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We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

propublica.org

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Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#61
Ok HN! We are intelligent, rational, and well intentioned- but we are also diverse! And it is great.

Can someone please help me with the following! Why do we still compare WEALTH with INCOME tax?

Of COURSE wealth is skewed: you go negative pretty fast (college and mortgage), and then you accumulate over time. It is a pretty rational progress. Income can vary over time - and the tax should vary, too.

Why do we smash these two together? Are we DELIBERATLY pushing for a wealth tax? We we doing it underhandedly? Is it ACTUALLY a good idea?

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. It seems to work for Finland. In some countries it would probably make you a kidnapping target.

You become a kidnapping target by being rich, whether that's a matter of public record or just someone cruising the wealthier neighbourhoods is arbitrary. I mean over here you can't look up who makes how much, but the rough value of houses and neighbourhoods, which is used to determine property taxes, is public record. I'm sure there's some rich people / families living in otherwise underwhelming houses, but they're…

> I'm sure there's some rich people / families living in otherwise underwhelming houses, but they're generally a minority.

There are more than you think. Pretty much every city has a nice neighborhood where the wealthy residents live. The difference between someone worth $10mm vs someone worth $100mm is not visible from the street.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#63
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the .001 consistently encroach on our political policies for private benefit. I see these tax loopholes as bugs/vulnerabilities in the tax code. And just like in software, bad actors have an incentive to keep the bugs in place. Shedding light on them is a first step towards greater awareness and eventual fixes.

> Taxes aren't and shouldn't be secret. Cool. Would you mind sending me your tax returns (assuming you're in the US), or similar income history? You can oppose tax loopholes without encroaching on the privacy of others. To use your example, imagine dumping hacked Facebook user data because you don't like bugs in Facebook software

That's an unfair response. It's reasonable to want the rules to change for society and be willing to play along. That's different from wanting to be the only one to do it.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#64
post #2

> Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We are doing so — quite selectively and carefully — because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden.... We believe that disclosing the identities of billionaires who paid little to no taxes in years their fortunes grew by billions of dollars will help readers understand t…

> quite selectively and carefully

> allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden

am I being too cynical, or is this a "pick one" situation? what "pattern" are the readers supposed to see in this carefully chosen subset of the data? what patterns do the unchosen subsets show?

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#65
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously haven't been to Finland. In Scandinavia, the approach to other person earning couple of times more than you could be summarized by "good for you".

But earning couple of times less lol? ) I don't think anyone at all wants live in a place where most people earn a lot less than themselves.

Nah. A lot of people care about trashiness and culture much more. And boy that does not correlate with bank account.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#66
post #2

> Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We are doing so — quite selectively and carefully — because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden.... We believe that disclosing the identities of billionaires who paid little to no taxes in years their fortunes grew by billions of dollars will help readers understand t…

Let's talk about the actual damage that could occur to an individual here. The fact of the matter is, billionaires are effectively isolated from all societal repercussions, where the average person simply isn't. Even if you waved a magic wand, and prevented them from making any money through any mechanism, and they just had spend their wealth, their lifestyle would not change at all. They literally can not spend the amount of money they have, in the years of life they have remaining. Even the threat of jail time isn't a real threat, given the serious discrepancies in prosecution and sentencing guidelines, let alone the plausibility of someone pulling a Carlos Ghosn[0], which is much easier to do when you effectively have infinite resources.

Now let's look at the other side. The societal benefit is making these effects current preferential policies concrete. Often politicians and other supporters of the super wealthy intentionally muddy the waters by talking about "small businesses", "family farms", and other middle class and upper middle class lifestyles. (e.g. The arguments made by against inheritance tax, that only affects net worths in excess of $11.7 million, or the arguments based on absolute dollar amounts rather than income or wealth percentages.) By making the effects concrete rather than abstract, it's much harder to argue that there is any sort of negative individual effects on ultra wealthy.[1]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50964040

[1] For example: Even if you took half of Warren Buffet's wealth ($110 B) every year for the rest of his life (90 years old, today), he'd probably still die a billionaire. And even if he lived to be a 100, he'd still have $100 million.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#67
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if someone wanted to demonstrate poor building codes by setting your house on fire, that would be okay too, since you know, it's in the public interest to demonstrate lax building codes? Privacy is a right that I would think more people on this forum would respect. I don't see why you're so happy to offer up the rights of others as sacrificial lambs to make some political point.

A better analogy would be breaking and entering to collect evidence that a building was unsafe for occupancy, and I’d support that as well under the assumption that due process had failed and there was risk to those marginalized. I don’t believe there is an absolute right to privacy. As always, there’s nuance.

Does this hypothesize the lack of a functioning court system to issue a search warrant, the lack of observing the Fourth Amendment in the US (or equivalent in many other countries), or both?

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#68
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the .001 consistently encroach on our political policies for private benefit. I see these tax loopholes as bugs/vulnerabilities in the tax code. And just like in software, bad actors have an incentive to keep the bugs in place. Shedding light on them is a first step towards greater awareness and eventual fixes.

> Taxes aren't and shouldn't be secret. Cool. Would you mind sending me your tax returns (assuming you're in the US), or similar income history? You can oppose tax loopholes without encroaching on the privacy of others. To use your example, imagine dumping hacked Facebook user data because you don't like bugs in Facebook software

What's the argument in keeping it secret? Politicians routinely (Trump notably being the exception) release these all the time.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. It seems to work for Finland. In some countries it would probably make you a kidnapping target.

You become a kidnapping target by being rich, whether that's a matter of public record or just someone cruising the wealthier neighbourhoods is arbitrary. I mean over here you can't look up who makes how much, but the rough value of houses and neighbourhoods, which is used to determine property taxes, is public record. I'm sure there's some rich people / families living in otherwise underwhelming houses, but they're…

Per The Millionaire Next Door (see https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer... for the link), most wealthy are those who have a reasonable income but good financial discipline.

Which means that a shocking number of millionaires live in poor neighborhoods and have modest lifestyles.

Those aren't the super-wealthy, of course. But most wealthy people can't be identified by where they live.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#70
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better analogy would be breaking and entering to collect evidence that a building was unsafe for occupancy, and I’d support that as well under the assumption that due process had failed and there was risk to those marginalized. I don’t believe there is an absolute right to privacy. As always, there’s nuance.

So evidence obtained illegally outside of due-process is fair game in your book? I guess by saying "when due process failed" kind of makes it so since by definition it "failed".

>So evidence obtained illegally outside of due-process is fair game in your book?

So evidence of horrible crimes should be ignored if subjective "due-process" isn't followed? You do realize that the moneyed elite have disproportionate influence over "process" and law, right?

Focus on the leaks and whether they are true, not the messenger.

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