do an average.
It’s dishonest otherwise to reference one year from 8 years ago
By my quick math:
Over the last decade he’s done about 40b in Amazon share sales (on avg 4b a year)
That translates to about 960M a year on average just on NIIT and federal taxes (not including state or anything else)
We know the tax brackets so this isn’t super hard to calculate.
Wow aren't you demanding. My post was in response to another comment. I get that you are passionate about your concern for billionaires, but take it easy.
In the magnanimity of the law both poor and rich can take loans on their unrealized gains and avoid income tax. I forgot, someone remind me which banks will give me a low interest loan on 2 shares of a company?
27% is wayyyy less than I pay as a professional, especially when you include things like payroll taxes (another 13% off the top) and healthcare (employers only pay for employee so having a family is shadow taxed) and sales taxes....
> The leftist economists typically assert rich people do not pay taxes.
Can you cite a single economist who has said this? Or we just doing the Reddit thing where you write some fanfiction about the world then criticize that?
Bezos has to publicly file when he sells- they’re too lazy to look at his sec filings. He’s paid almost a billion a year for the last decade just off Amazon share sales
It also never occurred to them he needs to still pay off the loan with large sums of money. So if he sells he gets taxed. They also assumed he owns majority of all Amazon stock. He owns like 8%.
Another thing that people seem to misunderstand is if he gets paid in stocks he doesn’t get taxed. But if you do get paid in stocks you get taxed a the regular income tax rates.
Humor is open to interpretation, but I find it funny that so many people are front and center in the war against poor people. Bezos is the worst sort of genius billionaire scumbag, he got his and moved on. Props to his wife who has a social conscious, something you may not be familiar with.
What war against poor people? The same poor people who frequently use Amazon? Want to win the war? Stop
using Amazon, stop buying from Walmart, stop using debt to pay for wants, etc.
But Americans are addicted to cheap consumption. People want these companies to pay higher wages but refuse to pay higher prices for higher wages. Thats why we ship labor overseas to exploit lower cost internationally.
No, the same poor people who prop up corporations by working for low wages and then spending their paycheck on necessities . Despite your concern, America corporations are doing just fine. In fact they are doing amazing. People want to survive and thrive, Corporations want to reward shareholders. This is not hard.
Buy/Borrow/Die loophole is hardly even practiced. Why? Because it’s risky. You’re making an assumption that Amazon still be around and worth more or the same as it is today 30-40 years from now. Assuming Bezos lives that many more years.
Why is it risky? Because 30-40 years ago you would be making the same assumption on the owners of blockbuster, Kmart, Sears, etc, it might’ve sound like the winning strategy then, but it definitely isn’t now.
Most people aren’t even referring to the right thing when they discuss buy borrow die. It’s not really a way to avoid income tax, it just allows for the dual combination of a step-up at death + no estate tax
The estate tax applies to the taxable estate and not the gross estate, so it’s calculated after the debt payoff has reduced the value of the estate
So the debt is taken out prior to death, the cash from the loan is swapped into an irrevocable trust in exchange for appreciated assets, and then the debt reduces the value of the estate. So the appreciated assets get the step-up, and don’t face the estate tax
You’re right that irrevocable trusts don’t get the step up, but that’s why you swap the assets in there back into the taxable estate. If it’s a grantor trust, you can swap assets of equivalent value without it being treated as a sale, since a grantor trust is a disregarded entity for US tax purposes. The process would go like this:
Individual contributes their stock to an irrevocable grantor trust early on in their wealth-planning journey (grantor allows a swap power, while irrevocable removes future appreciation from the taxable estate)
At some point prior to death (ideally as close as possible), individual gets an equity instrument or debt to receive up-front cash in exchange for future payment or rights to collateral, similar to a prepaid forward contract
Individual utilizes their swap power of the grantor trust (disregarded step) to take back the appreciated stock in exchange for the upfront cash from step 2. This allows them to bypass both the estate tax (since the note is deducted from the gross value of the estate) and get a step up in basis on the stock upon death (since the appreciated assets get swapped back into the taxable estate prior to death).
I read up on this. It's a little more complicated, because the grantor is responsible for the trust taxes and the loan swap can be problematic for taxes if not structured well, but estate attorneys probably get the big bucks to avoid the taxes I'm sure. The trust can even write a loan to the grantor in another twisty loophole.
You’ve very clearly never been involved in any sort of estate planning work ever, why sit here and just BS your way through something like this?
Irrev trust contributions are subject to the same estate limits as everything else, you can’t swap cash in exchange for assets in an irrev trust for any sort of actual gain, there’s no discounting lmao, not that this would make any sense anyway, there’s no step up here, there’s no net benefit to doing any of this. It’s like you just combined a bunch of words from a year one CFP course and vomited them out trying to convince people there was some secret sauce here.
This is an odd response from you, you pretty much always know what you’re talking about. But in this case you’re wrong, and for some reason aggressive about it
I’m a CPA and see this pretty frequently. I’ll take it step by step, and I’ve talked about it previously like here and here
>Irrev trust contributions are subject to the same estate limits as everything else
Irrevocable trusts aren’t included in the taxable estate, and don’t face the estate tax. You pay gift tax on your contribution, but it happens at the time of the contribution itself, so future appreciation isn’t subject to the gift tax or estate tax
>you can’t swap cash in exchange for assets
§675 details the swap powers of grantor trusts, which allow you to swap assets of equivalent value. This is a disregarded transaction from an income tax standpoint, because grantor trusts aren’t separate entities.
>there’s no discounting
I never mentioned discounting
>there’s no step up here
Agree, assets in an irrevocable trust retain their carryover tax basis, which is why the swap power is important to pull those appreciated assets back into the taxable estate to get the step-up. And since cash has no basis disparity, it goes into the irrevocable trust
>there’s no net benefit
In the absence of this, you can either avoid the estate tax through an irrevocable trust (and not get the step-up), or leave the assets in the taxable estate, pay the estate tax, and get the stepped up basis
With this strategy, you’re economic position hasn’t changed (cash and debt offset), but you’ve reduced your taxable estate by the value of the appreciated stock (from the debt), and you’ve gotten a step-up on those appreciated assets. I explained more here
No, you don’t. This is what I’m talking about. There’s no way you’re a CPA, because this is a beginner mistake.
You have a single lifetime exclusion, contributions to irrevocable trusts constitute a gift of present value which is deducted from the lifetime estate deduction. You do not pay gift tax on anything here unless you’ve exhausted your estate limits, in which case doing any sort of irrev trust is generally a poor idea.
> 675 details the swap powers of grantor trusts, which allow you to swap assets of equivalent value.
Did you on purpose exclude the part of my post directly after where you quoted where I said that? Just to argue and try to save face??? The literal next line is pointing out it’s a straight exchange, I know you had to read it? Why be this dishonest?
> I never mentioned discounting
No, but if you understood trust math you’d know that the value of trust formation lies in discounting factors, which is why I brought it up, that’s not a factor here - you’d know that if you were a CPA.
> but you’ve reduced your taxable estate by the value of the appreciated stock (from the debt), and you’ve gotten a step-up on those appreciated
This would never work in the real world, aside from all of the technical errors I pointed out above this is effectively a sham transaction that circumvents estate rules and would almost certainly run an extremely high risk of the IRS pulling the assets back in to the estate. Almost no decent estate lawyer would sign off on this.
> Again, disappointing comment from you
Considering that you just openly misrepresented two things I said, fucked up how discounting worked, somehow had no idea how trust contributions work within estate thresholds, and still didn’t address all of the issues I mentioned here I’d say maybe drop the act?
Having someone sit here and claim to be a CPA then immediately make a completely incorrect claim regarding how gifting within an irrev trust hits a tax return, then call my comment disappointing is what I’ve come to expect on this sub sadly.
>You do not pay gift tax on anything here unless you’ve exhausted your estate limits
We’re talking about billionaires here lmao, every single one of them is past their unified exclusion. That’s the entire point of using irrevocable trusts to freeze the value, because it allows the majority of appreciation to pass on untaxed, which wouldn’t happen if it was part of the estate
>in which case doing any sort of irrev trust is generally a poor idea
You can drop the facade here, we both know you don’t understand this. Irrevocable trusts don’t really make sense below the estate tax exclusion, because the only concern is the step-up, as you’re not paying transfer taxes either way. Only when you’ve exhausted the limit do irrevocable trusts become important, because it becomes necessary to pull assets out of the estate to avoid the estate tax
>did you on purpose exclude the part of my post
You literally added “for any sort of actual gain” in your comment, which I ignored because I never said there was a gain. In fact, I specified multiple times the exact opposite, the grantor swap is disregarded. That’s why I just clarified it again in my comment, because it didn’t seem like you actually had read mine. You also said “it wouldn’t make sense anyways”, which is what my comment was directed towards, to help you understand why it does make sense
>a gift of present value
FMV, not present value
>the value of trust formation lies in discounting factors
The value of (irrevocable) trust formation lies in shielding assets from the taxable estate. I assume you’re talking about valuation discounts of private assets from LOC or LOM, which is nowhere near the most important benefit when we’re talking about decades of asset appreciation. And to point it out again, your first comment said “there’s no discounting”, whereas you seem to be saying the opposite now
>make a completely incorrect claim
Again, you can’t point out a single incorrect thing I’ve said, and you’re getting really defensive about it. Your entire issue with my comment seems to be that I simply didn’t call out the unified exemption, and my answer to that is that my example assumes you’ve already eclipsed the exemption (or else you wouldn’t need the strategy in the first place). If you want, I could apply the same logic and choose to invalidate your entire comment because you failed to mention the annual gift tax exclusion before touching the unified exemption amount
You might want to stick to economics if this is how you’re gonna act on topics outside of that scope
The argument is that it is not, but their argument is not well written or clear IMO. Their real argument is "I think we should compute tax rate in this particular way, and if we do that then tax rates don't increase monotonically with income and so the tax policy is not progressive."
Framed this way, the immediate reaction is "okay how do you think we should calculate income for tax purposes?"
Instead with their framing, the immediate response is either "these numbers are wrong, the computation based on AGI shows it's progressive" or 'I'm angry at rich people," neither of which is will help them with their actual policy goals.
The whole article disputes that our tax system is truly progressive, because of the regressive nature of taxes that hit working Americans and not billionaires and the very wealthy; Mainly payroll taxes, but also excise taxes. You may disagree but if we are being honest, that is the economist's point.
It asserts that by pointing at a subset of taxes that are regressive. But that isn’t where we collect the bulk of our taxes, as evidenced by my link which shows you who pays, in terms of total tax dollars collected.
If you want to claim our tax code is regressive, you have to look at the entire tax code.
In other words: you’re saying our tax code could be more progressive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t progressive already (factually our tax code is more progressive than the European countries)
I think the contention is that most revenue is uncollected because of the way in which different forms of wealth go untaxed (payroll, estate, assets, capital gains, what have you) via the current income-based model in most industrialized countries.
No system where effective tax rate as a proportion of income is lower for a billionaire than it is for their secretaries can be called truly progressive.
I mean, in the US, the top 1% pay 40% of the base, but the concentration of ownership is currently thrice what it was during the guilded age, so it’s more of a predistributive argument based on purchasing power for the median consumer.
If I offer you 1b for your Reddit account, and you choose not to sell - do you have 1b dollars? Are you a billionaire now? How will you afford to meet your tax bill?
I know that’s a dumb example - but this is a real issue for founders of private companies that are illiquid.
You’re taxing someone on the potential to realize value, but not having realized it (I’d argue this is why borrowing above your cost basis should be treated as having a realized gain)
Why don’t we make it a marginal 1000% tax on anyone making a quadrillion dollars
If we just keep adding arbitrary brackets that no one is in, we’ll make the tax code even more progressive according to Saez and zucman. We need at least 40 empty tax brackets at the top
Im highlighting the absurdity of predicating the definition of fairness based on what theoretical tax brackets exist vs who is actually paying what share of the taxes
If you think wealth actually is an issue, and there are unethical amounts of money that can only be earned by stealing (as aoc does), why dont we have taxes exceeding 100% for certain income levels?
Payroll gets taxed in the US. Social security has a cap, but medicare is the opposite, there's an extra tax on high incomes.
Estate taxes exist in the US. There is a basis step-up and a fairly large exemption, but any truly large inheritance gets taxed quite a lot. The tax game is to structure inheritance to avoid that, and there's also a lot of weirdness in the step-up basis thing, but there's also the double taxation thing. It's gonna have a lot of controversy in any direction.
Realized capital gains are taxed.
The wealthy's real trick, other than buying politicians, is structuring their income to avoid taxes. Us normal people can't choose when we get paid or how much we get paid in order to optimize taxes. We certainly have some methods of deferring the whole problem until we die of old age but certainly nothing like the truly wealthy do. Some of these things could be changed, some would cause all sorts of weird problems to change, and some would be avoided with the magic of having access to lots of tax lawyers. People with structural advantages use them to maintain them.
"I think the contention is that most revenue is uncollected because of the way in which different forms of wealth go untaxed (payroll, estate, assets, capital gains, what have you) via the current income-based model in most industrialized countries."
"No system where effective tax rate as a proportion of income is lower for a billionaire than it is for their secretaries can be called truly progressive."
No, I am saying that at first glance, and as a great Republican talking point, our taxes are progressive, I don't dispute the evidence. But imo if you look under the hood it is an unfair system that favors the wealthy ( I don't know how that is even disputable but whatever), , and while it may fit the definition of being progressive, looking at it from a macro perspective, it is not.
It’s not about who pays tho, that misses the point. Of course rich ppl pay a majority of the tax, they also make a majority of the income (gee, whodda thunk). The issue is the relative amount of tax paid on that proportion of income.
Also the death tax is functionally nonexistent at this point so the truly wealthy will be richer than any aristocrat ever dreamed here very soon
An easy way to illustrate this: if the market implodes tomorrow, Bezos still owns the same number of Amazon shares. The price going down doesn’t mean he lost a billion dollars either if he didn’t sell.
So if the share price goes up and he doesn’t sell, he hasn’t made a billion either
Re death tax: no it’s very much thing at both the state and federal levels https://smartasset.com/taxes/all-about-the-estate-tax
I don't know what a "death tax" is, but I do know of the estate tax. I also know that the estate tax only brought in about $30 billion against $7 trillion in spending at the federal level. About 0.4% of the budget. So nothing. You can say the estate tax is "very much a thing", but I'd argue it's "very much ineffective" and long overdue for a complete overhaul that helps stop runaway dynastic wealth.
See the issue is it applies when the billionaires die. Conveniently the left keeps pointing at billionaires that are still alive, so they wouldn’t have had to pay those yet
Because they don't have income. Because they don't work for a living. If we changed the definition of income to include their actual cash streams, they would pay more taxes.
Sort of. My point is that it could be more fair, it needs to be more fair. Billionaires should be paying more taxes. If that is regressive to the current statis quo than yeah, I am fine with it.
It is mostly progressive and the federal income tax is extremely progressive. The lower 20 to 30 percent of people not only pay zero or close to zero in federal income tax but in a lot of cases they pay negative federal income tax because they have zero federal income tax liability and they get refundable tax credits.
High earners (those making like 300-400k a year) pay a lot in fed income tax. However, the uber rich pay little in federal income tax (relatively speaking) for lots of reasons but one is that they have little in the way of income (relatively speaking). They have wealth, not income. If you want them to pay significantly more then you would need a wealth tax and/or trust/estate/gift reform.
And I'm going to dispute the findings in that article. I don't think the bottom 50% are paying 25-30 percent in taxes even when you account for fed payroll tax, excise taxes, and state/local taxes
We can all look at elons compensation package and just do the math. Simple fact their huge stock packages are all taxed as income.
Separately they have capital gains taxes which is when they sell those stocks they where already hit with income taxes when they where granted. This is entirely separate from income taxes
I literally deal with the same shit myself
"Oh that 120k of RSUs we already hit with income taxes, instead of selling them you where responsible and held them. Pay more taxes plz". It's really fun because on a separate annoying form where you need to do so much bullshit to minimize your taxes and pull out all the transactions .....it's such a pain in the ass.
> We can all look at elons compensation package and just do the math.
Not all of them have huge compensation packages like elon. A lot of them got their shares from when the company was private and had little value years ago. And then periodically sell those (now very valuable shares) and pay -> capital gains tax
>A lot of them got their shares from when the company was private
Which is a taxable event, taxable as income, I know I've been given pre IPO shares. And instead of being an absolute moron those founders held those shares..
Also that's false most of their shares come from larger and larger compensation packages as time goes on. Amazon has been public for decades + and in that same time bezos sold 40b worth in shares. Assuming he sold the oldest first (why wouldnt he) the majority of his shares he has now are from post IPO.
>Factism
Nah you're engaging in bullshit and misdirection. Which is why you're trying to conflate terms and hide from just pulling up sec filings on CEO compensation and reported sales of shares. Because if the evidence supported you you'd just pull up those filings or at least fucking reference them.
>You are an oligarch like elon?
Nope but I know the tax forms he has to fill out because I also have had to fill out similar forms. RSUs I get today are different than my previous package which was more similar to musks.
> Also that's false most of their shares come from larger and larger compensation packages as time goes on. Amazon has been public for decades + and in that same time bezos sold 40b worth in shares. Assuming he sold the oldest first (why wouldnt he) the majority of his shares he has now are from post IPO.
Dude just quit while you are behind, seriously. This is getting embarrassing for you
“Mr. Bezos requested not to receive additional compensation and has never received annual cash compensation in excess of his current amount,” the filing reads.
Part of the reason Bezos has kept his salary low and has never received stock compensation from Amazon is because he owned a large chunk of the company anyway.
“We believe that all Company-incurred security costs are reasonable and necessary and for the Company’s benefit, and that the amount of the reported security expenses for Mr. Bezos is especially reasonable in light of his low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation,” the company wrote in the proxy statement.
You can look up (eg) Warren Buffet's taxes, where even with AMT existing, his federal tax to booked income ratio for some years is lower than mine. The majority of his income is long term capital gains (20% marginal rate, until you do AMT calculations, net investment tax, deductions, etc) whereas my effective rate is higher and my marginal rate much higher. I haven't seen him publish his 2025 returns for example, but his 2010 returns had an effective rate of 17%.
And how did he get those shares that he ended up paying capital gains on?
From his income. From stock grants (income taxable), from cash used to purchase those shares .
And we can look at his income taxes and see he pays at the highest bracket
Don't try the populist bullshit of conflating income taxes with capital gains.
Shin my firm gives me 120k in RSUs, those are taxed as income. Then a year later when I go to sell they're taxed again as capital gains. When I use my cash (taxed as income) to buy shares of Nvidia and sell a year later sell those shares for a profit I'm taxed again as capital gains. Sure I could be not subhuman and continuously reinvest that capital after the sell and diversify it, then I'd would just be higher and higher cap gains as time goes on and I rebalance
Bruv he got most of his shares from before you were probably born or in diapers
> Don't try the populist bullshit of conflating income taxes with capital gains.
Try getting your facts straight
> Shin my firm gives me 120k in RSUs, those are taxed as income. Then a year later when I go to sell they're taxed again as capital gains. When I use my cash (taxed as income) to buy shares of Nvidia and sell a year later sell those shares for a profit I'm taxed again as capital gains.
My dude, you came on here with a patronizing attitude, you got schooled, you know you got schooled, and now all you have is ad hominem attacks LMAO
In 2018 bezos was estimated effective tax rates was 15% and it was 18% for buffett. Some years it is higher for those two, some years it is lower for those two but it is almost always lower than those higher earners that make their income from work
He got those shares by starting the company and having it go public while retaining a large amount of the company, resulting in him having an enormous amount of money after like 60 years of growth. He also gets shares of various companies by buying shares, thanks to income that, yes, was taxed.
You can literally look up the tax returns he releases, this isn't leaked from the IRS. Are you calling him a liar in 2010?
A founder does not have the same tax treatment as an employee getting RSUs because their situations are different.
>You can literally look up the tax returns he releases, this isn't leaked from the IRS.
And to get those context of the shares he sold we'd need the share purchase/grant history.
I'm guessing you're highly religious as you tend to fill in blanks with whatever agrees with your priors
>A founder does not have the same tax treatment as an employee getting RSUs because their situations are different.
Lol. You're not even trying to Google things instead you're just making it up. During the initial founding you'd still pay taxes, now if you pay it on the tranche vesting value or the initial depends on you filing 83(b) election. But regardless of have they give themselves shares it's all income taxable
Then theres the fact that most shares they have aren't from the initial founding otherwise you'd simply have extreme levels of dilution come the IPO. Most founders nowadays just give themselves special voting shares instead to maintain control so they don't have to dilute equity and they never sell those. Jesus Christ dude stop engaging in such raging bullshit slopulism. Next thing you know you'll be wearing a red hat you'll horseshoe so yourself into
I'll help you out there's Founder's Stock Refreshers which are vested so income taxable. But then there's options ISOs and NSOs. The former is strange because there's AMT and cap gains and you can get burned....and they're limited to $100k USD per year if vesting so most founders end up getting NSOs anyways which the income tax hits on the excise of the spread.
Tldr founders pay the tax man pre IPO or post ipo.
So yeah my guy, read up on this instead of sucking down slopulism. Also buffet wasn't even a founder so no none of this shit applies
That being said I'm okay with hiking income taxes, add some more brackets.
If you actually measure who pays what in to the federal system then it’s massively weighted towards higher income earners. This isn’t opinion, it’s math. The issue is that the rates are low across the board. Compounding that, most people don’t understand taxes because they read shit like this that openly disrespects the intelligence of the reader lol.
Zucman and Piketty are political militants, they sometimes play fast and lose with definitions when the facts don't go their way. Whatever your opinion on this subject, this should be no excuse to play tricks with the data to push your point.
Their worse offense IMHO is pretending to ignore benefits received or contributed for (ie when the government forces you to contribute for your own retirement, they write it off as a tax so as to show poorer people get more "taxed"). Then they'll compute the taxation rate of poor people as total taxes paid divided by only their direct income (but not subsidies and benefits) to achieve absurdly high tax rates for poor people. And when that looks too absurd (ie over 100% tax rate) they'll just edit the graph to not show that part... This is, to put it mildly, dishonest.
They also don't count "off balance sheet" assets. If the government owes you a pension, it's technically a form of wealth with a dollar value on it, but it's politically inconvenient to them as this would reduce the wealth gap they say is growing, so somehow that's not counted.
Just getting rid of the separate long term capital gains rate would make it a lot more progressive. Easy fix while also slightly simplifying the tax code.
People get so hung-up on what % of overall tax is paid by the wealthy. I feel a better measure is what % of regular and passive earnings is a better measure of overall contribution.
That is the point this article is trying to make, the income tax rate overall for Jeff Bezos is 15% while people like me pay a far higher % in taxes on earned income.
You're missing the entire point of the article. Sure the tax system is progressive. And the guys making $500k a year on a W2 job pay more tax than someone making $50k. But guys like Bezos and Musk are allowed to skirt the system. The top 400 wealthiest people pay less tax than anyone in the bottom 25%, and that's a problem.
Guys like Bezos and Musk pay no income tax, because they take payment in stock, and stock isn't taxed until it's sold. Even then it's taxed at a much lower rate than the 37% income tax they should be paying. So you have guys like Bezos and Musk paying effective tax rates of 15% while Suzie who is busting her ass working 50 hrs a week to afford a 2 bed apartment is paying 30%+ effective tax rate. That's just not right.
Suzie's effective federal tax rate (including FICA) would be ~18% (on $65k income). You have to hit $200k+ income to be at an effective rate of 30%+.
Bezos/Musk's cap gains rate is actually 20.38% (20% cap gains on top income + 3.8% net investment income tax). Capital gains taxes are considered double-taxed as the corporate entity gets taxed at 21% first, then after-tax profit is distributed or grows the stock value. Factoring that in, the effective rate would be 39.8%.
Aside from the real numbers, the reason why economists consider capital gains taxes to be highly inefficient is because they create economic distortions, reduce growth and creative deadweight loss relative to revenue (it's technical, but there is a swath of economic literature on it that is not at all disputed by economists.)
No that's not how it works with guys like Bezos. They use a loophole.
"Because he is an owner rather than an employee receiving stock as compensation, his shares are classified as an asset and are only taxed if and when he sells them."
If you’re receiving stock as compensation, then you’re an employee, by definition. That stock gets taxed at earned income rates regardless of whether or not you sell it
If Suzie buys a stock and it appreciates in value, what tax rate should she pay on it?
The stock she owns presumably has earnings. What percentage of profit should that corporation be paying to the government. Suppose you are a solo owner of a corporation, how much post tax money should you receive from $1 of profit.
You’re just completely wrong. When stock is given as compensation, it is taxed the same as ordinary income. When it is sold, any gain since its granting are taxed as capital gains.
But it’s flatly wrong to claim that companies are paying their CEOs in stock, and nobody is paying taxes on it until it is sold. That’s simply not how it works. You’re grossly misinformed, and spreading misinformation.
Lol you're completely wrong. JC you could do a 5 second Google search to figure this shit out man..
"Jeff Bezos does not pay income tax on his overall stock earnings until he actually sells the shares. U.S. tax laws apply only to "realized" gains, meaning the billions of dollars his net worth grows on paper (unrealized gains) are not taxed."
"When he does sell his stock to fund ventures like Blue Origin or buy assets, those sales are treated as capital gains, not standard income."
I like how people explained to you 10 times that you lack basic information and rather than admit it and educate yourself, you keep posting the same article over and over, even though it doesn’t even confirm what you’re saying .
I did Google it. And your cite doesn’t clearly state that it pertains to stocks given as a form of compensation.
> Yes, stock given as compensation is taxable in the US. It is treated as supplemental wages and is subject to ordinary income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes.
If what you are claiming were true, then it’d be a huge, gaping loophole. No publicly-traded company would ever pay any of their employees in cash. They’d just pay everybody (or at the very least, the C-suite) in stocks, and nobody would ever pay any taxes.
It doesn’t even pass the smell test. The slightest bit of critical thinking suggests that it’s incorrect, and a 5-second Google confirms it. Yet you’re doubling down. You’ve got a lot of confidence, I’ll give you that.
Why should someone pay taxes when... nothing happens? Bezos already owns the company and therefore the stock.
Do you think stocks are just some meaningless pieces of paper? They represent small portions of a company, a company that, in this case, Bezos founded and owns a large portion of.
I'll probably trust actual sources like Fortune and not a random guy on reddit who has no idea what he's talking about if it's all the same to you 🤷♂️
"Because he is an owner rather than an employee receiving stock as compensation, his shares are classified as an asset and are only taxed if and when he sells them."
The also seem to just cherry pick Jeff Bezos years to compare. There was a leak of like a decade of his tax returns and you can just do the average. There are years where he pays very little, but these are balanced by years that he pays a lot.
It’s not too long from now that with all the money siphoning to the top, millionaires will soon be the lower middle class, billionaires the upper middle class and trillionaires (yes that’s coming) will be the one percent.
Everyone else will have nothing.
It’s not for nothing they are building ginormous compounds and bunkers.
We had a capitalist society at all times in U.S. history, but a progressive tax system held egregious wealth inequality at bay from the 1930s through the 1980s.
It already is, then top 10% of earners make up for 50% of consumer spending. This is what the end of an empire looks like. The US will be lucky if Balkanization doesnt happen.
The most annoying thing about that movie was the med bed technology. The rich had one in every home and medical shuttles full them but they couldn't have one of them at the Armadyne plant just to stick Matt Damon in so they could throw him right back on the line to work?
Yea I’m sure people weren’t stressed and anxious 100 years ago during world wars, 15% of babies dying at birth, a Great Depression, and dying from basic infections.
If you look at quality of life vs. quantity then it's even better: no need to save for your retirement, just die at 65 like they did "in the past", and you can live like a king!
In the past, homes were much smaller, and had more people living in the smaller space. In the 70's, an average new home was ~1500 sq ft, and now they're closer to ~2400 sq ft. If I had to bet, I'd bet people spent less of their income on random crap back then too. Luxuries back then are now necessities for most people. How many families owned two cars? How many vacations did people take in their lifetime in the past? How many coffees did people buy per year at cafes? People in the past probably had "buying a home" as their #1 priority over traveling, eating out multiple times a week, buying luxuries, spending money frivolously. Even if they wanted to buy stuff, there were a limited amount of different things to even buy. What are they going to buy? A home, a car, furniture, and a color TV in the living room for the entire family? Nowadays there are way more goods/services that people's money can go towards. I'm not saying home prices didn't go up, but there are definitely other factors.
Personally, I'd rather live in 2026 than in the 1970's.
God that’s a ~~shit~~ bad take. Having a family is the best thing ever. Humans throughout history have had it tougher than the poor people of today. Such a ~~shit~~ bad take. But you do you and stick it to the man I guess! 💪
*edited because the OP commentor seems like a good person and I was rude.
Meanwhile Tesla is poisoning Texas water supply like it’s 99 but this time instead of Erin brokovich and regulation we’ve got poopbutt and other morons saying get off Reddit and touch grass xD gg
You really think it’s one company doing this? When trump has demolished most of the regulatory abilities and laws? Way to reinforce the “can’t think critically or at all” that magas are proud of. You know th Colorado river is drying up right? Like super fast? What do you think 40 million people are gonna do when water runs out? Enjoy your shithole
And we fixed a bit of the ozone layer, and now we’re full back to removing regulations again. Like are you just plain uninformed? Christ man take your head out of your ass it’s embarrassing for the rest of us when we have to explain america to people from other countries. I make my observations in the real world 😂 you probably never leave the loop of home car work car big box store car home. Every time I get told touch grass two-ten years later I get proven right. people told me to touch grass about a K shape happening. Now look
It's based on your reality which is fine but I implore you to discover a different one. I think this mindset is heavily shaped by perspective. Humans have lived through wars, famine, disease, poverty, and instability throughout history, yet people still found meaning in family, community, and raising children.
Some of the poorest communities in the world also report strong social bonds and life satisfaction, so I don’t think inequality automatically means life isn’t worth living.
I don’t think having children is inherently cruel because life contains struggle - struggle has always existed. If you personally don't want kids, fair enough, but I don’t think inequality means future generations shouldn’t exist at all.
Just because its always been this way doesnt mean it was right
I dont think its right to live through wars, famine, poverty, etc;
I am anti suffering, i dont want people or animals to suffer, living through wars and poverty is suffering guaranteed, if you intentionally subject others to suffering that is cruel at least from a logical perspective, from an emotional perspective perhaps not
People are wonderful at coping, its why god was invented, its why in the past zeus and hades were invented, people needed ways to cope and to explain things
The only way to end suffering is to end life. There will always be something, even if you have all of your wants and needs taken care of instantaneously, there will still be suffering.
Like I said, it's your reality and you're correct. I'm also correct and so is anyone else with an opinion on whether they want kids or not... For whatever reason they choose.
But by that logic, because suffering is unavoidable, existence itself becomes immoral - but most people who have experienced hardship still don’t wish they were never born.
So I am trying to challenge the mindset, at least for anyone reading our convo who’s on the fence. I think reducing life down to suffering alone is an unhealthy way to look at existence.
Humans and animals at that have always faced hardship, yet people still find meaning in family, love, friendship, purpose, and community. I don’t think the answer to suffering is ending future generations altogether.
Just because we have opinions it doesnt mean its correct, some people think the world is flat
We might disagree on the tolerable amount of suffering that people should experience and in that regard you and i would be correct
Yes most people do not wish they were born and thats due to the cope, there is a lot of various pressures around being grateful for the lives that we have because there are others who have it worse, family pressure, religious pressure, cultural pressure, etc;
Admitting that you wish you were never born can lead to more depression because its a wish that would never come true
Self euthanasia is a taboo topic, but more and more people are doing it
A rape victim who chose to have the child and that child became the best thing in their life, it would be tricky to ask her if she wishes she was never raped because if she says yes that means the best thing in her life would not have been born
You have an extremely unhealthy mindset about being human but thats your reality like I said.
Wishing you the best. This last reply sends a lot of red flags so I hope you’re personally doing ok despite the pessimistic thoughts around human kind.
Why did you feel the need to tell us this? You know it isn’t relevant, but you did it anyway. Nobody needs to know what you are going to do in your life or that you are going to be eternally childless.
I didn’t even introduce a claim on that topic. Next time, handle the critique more maturely, instead of engaging in an illogical appeal to emotion to justify your already irrelevant personal life.
Not only is the content of the article disingenuine, the author can't seem to decide on a single metric of "taxation" at all: % of profits, % of wealth, or absolute dollar amount in taxes paid. He/she fluidly shifts between all three depending on what is advantageous to their argument at the moment.
Note, therefore, there is not a single real rebuttal to the fact that billionaires contribute far more to tax revenue than the rest
Has the hollowing out of education in this country and the non stop propaganda truly been so effective that all these billionaire bootlickers are real people that actually believe this crap? I want them to mostly be bots but I know that is wishful thinking
Billionaires shouldn’t exist, they have dragon disease
I think it’s envy worship, with a healthy delusional dose of someday that could be me. But I have to admit, the passionate defense of the “poor” billionaires is kind of repulsive
This is a logical debate to which you reply with an appeal to emotion. You can't make tax policy based on emotions, you need a coherent and rationale framework.
Take your bullshit trolling elsewhere. You'd have to be making around ~~$650k~~ $600k in ordinary income, filing as single with only the standard deduction, no credits, no nothin, for a 30% federal income tax rate.
I don't find these analyses to be intellectually honest in the least. They include non income taxes for lower income groups where it's convenient, ignore the value of social benefit transfers and completely ignore the taxes paid by business owners that their businesses pay. I think it's pretty unarguable that we have a concentration of wealth at the top. And that in the US at least, our tax system has been manipulated by monied interests, while at the same time not providing many of the social benefits other countries do.
All that is true, but the solution is very clear. There are already countries with strong social safety nets and corresponding tax systems that we can look to. Just emulate them. Have a public option for healthcare. Fund higher education at the state level like we used to. And fix the social security system with a higher income cap and some portion of private accounts to invest. Then overlay a tax system that is shared funding that starts at lower income levels but scales progressively, including wrt capital gains. And treats borrowing against appreciated assets as a monetization.
This is all very politically hard but is necessary. The alternative will be a soft revolution that simmers below the surface as we speak.
I don't find these types of replies to be intellectually honest in the least. They protest about the fact that regressive taxes are included, despite being the majority of taxes most people pay. Sometimes, they'll even pretend that the benefit a poor individual receives from food stamps exceeds the benefit that someone like Bezos receives from the existence of the interstate highway system, or naval protection of shipping routes from China.
This is all nonsense that the privileged few tell themselves to ignore the revolution that simmers below the surface.
I mean if you actually read what I wrote, it isn't what i said at all. At least pretend to have a principled discussion. I said certain taxes are included on one side of the ledger and not the other. Which is correct. Then once people agree on the buckets, they can be quantified. I didn't quantify them or claim some quantum benefit of one over the other. What you are doing is exactly what the authors did. Making a value judgment first, and facts be damned. Zero interest in dogma.
They don’t…..they pay more taxes than the average American. They do pay lower % of their income.
Should they be paying more absolutely…and I think many of them have even said they should. But who’s gonna change the tax laws
Because the US is controlled by billionaires, not the average Americans. The tax code has more holes than Swiss cheese. Politicians purchased by them are writing the rules. When they still fail miserably after all these, we are required to bail them all out like 2008.
Seeing the debate to date in this thread, I'd encourage many people here to read the book The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.
In short - the person who said "Income is for peasants" nailed it. The people who run the show want us arguing about income taxes because it's squabbling over pennies in the couch cushions and distracting from where the real money is.
Aristocracy is hereditary. How many of reddit's favorite punching bag billionaires inherited their wealth?
America doesn't have dynasties - never really did, definitely doesn't now. Instead, America has innovators who create businesses that provide services so well they become exceedingly wealthy. Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Netflix, Google, none of these are multi-generational enterprises - hell, all these booming AI startups are so new I have underwear older than they are. Describing this as "aristocracy" is nothing less than reprehensible fear-mongering and triggering rhetoric.
I am guessing that you have not seen the numbers on family offices. And the people who have shaped tax policy largely were dynastic families. Seriously, read the book I referenced, it is a quick read, and if you disagree with what the author posits, then you will at least have some perspective on an opposing viewpoint that you can use in future debate.
First of all, they are lying.
Their own article contradicts the headline.
> (Bezos) claimed last week that the top 1 percent pays 40 percent of taxes and the bottom 50 percent only 3 percent.
This is true. Unequivocally true.
>All social groups pay broadly the same effective tax rate today—around 25 percent to 30 percent of income, including all taxes
So they don't pay less tax. We all pay, in aggregate, about the same tax rate as per tha article. Of course, rich people still pay far far more tax because their income is much higher.
Secondly, they are trying to combine all taxes. But they attribute payroll tax to the workers. But it's more accurately thought of a split or falling on the rich since they pay the salaries. In his earlier chart, they omit corporate taxes, which are effectively paid by the rich since they own those companies. And by extension and property, operation, or other taxes paid by the business should be attributed to the owners.
And of course, he ignores transfers and social welfare payments. If you look at net taxes paid after accounting for benefits received, the working class tax rates falls. He omits that because it counters his narrative.
He cherry picks the data for Bezos.
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ProPublica-Billionaires-Fact-Sheet-Updated.pdf
Payroll taxes are a tax on the wealthy because they pay the salaries? By that logic, wouldn't personal income taxes also be a tax on the wealthy since they also pay the salaries on which those taxes are levied?
It's because they're the job creators, if they have to pay taxes they couldn't afford to build AI data centers which will eliminate 50% of all jobs. That makes sense right?
I don't care if they pay more or less, I just want them to be as inconvenienced by taxes as I am. To share in the burden of it, to have their ascent slowed as mine is. Shit, I'd be happy if they shared half of the burden at this point.
This was according to a leaked report on the income taxes of the 25 richest Americans back in 2021. It appears to be calculated according to taxes paid vs gains realized after a 5 year period. Not a standard per year calculation, but it does appear to be correct if the leaked tax returns are valid.
Let's assume that this single website's reporting is correct. The site mentions that reported an income of $125M but paid taxes of $23.7M. How is his income tax rate .1%?
It appears that they are considering wealth growth to be income?
I’m all for capitalism but once you pass 2 billion (with the proper taxation laws in place making it very difficult to even achieve 2 billion), you should be forced to reinvest every extra penny of profit back into your business and help people to put food on their families tables (higher wages?).
Billionaires had one good idea and a lot of luck (some of them even stole their ideas like that assclown Zuckerberg). They aren’t special nor should they be worshiped for “working extra hard blah blah blah”. The number beside their name is how out of touch with reality they are - nothing else.
Capitalism on rails is what we had before that stupid fuck Reagan got into office. The wealth gap was far smaller, jobs paid living wages and people were generally happier. All of these things are facts. You don’t like them, pick up a book and read a bit.
Do you dispute the fact that Reaganomics created massive wealth gaps and shifted many jobs overseas?
The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 slashed the top marginal income tax rate from 70% down to 28%. The corporate tax rate was cut from 48% to 34%.
I'm willing to be wrong but I'm curious what your ultimate point is. Are you arguing that everything is "fine" right now or something else? Genuinely curious - not trying to troll.
Things are kinda a mess right now. But that's been true for most of history.
So think it's more of a return to mean than anything else.
I was just pointing out that making billionaires put their money into the business isn't a cure. It's the recipe for how they got that rich in the first place.
There are two main problematic issues. 1) How did they earn their billions AND 2) how much of it is being taxed.
Gaining wealth via paying low wages with diminishing benefits and high prices charged to consumers for their products is a major reason for wealth creation. Then toss in shotty/fraudulent products, poor service to customers, manipulating the consumer via technology and being an emerging near monopoly. Then consider the dollar value they gain from destroy the environment and letting mother nature and the public pay the price via early death/disease/poor health and catastrophic weather events caused by the climate change crisis. They amassed a fortune at the peril of others.
Next is avoiding taxes. That is the cherry on the top of decadent wealth. By not paying their taxes, the rest of us have to pay more or be impacted on major government cuts that support the working class. Clearly, Income/wealth inequality is HUGE and is impact on the working class is immense and unsustainable!
In the modern world, every single new billionaire is a billionaire because some other millionaires/billionaries bid the price of their company's stock through the roof.
None of them "made a billion" by how much or how little they pay their employees or charge customers. None of the money that made them a billionaire came from either of those sources. For all practical purposes it all came from unrelated rich people.
Can't centibillionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Ellison just sell $1 billion in stock and live off that the rest of their lives? So they pay taxes once and never again?
They sell stock regularly, it's public information, feel free to look it up. Bezos, for example, likes to sell boatloads to shove straight into Blue Origin.
They pay less taxes because they have very smart accountants and lawyers that know the law and find loopholes to exploit.
For example, their wealth is not in cash but in stocks value that only increases its value over time, so when they need money, they don't sell as selling meaning paying tax for profit.
Instead, they borrow against their own stocks and debts are not taxable. They use other people and institutions money to invest and increase even more wealth and with their money after it start generating revenue it start paying back with small interest.
Repeat the same thing forever and that's just one method to do so and to be honest is a really smart one.
I would do the same if I could but sadly in my country I cannot use my investments as guarantor to get money from bank and invest more.
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Genuine question - does anyone else feel dumber reading Zucman / Saez?
Like they know theyre redefining terms / torturing definitions - but to what end? Like surely you can just say:
I don't agree with that conclusion, but at least itd be intellectually honest
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 20 hours ago
You’re absolutely right - it’s this sort of dumb shit that honestly makes it more difficult for progressive directives to be passed. You sit there and lie to people about how taxes work for long enough, then someone shows them the truth in black and white and you’ve done nothing but discredit the good things you were trying to do.
The headline is a prime example: billionaires absolutely do not pay less taxes than me, and I paid more taxes last year than most people make. What is true is that often their effective tax rates are lower due to the structure of income realized, but that’s nowhere near the same as “paid less in taxes”.
It’s this sort of overt refusal to use accuracy in politics that continues to both dumb down the discourse and provide ample ammunition over and over again to those who wish to discredit these discussions.
The US has one of the most progressive tax systems of any developed nation - that is a mathematical fact, both in structure and in realized percentage of taxes paid by income earners. What’s also true is the US has the lowest taxes of any developed nation by a huge margin. This isn’t a hard discussion to have - however without fail you get headlines like the above, which is why your average Redditor is so aggressively misinformed.
0dteSPYFDs | 17 hours ago
I think the crux of the issue is for very high net worth individuals, equity shouldn’t have preferential tax treatment.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 17 hours ago
Sure, but that’s not what they’re getting at here, they’re just openly lying about how the tax code works and actual burdens of tax paid to push a point.
You could sit there and make a strong logical fact based argument that at some given threshold capital gains taxation should be at ordinary income rates. That’s honestly not hard to do at all.
But rather than do that, here they’re just fabricating a reality and frankly openly lying (as in the headline is an objectively false statement) to try to accomplish the same thing.
I’ll never understand why people think this would be a useful tactic in journalism, but Reddit gobbles this shit up cuz the audience is exactly the type of person the author thinks they are lol.
0dteSPYFDs | 16 hours ago
Oh I know, I don’t disagree. It drives me crazy when people harp on stock loans when that’s not the issue. People do the same thing with home equity loans all the time to avoid liquidating assets.
The issue is that people who are high earners that are salaried are getting taxed more than twice the amount of capital gains. Stock buybacks and low corporate taxes exasperate the problem.
If equity had normal taxation (or even increased for certain brackets), corporate taxes weren’t decreased, tax advantaged accounts weren’t valid/available to UNHW individuals and buybacks were banned/limited, things would feel a lot more “fair”.
Market_Chemestry | 13 hours ago
While it might feel more fair, it would raise costs for the middle class, slow growth (meaning overall government revenue), and slow wage increases.
The underlying problem is education: A population that doesn't understand the subject can be easily lied to by articles like this to gin up outrage for clicks.
Suspicious_Place1270 | 11 hours ago
in my opinion, equity should have preferential treatment to enable people to own stuff
a wealth cap or superprogressive wealth tax could be implemented by some inflation adjusted number if you ask me, but not more than that
however, there should be heavy taxes levied on people that inherit stuff, with the possibility to pay said taxes in installments for a couple of years in case of an inherited business etc.
here, an inheritance cap, meaning again progressive taxes from a specific number adjusted for inflation, should also be implemented
it's simply not fair to inherit stuff, but it is fair if you got the stuff yourself
this all does not change in principle unless people stop dying.
EpsteinClient4547 | 15 hours ago
I literally know a billionaire who just tried to sue the IRS for 10 billion because we found out he didnt pay taxes
tyn_peddler | 15 hours ago
> The headline is a prime example: billionaires absolutely do not pay less taxes than me, and I paid more taxes last year than most people make
There are lots of ways we can look at taxes, but since taxes are paid as a percentage of assets, income, etc, it makes the most sense to first discuss tax burden as a percentage of assets, income, etc. The headline is completely accurate.
Your complaints about accuracy are ironically rooted in misinformation campaigns run by parties trying to confuse the tax discussion, not clarifying it.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 14 hours ago
No, if that was the case the article would talk about percentages, but it doesn’t. It makes an absolute claim.
Why do mental backflips to defend an author that clearly doesn’t respect your intelligence?
tyn_peddler | 14 hours ago
Perhaps because I read the article.
>All social groups pay broadly the same effective tax rate today—around 25 percent to 30 percent of income, including all taxes—with billionaires having the lowest tax rate: 24 percent on average in 2018–20.
>More broadly, if one looks at the 400 wealthiest Americans, recent research shows that billionaires tend to have low individual income tax rates.
>Bezos’s total effective tax rate was just 15 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, the average person in the US pays around 30 percent of their income in taxes.
Taxation is based on rates, so any statement on taxes should assume to be based on rates, unless specifically called out.
Edit: Removed polite language that made my comments unclear. Your objections are rooted in a misunderstanding of taxation.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 14 hours ago
I don’t really know what to tell you, my statements were very simple and straightforward, if you’re having trouble understanding them then asking for clarification might be a better move than being argumentative and constantly switching gears?
The headline is a claim of absolute figures, it is an openly false claim. I can’t really make that any more straightforward. I’m sorry, but I don’t find taxes to be a difficult topic, so I’m not sure how else to convey this, and frankly I’m not sure that it’s worth the effort given that you’re choosing to manifest your confusion in the form of arguing rather than trying to learn something.
jspeed04 | 12 hours ago
I feel like you and u/tyn_peddler are broadly reaching the same conclusion and making the same argument, but are, or have taken different avenues to arrive there.
I take your point that the sensationalist headline is clickbait and does not fully respect the reader’s intelligence because the notion that anyone who we know has paid more sales tax, property tax etc. than the 400 wealthiest Americans is circumspect at best; however, I think OP also makes a salient point thattax rates, thus, percentages and the proportion of one’s wealth—be it from capital or income— are implied when discussing taxes whole cloth.
What am I missing?
_ii_ | 20 hours ago
Almost all of these kind of articles use Net Worth increases and income interchangeably. For the majority of Americans, who has practically zero dollar net worth, the weekly or bi-weekly wage is all they know. They cannot comprehend how a company founder creating billions of value that isn’t part of a paycheck. I hear more and more people demanding “the rich” make less money, implying somehow more money could flow down to them, to make it fair. Tax the rich is a much more complicated issue to explain, so just saying the 1% is paying the majority of taxes already won’t help.
Long-Blood | 19 hours ago
Tbh, when talking about value creation, a companies stock value is tied much more to market forces like momentum, government fiscal policy, and central bank monetary manipulation.
The ceo of Micron isnt doing anything extra to creat value for the shareholders.
Micron is caught up in global ai hysteria.
Theres nothing wrong with finding a way to tax all of that extra liquidity flooding the system in order to help bring down the deficit.
capnwally14 | 17 hours ago
Sure but if shareholders sell those shares we already tax them. So we’re already making lots of money from the buying and selling, as well as on corporate taxes (and on any dividends)
If you start just taxing companies because people are willing to pay some forward p/e what do you think the second order effects are? Why would companies list in the US vs somewhere with more favorable tax treatment?
You seem to be worried about the deficit - that’s because we spend more than we take in. but you don’t also seem to be realizing that we generate record revenues. Individual states have tax receipts larger than developed nations.
If you raise taxes or cause companies or innovators to leave, you might be permanently impairing your tax base (which is the exact critique of the California wealth tax which has seen lots of its wealth simply leave).
This isn’t a new issue either - for European nations that have tried onerous wealth taxes the same thing has happened. Unsurprisingly capital responds to incentives - and you can easily erode your tax base more than you raise
Long-Blood | 17 hours ago
I think the claim that corporations will leave the US if we tax them more is completely ridiculous.
But i would LOVE to be proven wrong. So we should try it and see what happens.
But besides that have you actually check to see how much of the federal tax revenue is from corporate taxes?
Its INSANELY low compared to how much profit they make, nevermind their absurd valuations.
capnwally14 | 6 hours ago
They already have offices outside of the US, what makes you think they won’t restructure to minimize US taxes?
That was the whole thing with the double Irish Dutch sandwich IP shenanigans from a decade ago, arguably most of irelands tech economy was due to tax arbitrage (which in Trump 1 if you remember we had large changes in the tax code to reshore lots of the capital that was parked overseas)
We have explicit proof given they’ve historically optimized their businesses around taxes, why would they suddenly not change?
Econ 101 is people reacting to incentives
suboptimus_maximus | 20 hours ago
Income is for peasants.
The number one thing that goes unappreciated by the masses is that most of the wealth is not and never was their income. It’s capital gains on the value of assets, which have deferred taxation and then preferential low tax rates when they do get taxed. And compounding returns are an exponential function so deferred taxation on asset values that have historically vastly outperformed inflation is a huge cheat code that has, predictably, resulted in acute wealth concentration and inequality.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Returns such as dividends are taxed as income..
>most of the wealth is not and never was their income
All of it was income at some point. Stocks when granted via whatever compensation vehicle (rsu/options/etc) are taxed as income when given
RedAero | 18 hours ago
When given. But their wealth is, by a huge margin, a product of the increase in the value of those shares since.
Say Bezos got 100 shares back in 1998 for $0.1 each, so he got $10 as income. Those shares are now $270 each and have split 4 times - 400x270=108k. $10 of his $108000 wealth was ever income.
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
Yeah and we're talking about income taxes and income in general not gains in capital valuations. Two entirely different things.
That's more of a lesson on invest early and hold for long term instead of doing what most people do when they get equity grants which is selling it like a dumbass.
I know a guy who worked at the Tesla plant a year after they started in Cali. If he never sold his RSUs he'd be able to retire now, but he sold them to pay for vacations.
My general solution would to be to force people by law to buy equities and force them to hold them for a decade +, that andprobably transition portions of social security to superannuation
RedAero | 18 hours ago
>Yeah and we're talking about income taxes and income in general not gains in capital valuations.
You were talking, as you quoted verbatim, about wealth, and where it comes from. Most, by which I mean all but an irrelevant portion, of a billionaire's wealth was never income.
You're doing the same thing the people you are arguing with up and down this thread do regularly when they post those stupid memes about how long someone would have to work to earn some billionaire's net worth, as if wealth is somehow the sum total of income (worse yet is when they think their wealth is somehow skimmed off their employees' labour). You know as well as I do that wealth is just what other people think what you own is worth, it has nothing to do with income whatsoever.
Willing_Activity_855 | 17 hours ago
>You were talking, as you quoted verbatim, about wealth, and where it comes from.
Nope I was simply pointing out everything they have was initially hit with income taxes at some point, and then later when they sold they also had to pay capital gains on top of that. So multiple tax payments and that's not even talking about tax incidence of corporate taxes.
I was simply calling out the bullshit of conflating income taxes and capital gains taxes and the populist removal of context in regards to capital gains taxes.
We never talked about if the majority of that wealth was subject to some percentage of taxation. Which that depends on the individual, if they where an utter moron and sold shares instead of holding them yeah they'd have had a higher tax as a percentage of their total worth....but then they'd be dickless, imagine not believing in the company you founded and trying to diversify instead of going full portfolio, I wouldn't invest in such a founder.
Sure we should raise taxes via new brackets, I'd be okay with more progressive brackets in capital gains if we eliminated corporate taxes and replaced them with new cap gains and income brackets + the x tax
MegaBlastoise23 | 18 hours ago
Yeah and my 401K has massively grown in value so what?
RedAero | 17 hours ago
I have no idea what you're trying to say.
Independent_Mud_6106 | 20 hours ago
Saez, Zucman and Piketty have absolutely perfect data, but they get the trends right. I guess most of their estimates are somewhat over- or underestimated. But the argument that the tax code is progressive is wrong when it comes to the super-rich. They pay super low effective tax rates
Edit: ... do not have perfect data oops
dark567 | 20 hours ago
But their data does show that? It shows zuckerberg paying an effective rate of 27%, higher than the working class. Sure they also say he pays some tiny percentage of his wealth as tax but no one in the US is really taxed on their total wealth that's not particularly higher or lower than the average American.
Independent_Mud_6106 | 20 hours ago
Do you mean that iceberg picture he posted? I only briefly saw it, but I thought it shows a rate of 27% on the actual income of Zuckerberg, while the tax rate based on his overall net worth is much lower, approaching 0 for stock gains
https://nitter.net/gabriel_zucman/status/2059209907589529891#m
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 20 hours ago
It’s a bullshit infographic because they’re using unrealized gains here. That’s not income, so it’s not taxed. Realization point is where it’s taxed.
So rather than being honest and saying “hey look, here’s his income and taxes, but like there’s room for more” they’re dishonest and manipulate the income figure to make the numerator much bigger.
I don’t understand why so many people in media rely on bullshitting people to push a point when the same point could be evidenced by the truth. All it does is changes the conversation from focusing on taxes to pointing out how much disinformation they’re using to get there.
IPissExcellentThrows | 19 hours ago
It's ridiculously dishonest what they're doing. They know what they're doing too. But clearly a lot of people don’t understand it well enough, so they eat it up. Shameless from the author.
mistressbitcoin | 16 hours ago
The average person reads at probably a 5th grade level, only reads the headlines, and believes that their life is in shambles because someone [a billionaire] sold them the cell phone they use to doomscroll.
The cruel twist is that without the doomscrolling, the billionaires wouldn't be as rich as they are.
Ceno-taur | 15 hours ago
>That’s not income, so it’s not taxed.
You can absolutely tax unrealized gains. A lot of jurisdictions do that via property taxes. And I also don't think that you are going to deny the fact that those unrealized gains do eventually translate into substantial amounts of disposable capital.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 15 hours ago
You cannot do this on the federal local, no. It’s constitutionally prohibited.
And the future conversion of unrealized gain to realized gain is sorta irrelevant, this infographic represents unrealized gain as income, which it is not. If you can’t admit that’s an openly deceitful tactic aimed at fooling low acumen readers then I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself.
SeaworthinessLow6636 | 14 hours ago
It’s 2026. Nobody gives a shit about the constitution.
Ceno-taur | 15 hours ago
It is not explicitly prohibited by constitution since it is pretty evident that starting from a certain pretty high level unrealized gains do translate (of course not 1:1) to income. If dems can pack the SCOTUS, they can absolutely dismiss any constitution challenge to a potential unrealized gains tax.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 15 hours ago
No, it’s explicitly prohibited lol. The entire tax code and legal concept of income is extremely well established here, and unrealized gain is squarely not income.
A court full of RBGs would rule against this fantasy, if you wanna keep your head in the clouds that’s fine but that’s not how any aspect of the legal framework within this country works. Me personally, I’ll stick to things that can be done, not writing fanfiction.
ThimSlick | 14 hours ago
Where are you getting the idea that it’s explicitly prohibited?
Ceno-taur | 14 hours ago
>No, it’s explicitly prohibited lol
Have an article of constitution with that exact wording at hand? Or an article that prohibits any amendments to the tax code?
Ceno-taur | 14 hours ago
> I’ll stick to things that can be done
If the GOP-led SCOTUS can rule that a president can have absolute immunity for his official actions then I don't think that a dem-led SCOTUS can't rule that unrealized gains do effectively translate to income.
Radicalnotion528 | 15 hours ago
Property taxes are viewed as part of the cost of maintaining the property and for funding local infrastructure. Not only that, local governments determines the value.
Stocks should not be viewed the same way.
Ceno-taur | 15 hours ago
You can apply a similar logic to stocks as well - companies do use or benefit from the federal infrastructure, or? It is a mere expansion of the taxable base that can be done in a very progressive manner.
Radicalnotion528 | 14 hours ago
In that case, it makes much more practical sense to apply a tax to the underlying physical assets that the companies own. For example, a factory, data center. Like real property taxes, it can't be easily avoided.
Ceno-taur | 14 hours ago
I really doubt that a NVDA has immense swaths of taxable property or physical assets.
ants_are_everywhere | 14 hours ago
I see the logic behind wanting to tax unrealized gains, but I don't see how it would work in practice. Unrealized gains turn into money now via loans.
When you read the chapter of the history book that says "By 2030, most of the ultra wealthy were taking out large loans to finance their tax burdens" it sounds like it's about to describe an economic implosion and not a period of gains for the lower classes.
Under a plan that taxed unrealized gains, the government would get a notable part of taxes indirectly via loans from the banks. That creates systemic issues, both politically with respect to the government and economically with respect to markets, jobs, inequality, etc.
As people default on loans, the bank starts accumulating shares. But they can't hold large equity positions, so they periodically liquidate large numbers of shares of stock in companies arbitrarily. Some guy who was an executive at XYZ corp 20 years ago and has nothing to do with their operations runs into financial difficulty and now needs to liquidate shares to pay taxes. Over time you're hitting the market with these stochastic liquidation events that are untethered to the performance of the companies. In addition to sending shocks through the market, these shares get picked up by private equity and index funds like BlackRock who begin controlling even more of the economy.
How will banking regulation work when the banks play a crucial role in paying taxes? What happens in a recession? Banks tighten lending, people can't borrow against unrealized gains to pay their taxes so you have some combination of people just not paying and people having to liquidate large positions to pay taxes. This latter puts even more downward pressure on the market during a bear market and the former means an already struggling government has to decide whether to devote large amounts of resources to trying to recover unpaid taxes from people who can fight prolonged court battles.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the IRS would have to compensate for unrealized losses in a downturn since they a already taxed the unrealized gains that weren't actually gains. So even more money is flowing out of the government when it's most needed. Suppose Jeff Bezos's wealth goes up in a boom year and the next year a recession hits. Bezos overpaid by $1 billion in the boom year. How will it look for the party in power when they cut Bezos a $1 billion tax refund during the recession the following year?
The only way I can think of from keeping the whole thing from collapsing catastrophically is if over time more and more of the government is devoted to ensuring the stock market never declines. It's basically the gilded age. The government would be constantly intervening to spend tax payer money to ensure there's a permanent floor in the stock market. And the biggest beneficiaries would be the wealthy.
windemotions | 6 hours ago
Well said. When I read white guys arguing against wealth taxes, it reminds me of white guys arguing for slavery.
Same idea. Might take a change in laws but societies evolve to be less evil, sometimes.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Oh look slopulism data.
Showing net worth relative to taxes is stupid
IPissExcellentThrows | 19 hours ago
Using unrealized gains is absurdly dishonest lol. I'm not taxed on unrealized gains either. It's horrible policy to enact it for obvious reasons. Using it to try and push a narrative just completely discredits them. They aren't trying to actually do a study. They're pushing an intentionally dishonest narrative.
Can't believe I'm sitting here defending billionaire taxes. Raise their taxes by all means, but at least don't intentionally mislead people who aren't financially literate enough to understand what you're doing.
xxwww | 13 hours ago
The constant back and forth discussions about it always make me wonder how completely detached many people are from the concept of investing. Like purchasing any security and watching it go up and down over time you'd think someone would have the same confusion about taxing unrealized gains but no lol
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
We don't have all the years but this was cited in the article.
"Bezos’s total effective tax rate was just 15 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, the average person in the US pays around 30 percent of their income in taxes."
embourbe | 19 hours ago
You're comparing Bezos' effective income tax rate to what others pay in all taxes including sales tax property tax etc.
ff904 | 16 hours ago
No, total effective tax rate includes all jurisdictions.
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Please don’t cherry pick years, if you want to use Bezos as the example crawl through amazons quarterly filings so we can see how much he’s done over the last decade and do an average.
It’s dishonest otherwise to reference one year from 8 years ago
By my quick math:
Over the last decade he’s done about 40b in Amazon share sales (on avg 4b a year)
That translates to about 960M a year on average just on NIIT and federal taxes (not including state or anything else)
We know the tax brackets so this isn’t super hard to calculate.
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
Wow aren't you demanding. My post was in response to another comment. I get that you are passionate about your concern for billionaires, but take it easy.
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
I’m passionate for forcing slopulists to hold themselves to a higher bar
Being factually accurate is the minimum
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 16 hours ago
It’s weird to be in an economics sub and get this aggressive over someone using basic tax math.
TBradley | 18 hours ago
In the magnanimity of the law both poor and rich can take loans on their unrealized gains and avoid income tax. I forgot, someone remind me which banks will give me a low interest loan on 2 shares of a company?
Iron-Fist | 17 hours ago
27% is wayyyy less than I pay as a professional, especially when you include things like payroll taxes (another 13% off the top) and healthcare (employers only pay for employee so having a family is shadow taxed) and sales taxes....
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
The leftist economists typically assert rich people do not pay taxes.
Meanwhile, you can see on a quarterly basis the sales of tech founders which directly imply taxes being paid
I’m going to trust the regulatory filings vs the assertions of the Berkeley profs trying to hawk their new book on this one
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 16 hours ago
> The leftist economists typically assert rich people do not pay taxes.
Can you cite a single economist who has said this? Or we just doing the Reddit thing where you write some fanfiction about the world then criticize that?
Doctor_Shotbottom | 20 hours ago
The Buy/Borrow/Die loophole lets them pay very low effective tax rates.
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Bezos has to publicly file when he sells- they’re too lazy to look at his sec filings. He’s paid almost a billion a year for the last decade just off Amazon share sales
ohhhbooyy | 20 hours ago
I find it funny that everyone assumes he pays 0 taxes. Yet the only people who have that information is himself, his tax accountant, and the IRS.
It’s even funnier how they just assume he uses the buy/borrows/die strategy
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Never occurred to them to question why, If as they claim he was all in on buy borrow die, he sold 40b of Amazon stock in the last decade
Like surely he would have kept borrowing?
ohhhbooyy | 19 hours ago
It also never occurred to them he needs to still pay off the loan with large sums of money. So if he sells he gets taxed. They also assumed he owns majority of all Amazon stock. He owns like 8%.
Another thing that people seem to misunderstand is if he gets paid in stocks he doesn’t get taxed. But if you do get paid in stocks you get taxed a the regular income tax rates.
ChiGuy6124 | 19 hours ago
Humor is open to interpretation, but I find it funny that so many people are front and center in the war against poor people. Bezos is the worst sort of genius billionaire scumbag, he got his and moved on. Props to his wife who has a social conscious, something you may not be familiar with.
ohhhbooyy | 19 hours ago
What war against poor people? The same poor people who frequently use Amazon? Want to win the war? Stop using Amazon, stop buying from Walmart, stop using debt to pay for wants, etc.
But Americans are addicted to cheap consumption. People want these companies to pay higher wages but refuse to pay higher prices for higher wages. Thats why we ship labor overseas to exploit lower cost internationally.
Then everyone makes
sorry_outtafucks | 18 hours ago
That's not where Amazon's money maker is tho. You need to look at AWS.
ChiGuy6124 | 18 hours ago
No, the same poor people who prop up corporations by working for low wages and then spending their paycheck on necessities . Despite your concern, America corporations are doing just fine. In fact they are doing amazing. People want to survive and thrive, Corporations want to reward shareholders. This is not hard.
C638 | 17 hours ago
These are not mutually incompatible.
ohhhbooyy | 20 hours ago
Buy/Borrow/Die loophole is hardly even practiced. Why? Because it’s risky. You’re making an assumption that Amazon still be around and worth more or the same as it is today 30-40 years from now. Assuming Bezos lives that many more years.
Why is it risky? Because 30-40 years ago you would be making the same assumption on the owners of blockbuster, Kmart, Sears, etc, it might’ve sound like the winning strategy then, but it definitely isn’t now.
EndonOfMarkarth | 19 hours ago
Then add in the assumption that these loans are supposedly “interest free” - because banks apparently go out of their way to lose money
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Bro try explaining tail risk to these people, they can't even comprehend it
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 15 hours ago
I’d settle for starting with a few people understanding carry costs but that’s a bridge too far it seems
MegaBlastoise23 | 18 hours ago
This reddit brain dead take needs to fucking die
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 16 hours ago
This isn’t a real thing that people actually do, just a meme on Reddit among individuals who don’t understand carry costs.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 20 hours ago
Most people aren’t even referring to the right thing when they discuss buy borrow die. It’s not really a way to avoid income tax, it just allows for the dual combination of a step-up at death + no estate tax
N7day | 19 hours ago
How could it ever avoid estate tax?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 18 hours ago
The estate tax applies to the taxable estate and not the gross estate, so it’s calculated after the debt payoff has reduced the value of the estate
So the debt is taken out prior to death, the cash from the loan is swapped into an irrevocable trust in exchange for appreciated assets, and then the debt reduces the value of the estate. So the appreciated assets get the step-up, and don’t face the estate tax
snark42 | 17 hours ago
Do you happen to have a source that explains it better?
AFAIK Irrevocable trusts don't get a step up and you can't just swap cash for assets without considering it a sale.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 17 hours ago
You’re right that irrevocable trusts don’t get the step up, but that’s why you swap the assets in there back into the taxable estate. If it’s a grantor trust, you can swap assets of equivalent value without it being treated as a sale, since a grantor trust is a disregarded entity for US tax purposes. The process would go like this:
Individual contributes their stock to an irrevocable grantor trust early on in their wealth-planning journey (grantor allows a swap power, while irrevocable removes future appreciation from the taxable estate)
At some point prior to death (ideally as close as possible), individual gets an equity instrument or debt to receive up-front cash in exchange for future payment or rights to collateral, similar to a prepaid forward contract
Individual utilizes their swap power of the grantor trust (disregarded step) to take back the appreciated stock in exchange for the upfront cash from step 2. This allows them to bypass both the estate tax (since the note is deducted from the gross value of the estate) and get a step up in basis on the stock upon death (since the appreciated assets get swapped back into the taxable estate prior to death).
snark42 | 14 hours ago
I read up on this. It's a little more complicated, because the grantor is responsible for the trust taxes and the loan swap can be problematic for taxes if not structured well, but estate attorneys probably get the big bucks to avoid the taxes I'm sure. The trust can even write a loan to the grantor in another twisty loophole.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 16 hours ago
You’ve very clearly never been involved in any sort of estate planning work ever, why sit here and just BS your way through something like this?
Irrev trust contributions are subject to the same estate limits as everything else, you can’t swap cash in exchange for assets in an irrev trust for any sort of actual gain, there’s no discounting lmao, not that this would make any sense anyway, there’s no step up here, there’s no net benefit to doing any of this. It’s like you just combined a bunch of words from a year one CFP course and vomited them out trying to convince people there was some secret sauce here.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 16 hours ago
This is an odd response from you, you pretty much always know what you’re talking about. But in this case you’re wrong, and for some reason aggressive about it
I’m a CPA and see this pretty frequently. I’ll take it step by step, and I’ve talked about it previously like here and here
>Irrev trust contributions are subject to the same estate limits as everything else
Irrevocable trusts aren’t included in the taxable estate, and don’t face the estate tax. You pay gift tax on your contribution, but it happens at the time of the contribution itself, so future appreciation isn’t subject to the gift tax or estate tax
>you can’t swap cash in exchange for assets
§675 details the swap powers of grantor trusts, which allow you to swap assets of equivalent value. This is a disregarded transaction from an income tax standpoint, because grantor trusts aren’t separate entities.
>there’s no discounting
I never mentioned discounting
>there’s no step up here
Agree, assets in an irrevocable trust retain their carryover tax basis, which is why the swap power is important to pull those appreciated assets back into the taxable estate to get the step-up. And since cash has no basis disparity, it goes into the irrevocable trust
>there’s no net benefit
In the absence of this, you can either avoid the estate tax through an irrevocable trust (and not get the step-up), or leave the assets in the taxable estate, pay the estate tax, and get the stepped up basis
With this strategy, you’re economic position hasn’t changed (cash and debt offset), but you’ve reduced your taxable estate by the value of the appreciated stock (from the debt), and you’ve gotten a step-up on those appreciated assets. I explained more here
Again, disappointing comment from you here
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 15 hours ago
> You pay gift tax on your contribution,
No, you don’t. This is what I’m talking about. There’s no way you’re a CPA, because this is a beginner mistake.
You have a single lifetime exclusion, contributions to irrevocable trusts constitute a gift of present value which is deducted from the lifetime estate deduction. You do not pay gift tax on anything here unless you’ve exhausted your estate limits, in which case doing any sort of irrev trust is generally a poor idea.
> 675 details the swap powers of grantor trusts, which allow you to swap assets of equivalent value.
Did you on purpose exclude the part of my post directly after where you quoted where I said that? Just to argue and try to save face??? The literal next line is pointing out it’s a straight exchange, I know you had to read it? Why be this dishonest?
> I never mentioned discounting
No, but if you understood trust math you’d know that the value of trust formation lies in discounting factors, which is why I brought it up, that’s not a factor here - you’d know that if you were a CPA.
> but you’ve reduced your taxable estate by the value of the appreciated stock (from the debt), and you’ve gotten a step-up on those appreciated
This would never work in the real world, aside from all of the technical errors I pointed out above this is effectively a sham transaction that circumvents estate rules and would almost certainly run an extremely high risk of the IRS pulling the assets back in to the estate. Almost no decent estate lawyer would sign off on this.
> Again, disappointing comment from you
Considering that you just openly misrepresented two things I said, fucked up how discounting worked, somehow had no idea how trust contributions work within estate thresholds, and still didn’t address all of the issues I mentioned here I’d say maybe drop the act?
Having someone sit here and claim to be a CPA then immediately make a completely incorrect claim regarding how gifting within an irrev trust hits a tax return, then call my comment disappointing is what I’ve come to expect on this sub sadly.
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 14 hours ago
Soooo, was there no response here?
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 15 hours ago
>You do not pay gift tax on anything here unless you’ve exhausted your estate limits
We’re talking about billionaires here lmao, every single one of them is past their unified exclusion. That’s the entire point of using irrevocable trusts to freeze the value, because it allows the majority of appreciation to pass on untaxed, which wouldn’t happen if it was part of the estate
>in which case doing any sort of irrev trust is generally a poor idea
You can drop the facade here, we both know you don’t understand this. Irrevocable trusts don’t really make sense below the estate tax exclusion, because the only concern is the step-up, as you’re not paying transfer taxes either way. Only when you’ve exhausted the limit do irrevocable trusts become important, because it becomes necessary to pull assets out of the estate to avoid the estate tax
>did you on purpose exclude the part of my post
You literally added “for any sort of actual gain” in your comment, which I ignored because I never said there was a gain. In fact, I specified multiple times the exact opposite, the grantor swap is disregarded. That’s why I just clarified it again in my comment, because it didn’t seem like you actually had read mine. You also said “it wouldn’t make sense anyways”, which is what my comment was directed towards, to help you understand why it does make sense
>a gift of present value
FMV, not present value
>the value of trust formation lies in discounting factors
The value of (irrevocable) trust formation lies in shielding assets from the taxable estate. I assume you’re talking about valuation discounts of private assets from LOC or LOM, which is nowhere near the most important benefit when we’re talking about decades of asset appreciation. And to point it out again, your first comment said “there’s no discounting”, whereas you seem to be saying the opposite now
>make a completely incorrect claim
Again, you can’t point out a single incorrect thing I’ve said, and you’re getting really defensive about it. Your entire issue with my comment seems to be that I simply didn’t call out the unified exemption, and my answer to that is that my example assumes you’ve already eclipsed the exemption (or else you wouldn’t need the strategy in the first place). If you want, I could apply the same logic and choose to invalidate your entire comment because you failed to mention the annual gift tax exclusion before touching the unified exemption amount
You might want to stick to economics if this is how you’re gonna act on topics outside of that scope
ants_are_everywhere | 16 hours ago
> The tax code is progressive already
The argument is that it is not, but their argument is not well written or clear IMO. Their real argument is "I think we should compute tax rate in this particular way, and if we do that then tax rates don't increase monotonically with income and so the tax policy is not progressive."
Framed this way, the immediate reaction is "okay how do you think we should calculate income for tax purposes?"
Instead with their framing, the immediate response is either "these numbers are wrong, the computation based on AGI shows it's progressive" or 'I'm angry at rich people," neither of which is will help them with their actual policy goals.
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
The whole article disputes that our tax system is truly progressive, because of the regressive nature of taxes that hit working Americans and not billionaires and the very wealthy; Mainly payroll taxes, but also excise taxes. You may disagree but if we are being honest, that is the economist's point.
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
It asserts that by pointing at a subset of taxes that are regressive. But that isn’t where we collect the bulk of our taxes, as evidenced by my link which shows you who pays, in terms of total tax dollars collected.
If you want to claim our tax code is regressive, you have to look at the entire tax code.
In other words: you’re saying our tax code could be more progressive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t progressive already (factually our tax code is more progressive than the European countries)
AdityaG10 | 20 hours ago
I think the contention is that most revenue is uncollected because of the way in which different forms of wealth go untaxed (payroll, estate, assets, capital gains, what have you) via the current income-based model in most industrialized countries.
No system where effective tax rate as a proportion of income is lower for a billionaire than it is for their secretaries can be called truly progressive.
I mean, in the US, the top 1% pay 40% of the base, but the concentration of ownership is currently thrice what it was during the guilded age, so it’s more of a predistributive argument based on purchasing power for the median consumer.
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Wealth isn’t income!
If I offer you 1b for your Reddit account, and you choose not to sell - do you have 1b dollars? Are you a billionaire now? How will you afford to meet your tax bill?
I know that’s a dumb example - but this is a real issue for founders of private companies that are illiquid.
You’re taxing someone on the potential to realize value, but not having realized it (I’d argue this is why borrowing above your cost basis should be treated as having a realized gain)
Several-Quests7440 | 20 hours ago
I agree, fuck billionaires and their bootlickers. Bring back 90% tax rates for the .05-.00001%
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Yes we should bring back the effective rates they paid back the. ( L o l )
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Why don’t we make it a marginal 1000% tax on anyone making a quadrillion dollars
If we just keep adding arbitrary brackets that no one is in, we’ll make the tax code even more progressive according to Saez and zucman. We need at least 40 empty tax brackets at the top
bobandgeorge | 17 hours ago
Earlier in the thread you were asking for intellectual honesty. Can you do you best to keep up your end?
capnwally14 | 5 hours ago
Im highlighting the absurdity of predicating the definition of fairness based on what theoretical tax brackets exist vs who is actually paying what share of the taxes
If you think wealth actually is an issue, and there are unethical amounts of money that can only be earned by stealing (as aoc does), why dont we have taxes exceeding 100% for certain income levels?
gimpwiz | 19 hours ago
Appreciation in asset value isn't revenue.
Payroll gets taxed in the US. Social security has a cap, but medicare is the opposite, there's an extra tax on high incomes.
Estate taxes exist in the US. There is a basis step-up and a fairly large exemption, but any truly large inheritance gets taxed quite a lot. The tax game is to structure inheritance to avoid that, and there's also a lot of weirdness in the step-up basis thing, but there's also the double taxation thing. It's gonna have a lot of controversy in any direction.
Realized capital gains are taxed.
The wealthy's real trick, other than buying politicians, is structuring their income to avoid taxes. Us normal people can't choose when we get paid or how much we get paid in order to optimize taxes. We certainly have some methods of deferring the whole problem until we die of old age but certainly nothing like the truly wealthy do. Some of these things could be changed, some would cause all sorts of weird problems to change, and some would be avoided with the magic of having access to lots of tax lawyers. People with structural advantages use them to maintain them.
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
*Much better said than me*
👀
"I think the contention is that most revenue is uncollected because of the way in which different forms of wealth go untaxed (payroll, estate, assets, capital gains, what have you) via the current income-based model in most industrialized countries."
"No system where effective tax rate as a proportion of income is lower for a billionaire than it is for their secretaries can be called truly progressive."
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Other people thinking you own a piece of wood that's now worth more is not income.
So no secretaries do not pay more in taxes than their billionaire bosses in terms of percentages
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
No, I am saying that at first glance, and as a great Republican talking point, our taxes are progressive, I don't dispute the evidence. But imo if you look under the hood it is an unfair system that favors the wealthy ( I don't know how that is even disputable but whatever), , and while it may fit the definition of being progressive, looking at it from a macro perspective, it is not.
cursedfan | 20 hours ago
It’s not about who pays tho, that misses the point. Of course rich ppl pay a majority of the tax, they also make a majority of the income (gee, whodda thunk). The issue is the relative amount of tax paid on that proportion of income.
Also the death tax is functionally nonexistent at this point so the truly wealthy will be richer than any aristocrat ever dreamed here very soon
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
Wealth isn’t income. It’s potential income.
An easy way to illustrate this: if the market implodes tomorrow, Bezos still owns the same number of Amazon shares. The price going down doesn’t mean he lost a billion dollars either if he didn’t sell.
So if the share price goes up and he doesn’t sell, he hasn’t made a billion either
Re death tax: no it’s very much thing at both the state and federal levels https://smartasset.com/taxes/all-about-the-estate-tax
It exclusively applies to wealthy folks
plateia-lumitar | 18 hours ago
I don't know what a "death tax" is, but I do know of the estate tax. I also know that the estate tax only brought in about $30 billion against $7 trillion in spending at the federal level. About 0.4% of the budget. So nothing. You can say the estate tax is "very much a thing", but I'd argue it's "very much ineffective" and long overdue for a complete overhaul that helps stop runaway dynastic wealth.
capnwally14 | 18 hours ago
See the issue is it applies when the billionaires die. Conveniently the left keeps pointing at billionaires that are still alive, so they wouldn’t have had to pay those yet
BigDictionEnergy | 20 hours ago
You're point is it could be even more regressive?
capnwally14 | 20 hours ago
It definitely could be more regressive! Very easily- just say we have a flat 15% tax on all forms of income with no higher tiers
BigDictionEnergy | 20 hours ago
How would that be more regressive if it resulted in billionaires paying more?
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
A 15% tax in all forms of income would not mean billionaires pay more
BigDictionEnergy | 19 hours ago
Because they don't have income. Because they don't work for a living. If we changed the definition of income to include their actual cash streams, they would pay more taxes.
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
They don't have income.
So when I looked at Teslas sec filings they're paying musk $0.00 in total comp?
Slopulism not even once
capnwally14 | 19 hours ago
It wouldn’t result in billionaires paying more, they’d pay less than they do today.
Flat taxes are regressive (Europe has more of these than the US, they rely on taxing the middle class more than their wealthy)
Literally the existence of different income / capital gains bands is the hallmark of a progressive tax system.
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
Sort of. My point is that it could be more fair, it needs to be more fair. Billionaires should be paying more taxes. If that is regressive to the current statis quo than yeah, I am fine with it.
BigDictionEnergy | 20 hours ago
No, I agree with you. That question was directed at capnwally14
ChiGuy6124 | 20 hours ago
Got it. sorry.
morbie5 | 20 hours ago
It is mostly progressive and the federal income tax is extremely progressive. The lower 20 to 30 percent of people not only pay zero or close to zero in federal income tax but in a lot of cases they pay negative federal income tax because they have zero federal income tax liability and they get refundable tax credits.
High earners (those making like 300-400k a year) pay a lot in fed income tax. However, the uber rich pay little in federal income tax (relatively speaking) for lots of reasons but one is that they have little in the way of income (relatively speaking). They have wealth, not income. If you want them to pay significantly more then you would need a wealth tax and/or trust/estate/gift reform.
And I'm going to dispute the findings in that article. I don't think the bottom 50% are paying 25-30 percent in taxes even when you account for fed payroll tax, excise taxes, and state/local taxes
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
>However, the uber rich pay little in federal income tax (relatively speaking)
Untrue. They pay the highest rates as a percentage of their income
morbie5 | 19 hours ago
No they don't. High earners (top end of the upper middle class) that have income from work instead of stock sales usually pay a higher percentage
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
You're engaging in slopusim
We can all look at elons compensation package and just do the math. Simple fact their huge stock packages are all taxed as income.
Separately they have capital gains taxes which is when they sell those stocks they where already hit with income taxes when they where granted. This is entirely separate from income taxes
I literally deal with the same shit myself
"Oh that 120k of RSUs we already hit with income taxes, instead of selling them you where responsible and held them. Pay more taxes plz". It's really fun because on a separate annoying form where you need to do so much bullshit to minimize your taxes and pull out all the transactions .....it's such a pain in the ass.
morbie5 | 18 hours ago
> You're engaging in slopusim
No, I'm engaging in factism my dude unit
> We can all look at elons compensation package and just do the math.
Not all of them have huge compensation packages like elon. A lot of them got their shares from when the company was private and had little value years ago. And then periodically sell those (now very valuable shares) and pay -> capital gains tax
> I literally deal with the same shit myself
You are an oligarch like elon?
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
>A lot of them got their shares from when the company was private
Which is a taxable event, taxable as income, I know I've been given pre IPO shares. And instead of being an absolute moron those founders held those shares..
Also that's false most of their shares come from larger and larger compensation packages as time goes on. Amazon has been public for decades + and in that same time bezos sold 40b worth in shares. Assuming he sold the oldest first (why wouldnt he) the majority of his shares he has now are from post IPO.
>Factism
Nah you're engaging in bullshit and misdirection. Which is why you're trying to conflate terms and hide from just pulling up sec filings on CEO compensation and reported sales of shares. Because if the evidence supported you you'd just pull up those filings or at least fucking reference them.
>You are an oligarch like elon?
Nope but I know the tax forms he has to fill out because I also have had to fill out similar forms. RSUs I get today are different than my previous package which was more similar to musks.
morbie5 | 18 hours ago
> Also that's false most of their shares come from larger and larger compensation packages as time goes on. Amazon has been public for decades + and in that same time bezos sold 40b worth in shares. Assuming he sold the oldest first (why wouldnt he) the majority of his shares he has now are from post IPO.
Dude just quit while you are behind, seriously. This is getting embarrassing for you
https://fortune.com/2026/04/10/amazon-jeff-bezos-80k-salary-billionaires-ceo-executive-chairman/
“Mr. Bezos requested not to receive additional compensation and has never received annual cash compensation in excess of his current amount,” the filing reads.
Part of the reason Bezos has kept his salary low and has never received stock compensation from Amazon is because he owned a large chunk of the company anyway.
“We believe that all Company-incurred security costs are reasonable and necessary and for the Company’s benefit, and that the amount of the reported security expenses for Mr. Bezos is especially reasonable in light of his low salary and the fact that he has never received any stock-based compensation,” the company wrote in the proxy statement.
gimpwiz | 19 hours ago
You can look up (eg) Warren Buffet's taxes, where even with AMT existing, his federal tax to booked income ratio for some years is lower than mine. The majority of his income is long term capital gains (20% marginal rate, until you do AMT calculations, net investment tax, deductions, etc) whereas my effective rate is higher and my marginal rate much higher. I haven't seen him publish his 2025 returns for example, but his 2010 returns had an effective rate of 17%.
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
And how did he get those shares that he ended up paying capital gains on?
From his income. From stock grants (income taxable), from cash used to purchase those shares .
And we can look at his income taxes and see he pays at the highest bracket
Don't try the populist bullshit of conflating income taxes with capital gains.
Shin my firm gives me 120k in RSUs, those are taxed as income. Then a year later when I go to sell they're taxed again as capital gains. When I use my cash (taxed as income) to buy shares of Nvidia and sell a year later sell those shares for a profit I'm taxed again as capital gains. Sure I could be not subhuman and continuously reinvest that capital after the sell and diversify it, then I'd would just be higher and higher cap gains as time goes on and I rebalance
Stop engaging in bullshit slopulism.
morbie5 | 18 hours ago
> from cash used to purchase those shares
Bruv he got most of his shares from before you were probably born or in diapers
> Don't try the populist bullshit of conflating income taxes with capital gains.
Try getting your facts straight
> Shin my firm gives me 120k in RSUs, those are taxed as income. Then a year later when I go to sell they're taxed again as capital gains. When I use my cash (taxed as income) to buy shares of Nvidia and sell a year later sell those shares for a profit I'm taxed again as capital gains.
So terrible
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
Jesus Christ you people and trump voters have a nearly perfect crossover. More alike than unlike.
morbie5 | 18 hours ago
My dude, you came on here with a patronizing attitude, you got schooled, you know you got schooled, and now all you have is ad hominem attacks LMAO
In 2018 bezos was estimated effective tax rates was 15% and it was 18% for buffett. Some years it is higher for those two, some years it is lower for those two but it is almost always lower than those higher earners that make their income from work
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
Oh look you're conflating capital gains taxes and income taxes again and ignore the capital he made gains on was already taxed as income previously.
You should probably figure out your hat size.
I'm patronizing because you just engaging in factless slopulism
gimpwiz | 18 hours ago
He got those shares by starting the company and having it go public while retaining a large amount of the company, resulting in him having an enormous amount of money after like 60 years of growth. He also gets shares of various companies by buying shares, thanks to income that, yes, was taxed.
You can literally look up the tax returns he releases, this isn't leaked from the IRS. Are you calling him a liar in 2010?
A founder does not have the same tax treatment as an employee getting RSUs because their situations are different.
morbie5 | 18 hours ago
You are 100% percent correct on the relevant points but to be pedantic Buffet wasn't the founder of Berkshire Hathaway
gimpwiz | 18 hours ago
Good correction, you're right.
Willing_Activity_855 | 18 hours ago
>You can literally look up the tax returns he releases, this isn't leaked from the IRS.
And to get those context of the shares he sold we'd need the share purchase/grant history.
I'm guessing you're highly religious as you tend to fill in blanks with whatever agrees with your priors
>A founder does not have the same tax treatment as an employee getting RSUs because their situations are different.
Lol. You're not even trying to Google things instead you're just making it up. During the initial founding you'd still pay taxes, now if you pay it on the tranche vesting value or the initial depends on you filing 83(b) election. But regardless of have they give themselves shares it's all income taxable
Then theres the fact that most shares they have aren't from the initial founding otherwise you'd simply have extreme levels of dilution come the IPO. Most founders nowadays just give themselves special voting shares instead to maintain control so they don't have to dilute equity and they never sell those. Jesus Christ dude stop engaging in such raging bullshit slopulism. Next thing you know you'll be wearing a red hat you'll horseshoe so yourself into
I'll help you out there's Founder's Stock Refreshers which are vested so income taxable. But then there's options ISOs and NSOs. The former is strange because there's AMT and cap gains and you can get burned....and they're limited to $100k USD per year if vesting so most founders end up getting NSOs anyways which the income tax hits on the excise of the spread.
Tldr founders pay the tax man pre IPO or post ipo.
So yeah my guy, read up on this instead of sucking down slopulism. Also buffet wasn't even a founder so no none of this shit applies
That being said I'm okay with hiking income taxes, add some more brackets.
RIP_Soulja_Slim | 20 hours ago
If you actually measure who pays what in to the federal system then it’s massively weighted towards higher income earners. This isn’t opinion, it’s math. The issue is that the rates are low across the board. Compounding that, most people don’t understand taxes because they read shit like this that openly disrespects the intelligence of the reader lol.
uwnav | 17 hours ago
They're muddying waters because you can keep winning elections and lining your pockets if you keep the electorate ill-informed.
If you were to poll Dems on how many think "Billionaires pay less taxes than the average American" - I'm sure the numbers would be quite depressing.
bitflag | 17 hours ago
Zucman and Piketty are political militants, they sometimes play fast and lose with definitions when the facts don't go their way. Whatever your opinion on this subject, this should be no excuse to play tricks with the data to push your point.
Their worse offense IMHO is pretending to ignore benefits received or contributed for (ie when the government forces you to contribute for your own retirement, they write it off as a tax so as to show poorer people get more "taxed"). Then they'll compute the taxation rate of poor people as total taxes paid divided by only their direct income (but not subsidies and benefits) to achieve absurdly high tax rates for poor people. And when that looks too absurd (ie over 100% tax rate) they'll just edit the graph to not show that part... This is, to put it mildly, dishonest.
They also don't count "off balance sheet" assets. If the government owes you a pension, it's technically a form of wealth with a dollar value on it, but it's politically inconvenient to them as this would reduce the wealth gap they say is growing, so somehow that's not counted.
Momoselfie | 18 hours ago
Just getting rid of the separate long term capital gains rate would make it a lot more progressive. Easy fix while also slightly simplifying the tax code.
portmanteaudition | 20 hours ago
Because the politics of saying the top 1% should pay 99% of taxes are way less strong for them.
Beginning_Ad_6616 | 19 hours ago
People get so hung-up on what % of overall tax is paid by the wealthy. I feel a better measure is what % of regular and passive earnings is a better measure of overall contribution.
That is the point this article is trying to make, the income tax rate overall for Jeff Bezos is 15% while people like me pay a far higher % in taxes on earned income.
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
You're missing the entire point of the article. Sure the tax system is progressive. And the guys making $500k a year on a W2 job pay more tax than someone making $50k. But guys like Bezos and Musk are allowed to skirt the system. The top 400 wealthiest people pay less tax than anyone in the bottom 25%, and that's a problem.
Guys like Bezos and Musk pay no income tax, because they take payment in stock, and stock isn't taxed until it's sold. Even then it's taxed at a much lower rate than the 37% income tax they should be paying. So you have guys like Bezos and Musk paying effective tax rates of 15% while Suzie who is busting her ass working 50 hrs a week to afford a 2 bed apartment is paying 30%+ effective tax rate. That's just not right.
k4rupt | 20 hours ago
It's a bit more nuanced...
Let's fix up the numbers first:
Suzie's effective federal tax rate (including FICA) would be ~18% (on $65k income). You have to hit $200k+ income to be at an effective rate of 30%+.
Bezos/Musk's cap gains rate is actually 20.38% (20% cap gains on top income + 3.8% net investment income tax). Capital gains taxes are considered double-taxed as the corporate entity gets taxed at 21% first, then after-tax profit is distributed or grows the stock value. Factoring that in, the effective rate would be 39.8%.
Aside from the real numbers, the reason why economists consider capital gains taxes to be highly inefficient is because they create economic distortions, reduce growth and creative deadweight loss relative to revenue (it's technical, but there is a swath of economic literature on it that is not at all disputed by economists.)
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
>Suzie's effective federal tax rate (including FICA) would be ~18% (on $65k income). You have to hit $200k+ income to be at an effective rate of 30%+.
Nah. Effective tax rate is the total taxes someone pays, e.g., income tax, sales tax, property tax, social security tax etc.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Effective tax rate depends on the taxes in question. In this instsnxe we're looking at income taxes
erichang | 19 hours ago
Effective rate for $200k single earner, no depends, is 20-21%, not 30%, fica included.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
>But guys like Bezos and Musk are allowed to skirt the system
No they don't. We can see their compensation packages and we know existing tax rates. You can just do the math
poopbutt23111 | 20 hours ago
Stock compensation is taxed as regular income. You are probably getting confused with capital gains they may earn on the stock after it is.
If stock is paid to an employee when it’s worth $10 a share they pay normal income tax on $10 a share.
If the employee holds and sells that stock for $15 a share they will pay income tax on $10 / share and capital gains on the $5 gain.
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
No that's not how it works with guys like Bezos. They use a loophole.
"Because he is an owner rather than an employee receiving stock as compensation, his shares are classified as an asset and are only taxed if and when he sells them."
https://fortune.com/2026/04/10/amazon-jeff-bezos-80k-salary-billionaires-ceo-executive-chairman/
CNBC just did an article/interview about this. Bezos himself said he only pays capital gains tax when he sells stock. No income tax.
poopbutt23111 | 20 hours ago
So he isn’t “paid” in stock then. He already owns it.
It’s the same if you were to start a company and then sell half of it off. You would pay capital gains on the sale. This isn’t a “loophole” lmao.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
Jesus the slopulism you guys engage in. You don't even try googling IRD tax codes
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 20 hours ago
If you’re receiving stock as compensation, then you’re an employee, by definition. That stock gets taxed at earned income rates regardless of whether or not you sell it
m0nty555 | 20 hours ago
If Suzie buys a stock and it appreciates in value, what tax rate should she pay on it?
The stock she owns presumably has earnings. What percentage of profit should that corporation be paying to the government. Suppose you are a solo owner of a corporation, how much post tax money should you receive from $1 of profit.
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
*If Suzies employer pays her in stock instead of cash, she gets to skip paying income tax.
We weren't talking about people buying stocks. We're talking about income. Payment from your company.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
>*If Suzies employer pays her in stock instead of cash, she gets to skip paying income tax
Lol no that's not how that works I know I get stock as comp
Kombatnt | 20 hours ago
You’re just completely wrong. When stock is given as compensation, it is taxed the same as ordinary income. When it is sold, any gain since its granting are taxed as capital gains.
But it’s flatly wrong to claim that companies are paying their CEOs in stock, and nobody is paying taxes on it until it is sold. That’s simply not how it works. You’re grossly misinformed, and spreading misinformation.
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
Lol you're completely wrong. JC you could do a 5 second Google search to figure this shit out man..
"Jeff Bezos does not pay income tax on his overall stock earnings until he actually sells the shares. U.S. tax laws apply only to "realized" gains, meaning the billions of dollars his net worth grows on paper (unrealized gains) are not taxed."
"When he does sell his stock to fund ventures like Blue Origin or buy assets, those sales are treated as capital gains, not standard income."
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/jeff-bezos-taxes.html
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/jeff-bezos-you-were-so-close-to-making-a-good-point/
m0nty555 | 13 hours ago
I like how people explained to you 10 times that you lack basic information and rather than admit it and educate yourself, you keep posting the same article over and over, even though it doesn’t even confirm what you’re saying .
Kombatnt | 20 hours ago
I did Google it. And your cite doesn’t clearly state that it pertains to stocks given as a form of compensation.
> Yes, stock given as compensation is taxable in the US. It is treated as supplemental wages and is subject to ordinary income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes.
If what you are claiming were true, then it’d be a huge, gaping loophole. No publicly-traded company would ever pay any of their employees in cash. They’d just pay everybody (or at the very least, the C-suite) in stocks, and nobody would ever pay any taxes.
It doesn’t even pass the smell test. The slightest bit of critical thinking suggests that it’s incorrect, and a 5-second Google confirms it. Yet you’re doubling down. You’ve got a lot of confidence, I’ll give you that.
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
Then I guess it's not given as "compensation". Just another loophole these guys use.
Read the article or watch the interview man. Bezos literally says he only pays tax when he sells the stock.
RedAero | 18 hours ago
Why should someone pay taxes when... nothing happens? Bezos already owns the company and therefore the stock.
Do you think stocks are just some meaningless pieces of paper? They represent small portions of a company, a company that, in this case, Bezos founded and owns a large portion of.
erichang | 19 hours ago
Go get a job from companies that offer espp then you would understand.
“Overall stock” means those stock shares either
1.he owns from day 1 or
2.he receives from his CEO job and paid income taxes.
Like_Today | 20 hours ago
I'll probably trust actual sources like Fortune and not a random guy on reddit who has no idea what he's talking about if it's all the same to you 🤷♂️
"Because he is an owner rather than an employee receiving stock as compensation, his shares are classified as an asset and are only taxed if and when he sells them."
https://fortune.com/2026/04/10/amazon-jeff-bezos-80k-salary-billionaires-ceo-executive-chairman/
Kombatnt | 19 hours ago
So “stock given as compensation” is taxed as ordinary income, just as I was saying.
Paying a CEO in stock isn’t some loophole that skirts income taxes.
embourbe | 19 hours ago
>Guys like Bezos and Musk pay no income tax
Of course they do, the dividends and cap gains are considered income. I file my income taxes, and there is a line for the income from investments.
shades344 | 20 hours ago
The also seem to just cherry pick Jeff Bezos years to compare. There was a leak of like a decade of his tax returns and you can just do the average. There are years where he pays very little, but these are balanced by years that he pays a lot.
Willing_Activity_855 | 19 hours ago
You can look at when he sold shares and you can see his compensation package each year....and simply do the math with rates to see how much he paid
It's all public in the SEC filings.
Go slopulism somewhere else
Admirable-Sink-2622 | 20 hours ago
It’s not too long from now that with all the money siphoning to the top, millionaires will soon be the lower middle class, billionaires the upper middle class and trillionaires (yes that’s coming) will be the one percent.
Everyone else will have nothing.
It’s not for nothing they are building ginormous compounds and bunkers.
Popular-Rule | 20 hours ago
Ain't it a trip that the main separation of classes is wealth?
daddy_is_sorry | 20 hours ago
As a capitalist society, We all saw it coming from a mile away…
At least some of us did
kafka_s_quire | 20 hours ago
We had a capitalist society at all times in U.S. history, but a progressive tax system held egregious wealth inequality at bay from the 1930s through the 1980s.
ImperatorUniversum1 | 18 hours ago
Eh you need things like corporate taxes upped a lot, and capital gains taxed at 50+%
RedAero | 18 hours ago
Oh yeah, Marx saw it over 140 years ago! He thought collapse was imminent. Any day now, right?
Meanwhile, every Marxist country in the world slowly becomes ever more capitalist...
Busterlimes | 20 hours ago
It already is, then top 10% of earners make up for 50% of consumer spending. This is what the end of an empire looks like. The US will be lucky if Balkanization doesnt happen.
ugotmedripping | 20 hours ago
They want some sort of Elysium situation
synocrat | 20 hours ago
The most annoying thing about that movie was the med bed technology. The rich had one in every home and medical shuttles full them but they couldn't have one of them at the Armadyne plant just to stick Matt Damon in so they could throw him right back on the line to work?
xboxhaxorz | 20 hours ago
We know this, we keep talking about it, yet we just keep making babies aka wage slaves who are gonna have an even more difficult life
If we cant get the system fixed i feel we shouldnt subject future generations to this, at least i wont with my lineage, i consider it cruel
poopbutt23111 | 20 hours ago
Being alive right now is one of the easiest times to be alive in all human history.
xboxhaxorz | 19 hours ago
How so? In the past you could have a home and family on a single income
poopbutt23111 | 19 hours ago
This is still possible in many areas of the country.
You should also look at living conditions, life expectancy, and health now compared to any other time in history.
xboxhaxorz | 19 hours ago
I look at quality of life vs quantity
Happiness is dropping, alot more suicide, depression, anxiety, stress, etc;
poopbutt23111 | 19 hours ago
Yea I’m sure people weren’t stressed and anxious 100 years ago during world wars, 15% of babies dying at birth, a Great Depression, and dying from basic infections.
RedAero | 18 hours ago
If you look at quality of life vs. quantity then it's even better: no need to save for your retirement, just die at 65 like they did "in the past", and you can live like a king!
xboxhaxorz | 17 hours ago
That is a plan
RedAero | 16 hours ago
Remember: the earlier to you die, the better you can live! Carpe diem!
DefinitelyNotDEA | 15 hours ago
In the past, homes were much smaller, and had more people living in the smaller space. In the 70's, an average new home was ~1500 sq ft, and now they're closer to ~2400 sq ft. If I had to bet, I'd bet people spent less of their income on random crap back then too. Luxuries back then are now necessities for most people. How many families owned two cars? How many vacations did people take in their lifetime in the past? How many coffees did people buy per year at cafes? People in the past probably had "buying a home" as their #1 priority over traveling, eating out multiple times a week, buying luxuries, spending money frivolously. Even if they wanted to buy stuff, there were a limited amount of different things to even buy. What are they going to buy? A home, a car, furniture, and a color TV in the living room for the entire family? Nowadays there are way more goods/services that people's money can go towards. I'm not saying home prices didn't go up, but there are definitely other factors.
Personally, I'd rather live in 2026 than in the 1970's.
jrodshoots | 20 hours ago
God that’s a ~~shit~~ bad take. Having a family is the best thing ever. Humans throughout history have had it tougher than the poor people of today. Such a ~~shit~~ bad take. But you do you and stick it to the man I guess! 💪
*edited because the OP commentor seems like a good person and I was rude.
lolyeahsure | 20 hours ago
Hope you have a good answer when your kids have existential crises about the shitstorm you’re leaving them and they ask “what did you do about it”
Imagine you being like “kids, you might face water wars and a collapsing ecosystem, but 200 years ago you’d be working on a farm! Say thank you!”
assasstits | 20 hours ago
Yeah the answer will be to touch grass
thiswillwork23 | 20 hours ago
Not fun to touch grass when it’s all brown and dry…
lolyeahsure | 20 hours ago
Oh yeah classic line, code for “my ego can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of the effects of apathy and individual greed. Go knicks!”
poopbutt23111 | 20 hours ago
Water wars 😂😂😂. Get off Reddit dude.
lolyeahsure | 19 hours ago
Meanwhile Tesla is poisoning Texas water supply like it’s 99 but this time instead of Erin brokovich and regulation we’ve got poopbutt and other morons saying get off Reddit and touch grass xD gg
poopbutt23111 | 19 hours ago
Hahahahahahhaa ok buddy
lolyeahsure | 19 hours ago
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/21/texas-tesla-lithium-battery-plant-pollution-tceq-robstown-drainage/
hahahahaha truth is funny!
PS only people with small pps say “buddy” just fyi
poopbutt23111 | 19 hours ago
So one company with one issue is the equivalent of poisoning Texas water which will lead to water wars. Makes complete sense 😂.
This is why regular people laugh at you doomer liberals.
lolyeahsure | 4 hours ago
You really think it’s one company doing this? When trump has demolished most of the regulatory abilities and laws? Way to reinforce the “can’t think critically or at all” that magas are proud of. You know th Colorado river is drying up right? Like super fast? What do you think 40 million people are gonna do when water runs out? Enjoy your shithole
RedAero | 17 hours ago
Dude... You know that period of time that you idolize, with the single-income-two-car-garage-union-job BS you got from a 1968 Buick ad?
Rivers used to light on fire they were so polluted. Fourteen times! The same river won "River of the Year" in 2019.
Do as the other guy said, get off reddit and touch grass. Hell, touch the Cuyahoga, you can now.
lolyeahsure | 13 hours ago
And we fixed a bit of the ozone layer, and now we’re full back to removing regulations again. Like are you just plain uninformed? Christ man take your head out of your ass it’s embarrassing for the rest of us when we have to explain america to people from other countries. I make my observations in the real world 😂 you probably never leave the loop of home car work car big box store car home. Every time I get told touch grass two-ten years later I get proven right. people told me to touch grass about a K shape happening. Now look
lolyeahsure | 12 hours ago
Dawg you have 15 years on Reddit and you’re telling me to get off it 😂😂😂😂
xboxhaxorz | 20 hours ago
Its a realistic take based on the reality, i dont believe subjecting my children to stress, suffering, anxiety is the best thing ever
Just because people have had it tougher doesnt mean it was right
Im not trying to stick it to others, im trying to prevent my children from having to experience the extreme inequality
jrodshoots | 19 hours ago
It's based on your reality which is fine but I implore you to discover a different one. I think this mindset is heavily shaped by perspective. Humans have lived through wars, famine, disease, poverty, and instability throughout history, yet people still found meaning in family, community, and raising children.
Some of the poorest communities in the world also report strong social bonds and life satisfaction, so I don’t think inequality automatically means life isn’t worth living.
I don’t think having children is inherently cruel because life contains struggle - struggle has always existed. If you personally don't want kids, fair enough, but I don’t think inequality means future generations shouldn’t exist at all.
xboxhaxorz | 18 hours ago
Just because its always been this way doesnt mean it was right
I dont think its right to live through wars, famine, poverty, etc;
I am anti suffering, i dont want people or animals to suffer, living through wars and poverty is suffering guaranteed, if you intentionally subject others to suffering that is cruel at least from a logical perspective, from an emotional perspective perhaps not
People are wonderful at coping, its why god was invented, its why in the past zeus and hades were invented, people needed ways to cope and to explain things
Gnarly-Beard | 18 hours ago
The only way to end suffering is to end life. There will always be something, even if you have all of your wants and needs taken care of instantaneously, there will still be suffering.
xboxhaxorz | 18 hours ago
Yes there will always be something but there can be situations where there is too much
Right now alot of people are struggling, homelessness is on the rise among other things and thats too much suffering IMO
jrodshoots | 18 hours ago
Like I said, it's your reality and you're correct. I'm also correct and so is anyone else with an opinion on whether they want kids or not... For whatever reason they choose.
But by that logic, because suffering is unavoidable, existence itself becomes immoral - but most people who have experienced hardship still don’t wish they were never born.
So I am trying to challenge the mindset, at least for anyone reading our convo who’s on the fence. I think reducing life down to suffering alone is an unhealthy way to look at existence.
Humans and animals at that have always faced hardship, yet people still find meaning in family, love, friendship, purpose, and community. I don’t think the answer to suffering is ending future generations altogether.
xboxhaxorz | 18 hours ago
Just because we have opinions it doesnt mean its correct, some people think the world is flat
We might disagree on the tolerable amount of suffering that people should experience and in that regard you and i would be correct
Yes most people do not wish they were born and thats due to the cope, there is a lot of various pressures around being grateful for the lives that we have because there are others who have it worse, family pressure, religious pressure, cultural pressure, etc;
Admitting that you wish you were never born can lead to more depression because its a wish that would never come true
Self euthanasia is a taboo topic, but more and more people are doing it
A rape victim who chose to have the child and that child became the best thing in their life, it would be tricky to ask her if she wishes she was never raped because if she says yes that means the best thing in her life would not have been born
jrodshoots | 16 hours ago
You have an extremely unhealthy mindset about being human but thats your reality like I said.
Wishing you the best. This last reply sends a lot of red flags so I hope you’re personally doing ok despite the pessimistic thoughts around human kind.
xboxhaxorz | 16 hours ago
Incorrect
I have a realistic mindset rather than a delusional mindset
There are 0 flags with accepting the world as it is and the realities of the world as it is, most never achieve this level of acceptance
ImSomeRandomHuman | 20 hours ago
Why did you feel the need to tell us this? You know it isn’t relevant, but you did it anyway. Nobody needs to know what you are going to do in your life or that you are going to be eternally childless.
xboxhaxorz | 20 hours ago
Im anti suffering, i dont want kids to suffer, i feel its relevant
Why do you want kids to suffer?
ImSomeRandomHuman | 20 hours ago
I didn’t even introduce a claim on that topic. Next time, handle the critique more maturely, instead of engaging in an illogical appeal to emotion to justify your already irrelevant personal life.
xboxhaxorz | 19 hours ago
toxic
Admirable-Sink-2622 | 20 hours ago
No way I’d have kids with this bleak of a future. It would be almost criminal to do that on purpose.
xboxhaxorz | 20 hours ago
I agree
mistletoe9 | 20 hours ago
Not only is the content of the article disingenuine, the author can't seem to decide on a single metric of "taxation" at all: % of profits, % of wealth, or absolute dollar amount in taxes paid. He/she fluidly shifts between all three depending on what is advantageous to their argument at the moment.
Note, therefore, there is not a single real rebuttal to the fact that billionaires contribute far more to tax revenue than the rest
ChiGuy6124 | 19 hours ago
If you find some comfort in believing that billionaires are paying their fair share, than embrace it. I disagree.
mistletoe9 | 17 hours ago
My guy, if you need to read outright misinformation to perpetuate your beliefs, then I'd suggest they're not really beliefs worth following at all.
And you don't need to disagree with anyone. Nothing will come of our exchange in a Reddit comment thread, believe me
ChiGuy6124 | 17 hours ago
This is so boring. Anyway have a good night.
Read_Safe | 18 hours ago
Has the hollowing out of education in this country and the non stop propaganda truly been so effective that all these billionaire bootlickers are real people that actually believe this crap? I want them to mostly be bots but I know that is wishful thinking
Billionaires shouldn’t exist, they have dragon disease
ImperatorUniversum1 | 18 hours ago
Way too many people thinking they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
ChiGuy6124 | 18 hours ago
I think it’s envy worship, with a healthy delusional dose of someday that could be me. But I have to admit, the passionate defense of the “poor” billionaires is kind of repulsive
bitflag | 17 hours ago
This is a logical debate to which you reply with an appeal to emotion. You can't make tax policy based on emotions, you need a coherent and rationale framework.
RedAero | 17 hours ago
LMAO, this is, word for word, exactly what every conspiracy theorist says when reality is shoved in their face.
umbananas | 16 hours ago
The fact is I am paying almost 30% federal income tax, most of them are effectively paying less than 10%
RedAero | 16 hours ago
Take your bullshit trolling elsewhere. You'd have to be making around ~~$650k~~ $600k in ordinary income, filing as single with only the standard deduction, no credits, no nothin, for a 30% federal income tax rate.
Johnnadawearsglasses | 19 hours ago
I don't find these analyses to be intellectually honest in the least. They include non income taxes for lower income groups where it's convenient, ignore the value of social benefit transfers and completely ignore the taxes paid by business owners that their businesses pay. I think it's pretty unarguable that we have a concentration of wealth at the top. And that in the US at least, our tax system has been manipulated by monied interests, while at the same time not providing many of the social benefits other countries do.
All that is true, but the solution is very clear. There are already countries with strong social safety nets and corresponding tax systems that we can look to. Just emulate them. Have a public option for healthcare. Fund higher education at the state level like we used to. And fix the social security system with a higher income cap and some portion of private accounts to invest. Then overlay a tax system that is shared funding that starts at lower income levels but scales progressively, including wrt capital gains. And treats borrowing against appreciated assets as a monetization.
This is all very politically hard but is necessary. The alternative will be a soft revolution that simmers below the surface as we speak.
ff904 | 16 hours ago
I don't find these types of replies to be intellectually honest in the least. They protest about the fact that regressive taxes are included, despite being the majority of taxes most people pay. Sometimes, they'll even pretend that the benefit a poor individual receives from food stamps exceeds the benefit that someone like Bezos receives from the existence of the interstate highway system, or naval protection of shipping routes from China.
This is all nonsense that the privileged few tell themselves to ignore the revolution that simmers below the surface.
Johnnadawearsglasses | 16 hours ago
I mean if you actually read what I wrote, it isn't what i said at all. At least pretend to have a principled discussion. I said certain taxes are included on one side of the ledger and not the other. Which is correct. Then once people agree on the buckets, they can be quantified. I didn't quantify them or claim some quantum benefit of one over the other. What you are doing is exactly what the authors did. Making a value judgment first, and facts be damned. Zero interest in dogma.
Just_Candle_315 | 20 hours ago
Billionnaires have a lower effective tax rate, but it's beyond stupid to say billionnaires pay much less tax than the average American
Thin-Entertainer3789 | 16 hours ago
They don’t…..they pay more taxes than the average American. They do pay lower % of their income.
Should they be paying more absolutely…and I think many of them have even said they should. But who’s gonna change the tax laws
gizram84 | 16 hours ago
Imagine actually believing that billionaires pay less taxes than the average American.
Like, you really have to be a completely brainwashed fool to truly think that's what happens in the US.
redlinedidit | 18 hours ago
Because the US is controlled by billionaires, not the average Americans. The tax code has more holes than Swiss cheese. Politicians purchased by them are writing the rules. When they still fail miserably after all these, we are required to bail them all out like 2008.
peathah | 13 hours ago
Politicians do not write much anymore, they get ready made laws from consultancy, lobbyists firms,
BackupSlides | 19 hours ago
Seeing the debate to date in this thread, I'd encourage many people here to read the book The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.
In short - the person who said "Income is for peasants" nailed it. The people who run the show want us arguing about income taxes because it's squabbling over pennies in the couch cushions and distracting from where the real money is.
RedAero | 17 hours ago
Aristocracy is hereditary. How many of reddit's favorite punching bag billionaires inherited their wealth?
America doesn't have dynasties - never really did, definitely doesn't now. Instead, America has innovators who create businesses that provide services so well they become exceedingly wealthy. Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Netflix, Google, none of these are multi-generational enterprises - hell, all these booming AI startups are so new I have underwear older than they are. Describing this as "aristocracy" is nothing less than reprehensible fear-mongering and triggering rhetoric.
BackupSlides | 10 hours ago
I am guessing that you have not seen the numbers on family offices. And the people who have shaped tax policy largely were dynastic families. Seriously, read the book I referenced, it is a quick read, and if you disagree with what the author posits, then you will at least have some perspective on an opposing viewpoint that you can use in future debate.
Key-Organization3158 | 20 hours ago
First of all, they are lying. Their own article contradicts the headline.
> (Bezos) claimed last week that the top 1 percent pays 40 percent of taxes and the bottom 50 percent only 3 percent. This is true. Unequivocally true.
>All social groups pay broadly the same effective tax rate today—around 25 percent to 30 percent of income, including all taxes So they don't pay less tax. We all pay, in aggregate, about the same tax rate as per tha article. Of course, rich people still pay far far more tax because their income is much higher.
Secondly, they are trying to combine all taxes. But they attribute payroll tax to the workers. But it's more accurately thought of a split or falling on the rich since they pay the salaries. In his earlier chart, they omit corporate taxes, which are effectively paid by the rich since they own those companies. And by extension and property, operation, or other taxes paid by the business should be attributed to the owners.
And of course, he ignores transfers and social welfare payments. If you look at net taxes paid after accounting for benefits received, the working class tax rates falls. He omits that because it counters his narrative.
He cherry picks the data for Bezos. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/ProPublica-Billionaires-Fact-Sheet-Updated.pdf
Between 2014 and 2018, Bezos paid 23.1% tax rate.
NoCoolNameMatt | 20 hours ago
Payroll taxes are a tax on the wealthy because they pay the salaries? By that logic, wouldn't personal income taxes also be a tax on the wealthy since they also pay the salaries on which those taxes are levied?
Used-Veterinarian622 | 19 hours ago
Insane take to say payroll tax is not borne by the employee.
NoCoolNameMatt | 4 hours ago
I can't stop laughing about it.
Skatesafe | 20 hours ago
Headline likely refers to effective tax rate not total sum. With that in mind where is the contradiction in the quotes you shared?
kafka_s_quire | 20 hours ago
Yum, yum these billionaire boots are delicious
Rurumo666 | 20 hours ago
It's because they're the job creators, if they have to pay taxes they couldn't afford to build AI data centers which will eliminate 50% of all jobs. That makes sense right?
SonofHondoBelmondo | 12 hours ago
I don't care if they pay more or less, I just want them to be as inconvenienced by taxes as I am. To share in the burden of it, to have their ascent slowed as mine is. Shit, I'd be happy if they shared half of the burden at this point.
grahag | 17 hours ago
The tax system incentivizes risk or spending which can then be used to show losses reducing tax burden to zero, giving SOME billiaires a refund even.
For billionaires this can be done at a level of spending that regular folks, even millionaires dream of.
The tax system doesn't have loophols for the common man and they were put in place by and for the richest Americans.
22% of my income went to taxes last year. I DID get a $3000 refund this season, which brings me down to about an 18% rate, if I want to simplify it.
Here's what the richest Americans paid of their income to taxes:
Warren Buffett: about 0.1%
Jeff Bezos: about 0.98%
Michael Bloomberg: about 1.3%
Elon Musk: about 3.27%
edWurz7 | 14 hours ago
Buffet paid .1% of income to taxes?
"In his interview, Buffett went on to explain an informal office survey he took at Berkshire Hathaway. His office staff paid an average effective tax rate of 32.9%, while he paid 17.7%, per The Guardian."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-view-taxes-vs-170225522.html
grahag | 11 hours ago
This was according to a leaked report on the income taxes of the 25 richest Americans back in 2021. It appears to be calculated according to taxes paid vs gains realized after a 5 year period. Not a standard per year calculation, but it does appear to be correct if the leaked tax returns are valid.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
edWurz7 | 7 hours ago
Let's assume that this single website's reporting is correct. The site mentions that reported an income of $125M but paid taxes of $23.7M. How is his income tax rate .1%?
It appears that they are considering wealth growth to be income?
applo1 | 20 hours ago
I’m all for capitalism but once you pass 2 billion (with the proper taxation laws in place making it very difficult to even achieve 2 billion), you should be forced to reinvest every extra penny of profit back into your business and help people to put food on their families tables (higher wages?).
Billionaires had one good idea and a lot of luck (some of them even stole their ideas like that assclown Zuckerberg). They aren’t special nor should they be worshiped for “working extra hard blah blah blah”. The number beside their name is how out of touch with reality they are - nothing else.
Capitalism on rails is what we had before that stupid fuck Reagan got into office. The wealth gap was far smaller, jobs paid living wages and people were generally happier. All of these things are facts. You don’t like them, pick up a book and read a bit.
oboshoe | 20 hours ago
that's literally how almost all billionaires become billionaires.
putting everything back into the business after x level.
your plan would actually produce marginally more.
applo1 | 18 hours ago
Do you dispute the fact that Reaganomics created massive wealth gaps and shifted many jobs overseas?
The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 slashed the top marginal income tax rate from 70% down to 28%. The corporate tax rate was cut from 48% to 34%.
oboshoe | 18 hours ago
i remember well my dad complaining about both of those two things happening during the run up to reagan's election
these aren't new things
applo1 | 18 hours ago
I'm willing to be wrong but I'm curious what your ultimate point is. Are you arguing that everything is "fine" right now or something else? Genuinely curious - not trying to troll.
oboshoe | 18 hours ago
Things are kinda a mess right now. But that's been true for most of history.
So think it's more of a return to mean than anything else.
I was just pointing out that making billionaires put their money into the business isn't a cure. It's the recipe for how they got that rich in the first place.
capnwally14 | 15 hours ago
Jensen has made so many millionaires both inside and outside of his company. Many such cases.
dominiond66 | 20 hours ago
There are two main problematic issues. 1) How did they earn their billions AND 2) how much of it is being taxed.
Gaining wealth via paying low wages with diminishing benefits and high prices charged to consumers for their products is a major reason for wealth creation. Then toss in shotty/fraudulent products, poor service to customers, manipulating the consumer via technology and being an emerging near monopoly. Then consider the dollar value they gain from destroy the environment and letting mother nature and the public pay the price via early death/disease/poor health and catastrophic weather events caused by the climate change crisis. They amassed a fortune at the peril of others.
Next is avoiding taxes. That is the cherry on the top of decadent wealth. By not paying their taxes, the rest of us have to pay more or be impacted on major government cuts that support the working class. Clearly, Income/wealth inequality is HUGE and is impact on the working class is immense and unsustainable!
hacksoncode | 20 hours ago
In the modern world, every single new billionaire is a billionaire because some other millionaires/billionaries bid the price of their company's stock through the roof.
None of them "made a billion" by how much or how little they pay their employees or charge customers. None of the money that made them a billionaire came from either of those sources. For all practical purposes it all came from unrelated rich people.
Otterz4Life | 19 hours ago
Can't centibillionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Ellison just sell $1 billion in stock and live off that the rest of their lives? So they pay taxes once and never again?
RedAero | 17 hours ago
They sell stock regularly, it's public information, feel free to look it up. Bezos, for example, likes to sell boatloads to shove straight into Blue Origin.
MotanulScotishFold | 19 hours ago
They pay less taxes because they have very smart accountants and lawyers that know the law and find loopholes to exploit.
For example, their wealth is not in cash but in stocks value that only increases its value over time, so when they need money, they don't sell as selling meaning paying tax for profit.
Instead, they borrow against their own stocks and debts are not taxable. They use other people and institutions money to invest and increase even more wealth and with their money after it start generating revenue it start paying back with small interest.
Repeat the same thing forever and that's just one method to do so and to be honest is a really smart one.
I would do the same if I could but sadly in my country I cannot use my investments as guarantor to get money from bank and invest more.