By putting money in the LLC he can avoid estate taxes and still give his family control if he wants. >To sum up, his money is not going to a charity, but to his own LLC, which will let him evade tax by moving his private assets into a foundation. >Unlike a charitable trust, which is compelled to spend its money on charity, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC will be able to spend its money on whatever it wants, including…
I don't see how this is a problem. He's following the law and organizing his affairs to retain control of the money he earned. You aren't less of a citizen because you try to not pay more tax than you owe. The exemptions for certain types of income are put there because the legislature wants to promote certain activities as beneficial to the public good. Charitable Remainder Trusts are one of those things written int…
I've always found these arguments to be poor attempts at a reductio ad absurdum.
While some people do take vows of poverty, by and large this is not what's meant by advocates of public institutions.
The thing is that there is a large body of services and capital investments that are most efficiently - for both economic and political reasons - conducted by accountable, democratic institutions. The canonical example are roads and firemen but also education and public transit and healthcare and some kinds of housing.
We can debate over the legitimacy of particular governance mechanisms (NIMBYs in the Bay!) or political actors in given jurisdictions (State senators in NY!) but by and large in North America people have some sort of say in outcomes that affect them.
The problem is precisely that by
>following the law and organizing his affairs to retain control of the money he earned
his gift is a considerably less selfless act. It's one thing to "eradicate malaria". It's another completely to "try to make the world resemble what Chan Zuckerberg want".
You're allowed to do this with your own money, of course. But it's considerably less altruistic of you. If you were anywhere at all already suspicious of his intentions given the product his company has developed, the idea that he will be dedicating billions of dollars towards his own (political) agenda is not exactly heartwarming.