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Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

bbc.com

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Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#81

Post by boomboomsubban »

naveen99 wrote: post #34
01100011 wrote: post #5

I've seen people complaining that the article is disingenuous because it conflates income taxes with capital gains taxes. My response is 'so what'. When you make above a certain income level, you don't need anymore income and can play around with reinvesting capital gains to push taxes into the future while amassing wealth. Sure, you're not realizing the income, but what you're doing, I think, is gaining power and in…

It’s hard to value a potential large liquidation. A market sell by Jeff Bezos of 40% of his Amazon stock to pay for income tax would destabilize the markets. Also, if there was no tax advantage to holding stocks long term, the entire stock market would have been liquidated to zero in q1 of 2020. market volatility would certainly be much higher than it is now.

If the tax requirements were public, there would not be much destabilizing from executives yearly selling off an appropriate amount of stock.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#82

Post by brnt »

daenz wrote: post #72
dougmwne wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have a certain amount of assets, there's no need to realize any personal income. It becomes completely voluntary. If you have a billion in stock, you could leverage that to pay personal expenses. You could use an unrealized loss over there to balance out the cash you're taking in from a gain over there. You can use companies and foundations to execute any vision you have outside of your household. If you pla…

Do you trust politicians to redistribute money fairly and with accountability?

I have my vote. I have nothing over a billionaire.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#83

Post by knodi123 »

imgabe wrote: post #41
pontus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that taxing unrealized capital gains is a fundamentally flawed approach. However, the problem with the current system is that these ultra-wealthy people just end up borrowing against their equity, avoiding selling if possible. I think it would make sense to count borrowing against equity as tax-wise equivalent to selling that same equity. With that loophole closed, together with raising the capital gains tax,…

But borrowing is not equivalent to selling, tax wise or any otherwise. When you get a mortgage to buy a $750k house, do you want to be taxed as though you had $750k income that year? You’re just borrowing against the value of an asset after all.

Yes, but the difference is that borrowing against your unrealized investments is a way of dodging taxes. I think the tax code can handle that level of subtlety without paying attention to your flippant reductio ad absurdum.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#84

Post by mxschumacher »

willcipriano wrote: post #69
imgabe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do tax capital gains. You pay taxes when you sell. Do you mean tax unrealized capital gains? There is a reason you don’t owe taxes on a stock you haven’t sold yet. For one thing, what if you have to pay tax at one valuation, and then it goes down later.

A possible solution I haven't seen yet. Eliminate stock buybacks and force firms to deliver dividends again.

depending on the valuation, buying back stock is a much better use of capital than paying a dividend, even when disregarding the tax implications.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#85

Post by imgabe »

vkou wrote: post #68
imgabe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publicly release your own tax return first then. Be the change you want to see.

Nothing interesting in them. Wage income, standard deductions, some realized cap losses from a few stock sales. Looks like any other tax return. What bit of information do you expect that tax return add to the conversation of "Are the rich evading taxes?"

We have a whole section of the government dedicated to figuring out whether people are evading taxes and then pursuing them for it. It could use some more funding, but that’s the appropriate way to do it.

What are you going to add by having uninformed members of the public inspecting tax returns they don’t understand? Keep in mind there are people who turn down raises because they think being in a higher tax bracket will cause them to lose money. These are the geniuses you want to catch tax evaders?

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#86

Post by paulryanrogers »

daenz wrote: post #72
dougmwne wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have a certain amount of assets, there's no need to realize any personal income. It becomes completely voluntary. If you have a billion in stock, you could leverage that to pay personal expenses. You could use an unrealized loss over there to balance out the cash you're taking in from a gain over there. You can use companies and foundations to execute any vision you have outside of your household. If you pla…

Do you trust politicians to redistribute money fairly and with accountability?

What is the alternative? It seems that now we are trusting the rich to pay their share, which--as a percentage of their wealth--is a rounding error in practice.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#87

Post by robryan »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #55
aaronschroeder wrote: post #17

But what is the solution? Most wealth of people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is tied to ownership shares in their companies. I don't think it's fair to force them to sell shares so they can cover higher taxes. I also fear efforts to extract more tax money from them will ultimately just raise the bill for the middle class. The ultra wealthy can afford to hire a team of accountants to find the loopholes while small bu…

Why is it not fair to force them? I don't think it's any more or less fair than forcing people to pay income tax.

There may be unintended consequences in forcing successful founders to over time sell down a controlling stake in their company.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#89

Post by vkou »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #74
vkou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would guess it's all legal. When it's all secret, we can't make an informed decision on whether or not it should be legal.

As a point of order "we" don't make these decisions at all. We elect people who do. And, you can support something being legal/illegal on principle alone.

It's hard to argue for legal changes, when you can't even describe the problem.

Bill says "The rich should pay more taxes".

Bob says "No, they shouldn't, they pay plenty."

Neither actually has any idea of how much in taxes the rich actually pay. You can't have an informed discussion in that situation.

Re: Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

#90

Post by idiotsecant »

zorak8me wrote: post #58
aaronschroeder wrote: post #17

But what is the solution? Most wealth of people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is tied to ownership shares in their companies. I don't think it's fair to force them to sell shares so they can cover higher taxes. I also fear efforts to extract more tax money from them will ultimately just raise the bill for the middle class. The ultra wealthy can afford to hire a team of accountants to find the loopholes while small bu…

One solution- if someone is taking out personal loans that function like income, let’s tax it like income. If someone really wants to live on 80k a year, that’s fine. But if they’re reporting 80k income but spending 10M, maybe they should be paying their fair share on that. Edit- this has the benefit of completely avoiding the issue of unrealized gains and sticks to the issue of income...

I think this might upset the millions of people who take large loan to do things like purchase real estate to live in.
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