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How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

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Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#191

Post by doovd »

cassepipe wrote: post #128
doovd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

businesses yes. But governments abuse public spending - at least in the UK a significant chunk gets funnelled to conservative friends and family...why should I therefore want to fund that?

Seems like you need and try to convince people around you to vote for a party that wants high taxes on the rich (that include wealthy politicians), transparency on public expenses, public data on politicians resources, democratic control/revocation of elected representatives/public servants ? And forbid money owned medias by controlling their finances too ? There are only two ways to take down an oligarchy, a revolut…

Abuse of taxes is not a party-specific issue. Until laws are passed to prevent this (which is probably a multi-decade lobbying effort), it will re-occur. You are right, it eventually boils down to "it is quite hard".

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#192

Post by Nextgrid »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #121
doovd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

businesses yes. But governments abuse public spending - at least in the UK a significant chunk gets funnelled to conservative friends and family...why should I therefore want to fund that?

Why would a desire to pay less tax on your part influence a government’s misappropriation of the public purse? That’s what voting is for surely?

Voting only works if there are good options out there. If both options are equally crooked, there's no solution.

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#193

Post by lukas099 »

jusssi wrote: post #162
0xy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can only be true if you hold humans in such low regard that you think they cannot make an informed choice about where to work and under which conditions. Any example of a cooperative usually descends into chaos, an example being worker's unions which descend into criminality, corruption and pure evil (teacher's unions regularly defend sexual predator teachers, for example) more often than not. It's also a pure f…

> sexual predator teachers You need to chill, dude. I am not defending child molesters. I am not even claiming that capital investment is evil. I am simply pointing out the fact that the relation is parasitic. > As an investor, I don't see a single cent of profit in this case. Then you aren't paying capital gains tax either, so I don't see the problem. I'm curious though, do you also not expect to get any profit for…

It's not parasitic, it's symbiotic. Without profit-seeking capital, there would be no opportuinities for productive labor.

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#195

Post by ericmay »

lukas099 wrote: post #178
jen729w wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that this article should be titled “how to steal from society”, so I’ll join you in downvote-city, comrade.

Reducing your taxable income is stealing? So if I contribute to a Roth IRA, I am stealing too?

Depends on the spirit of the reduction and income levels. A Roth IRA was designed specifically for wage earners to have a tax-friendly investment vehicle to save for retirement. This benefits them and society. I don’t think you can say the same thing about the OP here.

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#197

Post by Nextgrid »

dmje wrote: post #68

Unfashionable thought: pay your damn taxes. Loopholes are one thing and IMO should be closed but morality is another. The whole idea that you can make a billion dollar business without being hugely dependent on the infrastructure, education, history, societal background etc that has largely been paid for by...taxes...is utter fallacy. Maybe if massively profitable businesses spent a bit more time doing the right thin…

The problem with taxes is that all the money effectively goes into a black hole from where senile, clueless or malicious politicians can draw to give to their friends, fall prey to unscrupulous suppliers (or be complicit and get a kickback, allowing them to "launder" public money into their own pocket) or spend it fighting stupid battles all while the country is falling apart (the UK as an example is notorious for constantly beating the "internet filtering" drum - low-income kids are starving and families can't afford heating bills, but porn on the internet is obviously a bigger problem).

I won't downvote and I agree with you in principle and wish I was lucky enough to live in a country where I can actually feel like I'm getting value out of my tax money, but as of right now that's not the case so I can totally understand tax evader's positions.

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#198

Post by ericmay »

mcv wrote: post #138
mschuster91 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent matters. Opportunity Zones are set up to incentivize actual businesses providing services to the local community, not to serve as vehicles for far-away rich arseholes to cheat money out of the taxman.

But if the rules don't enforce that, and allow far-away rich arseholes to use these zones to cheat money out of the taxman, then that's sloppy legislating. The loopholes need to be closed. Relying on the goodwill of people whose primary unifying characteristic is the hoarding of extreme amounts of money is a bad idea.

I agree and disagree.

I agree that it’s sloppy legislation and to that end the group to blame is the government (and ultimately the people).

But I disagree that if the rules don’t get enforced that it’s seemingly “ok” for people to exploit it. They should have common decency and ethical guidelines here. Probably why I’m not one of them.

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#199

Post by EdwardDiego »

mellavora wrote: post #122
dmje wrote: post #68

Unfashionable thought: pay your damn taxes. Loopholes are one thing and IMO should be closed but morality is another. The whole idea that you can make a billion dollar business without being hugely dependent on the infrastructure, education, history, societal background etc that has largely been paid for by...taxes...is utter fallacy. Maybe if massively profitable businesses spent a bit more time doing the right thin…

My brother's life was paid for by taxes. Went to the ER with a headache, turned out to be a brain annurism leading to 2 8rh plus surgeries and a month in the hospital. Bill was paid out of Minnesota state taxpayers fund. Otherwise he would have been bankrupt for life -- and without the surgery that life would not have been long. My wife's life was saved twice by tax-funded health care. Won't share details here. I hap…

Bingo.

When I left home at 15, I got into crime, as no-one would hire a smelly homeless kid.

Then when I turned 16, I was able to get a social security payment for "independent youths". I wasn't living in the lap of luxury, but I could actually pay rent in a flat and buy food, without committing crime.

So now that I'm earning a very decent wage as a dev, paying my taxes is the very least I can do to contribute to a country that supported me when I needed it.

Re: How to have a billion dollar exit with zero capital gains tax

#200

Post by roenxi »

dmje wrote: post #68

Unfashionable thought: pay your damn taxes. Loopholes are one thing and IMO should be closed but morality is another. The whole idea that you can make a billion dollar business without being hugely dependent on the infrastructure, education, history, societal background etc that has largely been paid for by...taxes...is utter fallacy. Maybe if massively profitable businesses spent a bit more time doing the right thin…

I don't think anyone has done the legwork to link "your taxes" and a moral aspect. There are a lot of basic unresolved questions (if Jeff Bezos pays more in taxes than you earn in your lifetime, has he payed his fair share? Why/why not? Are the standards used to work that out some sort of objective moral or just a reflection of personal interest speaking? A suspicious number of moral justifications involve other people paying all the taxes & not the moraliser). And a company like Apple has had a bigger positive influence on my lifestyle than a large number of government agencies. Some of those agencies are trying to make my life worse as far as I reckon it.

If the law says some entity must pay X tax it is uncertain what it would mean, in practice, to claim "their taxes" were really Y, some other amount they aren't legally obliged to pay.

> The whole idea that you can make a billion dollar business without being hugely dependent on the infrastructure, education, history, societal background etc that has largely been paid for by...taxes...is utter fallacy.

A business is a hypothetical entity, a term for a system of organising people to do things. Things that are measurably in high demand. It is profoundly uncertain that diverting money out of those systems is a good idea. Observing that businesses rely on their context does not start or end the argument about how much tax they should pay.

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