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For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

nytimes.com

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Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#241

Post by sologoub »

harimau777 wrote: post #62
therwey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takes home $150k. Has access to world-class infrastructure and public services. Complains. Sounds about right.

Depending on location, that could still be low enough that it's difficult to own a home. Edit: Oops, misread that 150k was before taxes. 150k after taxes should be enough to own a home

Welcome to SV - I was literally able to find similar homes in similar neighborhoods (crime rate, education, etc), but one being in SV and the other in Los Angeles. SV home cost 3x more. That’s for 3BR + 1.5BA ~1400 sq ft from 1960s in Mountain View. Palo Alto or Menlo Park would be even more.

Income distributions and costs are very skewed in Bay Area and nominal numbers do not tell nearly the story: https://www.timesheraldonline.com/2019/02/22/in-some-bay-are...

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#242

Post by holy_city »

gnicholas wrote: post #198

A couple of points regarding the lower rate of taxation for capital gains: • Capital gains are not inflation-indexed, which is one reason to have a lower rate. Consider three individuals: * Person A earned $100,000 working at BigCo in 2019 * Person B sold shares in 2019 that were purchased in 2017, for a (LTCG) gain of $100,000 * Person C sold shares in 2019 that were purchased in 1965, for a (LTCG) gain of $100,000…

I don't think you could say CG taxes are "double taxation" since only the income from the asset is taxed, not the principle.

>it's much less than that because of inflation

Why would you hold an investment for 55 years that isn't beating inflation?

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#243

Post by lotsofpulp »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #138
refurb wrote: post #19

What a shit article. It's well known that despite the high marginal tax rates of the past, very few people ever paid those. Deductions abound that have since been eliminated. What you should really look at is real effective tax rates by income level.[1] What you'll find is that the top 1% make 19% of all income, but pay 37% of all taxes, with an average tax rate of 27%. The bottom 50% earn 11% of all income, but only…

The distribution of income is a decision we’ve made as a society. Over the past few decades we’ve allowed more wealth and income to flow into a smaller number of hands, then we’ve enacted policies that reduce the effective tax rate on those particular taxpayers. This might be ok if we were collecting enough tax to fund our government, but in an environment where we’re running huge deficits, it’s not ok (nor is it fai…

It’s also due to technology allowing fewer and fewer people to “own” more of the production in society.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#244

Post by ptero »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #143
cpr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Rumsfeld announced that 2.3T USD were missing from the military? https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-157... Yeah, nor do most people. The date he announced that? September 10, 2001. The section of the Pentagon hit? The accounting wing with all the records.

It’s a lot easier on your sanity to just accept that (insanely) crazy coincidences happen. If it helps, that number jumped to 6.5T a few years later and now stands at 21T and the military and Pentagon have simply stalled all attempts at enforcing audits. They have the gall to simply refuse to account for the discrepancies and believe they cannot be taken to task for misappropriated funds; they don’t need to blow up r…

I do not doubt that the waste and accountability are a huge problem in the DoD, but $21T sounds extreme. The FY19 total military budget, according to Wikipedia, is a bit under $700B and you need to misappropriate 30 years of that to embezzle $21T. And that assumes everything is misappropriated (no salaries, no fuel to fly planes, etc.) and does not account for growth (30 years ago the budget was a lot smaller than it is today). My 2c.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#245

Post by 0x0aff374668 »

gnicholas wrote: post #198

A couple of points regarding the lower rate of taxation for capital gains: • Capital gains are not inflation-indexed, which is one reason to have a lower rate. Consider three individuals: * Person A earned $100,000 working at BigCo in 2019 * Person B sold shares in 2019 that were purchased in 2017, for a (LTCG) gain of $100,000 * Person C sold shares in 2019 that were purchased in 1965, for a (LTCG) gain of $100,000…

"Double taxation"

For such an in depth example you really missed this.

I make $100,000 in year X. That covers two brackets, and my effective rate is, say, 25% federal.

SO I have 75k left over.

I invest 5k.

It doubles to 10k.

I'm then taxed on the 5k I earned. Not the 5k I invested.

But do go on about double taxation.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#246

Post by c1505 »

_edo wrote: post #84

That has to be the worst x-axis on a graph I've seen in a long time. The grid lines measure 0-10th, 20-30th, 40-50th, 60-70th, 80-90th, 95-99th, 99.99th, Top 400? That's atrocious, not only is it non-linear, not only does it have a line with regularly spaced dots giving the impression of continuity, but it skips from percent groups to absolute numbers? If we're talking about historical taxes why are we looking at tax…

The graph does a good job at giving a visual for the data and the point of how much the tax rate has gone down for the super wealthy. Showing a percentage for that very top value would be less informative than saying the top 400.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#247

Post by ameister14 »

tanderson92 wrote: post #132
refurb wrote: post #19

What a shit article. It's well known that despite the high marginal tax rates of the past, very few people ever paid those. Deductions abound that have since been eliminated. What you should really look at is real effective tax rates by income level.[1] What you'll find is that the top 1% make 19% of all income, but pay 37% of all taxes, with an average tax rate of 27%. The bottom 50% earn 11% of all income, but only…

> It's well known that despite the high marginal tax rates of the past, very few people ever paid those. Deductions abound that have since been eliminated. I read the article, in which this expected point is addressed. From TFA: >They have constructed a historical database that tracks the tax payments of households at different points along the income spectrum going back to 1913, when the federal income tax began. Th…

I'm not who you're responding to, but I tend not to assume competence on the part of academic economists. I've listened to enough of them speak and read enough of their proposals/think tank papers/books to know that a sizable portion of them are perfectly happy making some absurd assumptions and running down a logical chain from there without addressing the obvious points.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#248

Post by _ea1k »

journalctl wrote: post #113
cpr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Rumsfeld announced that 2.3T USD were missing from the military? https://www.city-journal.org/html/americas-missing-money-157... Yeah, nor do most people. The date he announced that? September 10, 2001. The section of the Pentagon hit? The accounting wing with all the records.

As though the US government would have to orchestrate several terrorist attacks just to obscure some bad finances which are basically meaningless anyway.

Alternatively, the terrorist attack didn't actual hit the records in question (or at least not as many as are implied) and is unrelated, but was used as a convenient cover for bad finances that are basically meaningless anyway.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#249

Post by ahoy »

gorpovitch wrote: post #51

I'm tired to read articles written inside "Opinions" sections.(not that I necessarily disagree with it, you guys are explaining how this article is right or wrong better than me). I would really like (not intended at HN, it's a general crisis in my life) to read more articles about politics that are neutral and factually oriented. It seems like 90% of the political content I read twists facts and build cheap, cherry-…

> articles about politics that are neutral

That literally isn't a possibility.

Re: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax rate

#250

Post by shitpostbot »

It was really cool getting into a FANG and getting taught during orientation all the cool ways we could avoid taxes.

Did you know that bonuses can be deferred and invested in the market tax free for years before you claim them?

Also, what's the point of tax advantaged retirement and healthcare accounts. Normal dude making 50k and with a wife and two 2 kids gets very little. Silicon Valley engineer making N*100k gets a shitload extra cash even though he needs it the least.

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