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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

#271

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tartoran wrote: post #3

That is correct, the rich don't pay any taxes at all (whenever the can). The was a recent thread on HN regarding tax audits [0]. What I got from that is that the IRS cannot afford to audit the rich because their taxes are complicated and they don't have enough resources to do so. They choose to audit the poor instead because, it is simpler.. link [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176705

The IRS can audit everyones tax returns via automated algorithms, it is just that those kind of audits are very effective on simple tax returns and very not effective on complicated ones.

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

#272

Post by mattmaroon »

notatoad wrote: post #196
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.

If they were going to fly a plane into the pentagon to cover up 2.3T in missing funds, why would they bother to announce the shortfall beforehand? You don't orchestrate an elaborate cover-up, and also publicly announce the thing you're trying to cover up.

Because that's, like, what they want you to think man. :)

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

#274

Post by empath75 »

astine wrote: post #231
eloisant wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why capital gains should be taxed lower. Money you get from working, from your blood and your sweat should be heavily taxed, but money you're earning just by already having money (whether it's from your work, inherited, donated from family members) shouldn't be taxed as well? What's the logic here?

" I don't see why capital gains should be taxed lower. " The point of taxing capital gains lower than income is to encourage the wealthy to invest rather than hoard their wealth. This is good because invested money helps drive economic growth which is usually good for everyone.

That seems like a very good argument for taxing wealth.

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

#275

Post by refurb »

danans wrote: post #199
refurb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stated tax rate too. The bottom 50% effective tax rate is almost 1/10th of what the top 1%’s is. Therefore, the headline of the article “the rich pay less than than you” is pretty clearly false.

I agree the title is click baity, but the ultra wealthy do pay a lower effective tax rate than me, and I'm probably in the top 10% of income percentile. But the observations of the article itself check out. The tax system has gotten radically less progressive over the last 50 years. The argument is over whether or not it should be made more or less progressive given current realities. People can differ in their opini…

It’s gotten less progressive? 2nd graph here [1] shows the top 1% has steady increased their share of all taxes since 1986.

I have no idea what it looks like before 1986.

[1]https://taxfoundation.org/top-1-percent-tax-rate/

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

#276

Post by mistermann »

joshuamorton wrote: post #263
dv_dt wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a key language ambiguity here. Whatever your position on what the rich should pay, there is a question of what is being paid as a proportional rate of total income, vs what is being paid in absolute terms. Confounding that difference are also issues of income tax rate, vs capital gains rates and wealth vs income. The wealthy pay in absolute terms, more dollars, but they pay a lower rate than others.

No, according to this article, the 1% continue to pay a larger percent of their income. It is only once you move into the 1% of the 1% that the rate again decreases.

Total income, or "earned income" from a tax perspective?

There's so many technically correct but misleading definitions it's very hard to know what the "real truth" is in these discussions.

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

#277

Post by gok »

gnicholas wrote: post #260
dragonwriter wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I completely agree that we should inflation-index assets for which electronic purchase/sale records readily available (stock purchased through brokerages). How are electronic records relevant? The information needed is expected, whether records or electronic or not, when doing capital gains now, so there's non rational need for electronic records. > For other types of assets, the inflation rationale is still a dece…

How do you prove how long you've held an asset, so the appropriate inflation adjustment can be done?

Well you also need some paperwork to prove your cost basis, and most of that paperwork is dated.

But yeah this is one reason why collectibles have a special, higher LTCG rate than securities.

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

#278

Post by gnicholas »

0x0aff374668 wrote: post #245
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.

> For such an in depth example you really missed this.

Like many HNers, I'm on here in my spare time, while not running my startup or caring for my kids. Please forgive my not including every argument and counter-argument here.

But to reply, if you bought stock on the stock market, then yeah that is double taxed because the corporation also pays tax on their corporate income. We could get into that whole can of worms, but it's frankly too complex and off-topic. The point of my post was to show some common arguments and counter-arguments.

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

#279

Post by elindbe2 »

JeromeLon wrote: post #223
eloisant wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why capital gains should be taxed lower. Money you get from working, from your blood and your sweat should be heavily taxed, but money you're earning just by already having money (whether it's from your work, inherited, donated from family members) shouldn't be taxed as well? What's the logic here?

Let's say that the 20% rate applies to income tax, corporation tax, dividend tax and capital gain tax. When a company allocates $100 to its employee, the employee receives $100 of salary, pays $20 of income tax, and ends up with $80. When a company allocates $100 to its shareholder, it's first considered as profit, so the company pays $20 in corporation tax, the shareholder receives $80 of dividends, pays $16 of divi…

But the money the company pays out doesn't count as tax paid by the shareholder, and there is very good reason for this from the shareholder's perspective. The company is a separately legal entity created to protect the shareholder from liability (among other reasons). At least in theory an owner can avoid this "double tax" by doing all business under their own name and accepting the potential liability which comes with that.

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

#280

Post by filoleg »

esoterica wrote: post #179
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-…

There is no canonical neutral in politics. “Neutral” is just code for “stuff I agree with”. You don’t really want neutral content, you just want content that validates your existing beliefs. The article lists a bunch of facts and numbers, why do you consider it “non-factual”?

They probably meant that they want factual content that either leaves out the narrative completely or equally covers all sides of the story with equal regard. I.e., content that focuses on facts and supplements it with narrative when needed. As opposed to the majority of the current political content, where the narrative takes the first and foremost place (usually very one-sided narrative too), and then facts just act as a supplement for the narrative (i.e, facts end up buried deep inside the article somewhere or just straight up linked somewhere without even being directly mentioned).
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