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How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

propublica.org

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Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#21

Post by kjandersen »

koolba wrote: post #9
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.

There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…

(I wrote this comment as a _reaction_ to yours -- it turned out not to be a _response_ to it, so I apologise if I seem to put words in your mouth.)

I have this idea rummaging about that I have never quite seen articulated in these discussions.

The earnings of "rich friends" are often seen as a singular, isolated achievement, and fairness is then discussed as relative to that: "they earned it, so is it fair to take X%?"

It seems to me that society at large facilitates those earnings. The roads that their workers drive on, the water facility that supplies the school that their employees send their children to. The unemployment safety net that lets employees take risks and take the job of the industrialist... The list is endless.

All this is the net sum of what was _also_ given to (taken by?) the person that makes a billion dollars. In this context I think the "fairness" argument against taxation becomes weaker.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#22

Post by twoodfin »

kjandersen wrote: post #21
koolba wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…

(I wrote this comment as a _reaction_ to yours -- it turned out not to be a _response_ to it, so I apologise if I seem to put words in your mouth.) I have this idea rummaging about that I have never quite seen articulated in these discussions. The earnings of "rich friends" are often seen as a singular, isolated achievement, and fairness is then discussed as relative to that: "they earned it, so is it fair to take X%…

It doesn’t become weaker unless you can cogently express a limiting principle to your argument:

- Why isn’t it fair to take 99% of the highest earners’ income?

- Why isn’t it fair to take 50% of the median earner’s income? They, too, drive on roads and send their children to school.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#23

Post by littlestymaar »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

We stopped taxing them and started to borrow from them instead.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#24

Post by jmyeet »

Private foundations are really a massive scam on the public purse so whenever you hear about the Gates Foundation and the like, remember it's just a tax dodge, nothing more.

The way the rules work, a private foundation has to spend 5% of its capital on its intended purpose. Thing is, that 5% can include "administration" costs like paying salaries and benefits for the family. They really need to raise this to 10%, minimum.

Art is a massive tax scam. You should only get a tax deduction on the purchase price (not "appraised value") and only to a public museum and there should be strict requirements as to what a "museum" is.

But it's really quite disgusting what lengths billionaires go to to avoid paying for the society that makes their wealth possible.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#25

Post by tyingq »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #17
tyingq wrote: post #12

There's also the loophole of running a church and designating your home as a "parsonage". Laws vary by state, but there's several that don't mind fully exempting sprawling estates if you represent it as such.

I know someone who looked into this and since the facility was a business 5 days a week & a church on Sunday they gave him a 1/7 tax credit. OTOH it made sense, as all he had to do was find a congregation that wanted to meet there.

That seems like a reasonable, legal example. The Houston Chronical found ones that are unfortunately legal, but not reasonable...like: https://archive.is/SPY8K

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#26

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

dools wrote: post #10
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.

Well, fix government oversight of public bureaucracies and then we can have a discussion. As it is now, it's pretty clear that elected officials have little control and oversight into the bureaucracies that they nominally control and direct. Make bureaucrats firable. End Chevron deference. Bring back political appointments from the top to the bottom of the bureaucracy.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#27

Post by fifticon »

dools wrote: post #10
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

The bigger problem is a fear of public spending because of perceived incompetence. The stigma comes from a time when only governments had run big bureaucratic systems. Now we can see there is little difference between public and private bureaucracies except for a lack of oversight on the latter. Still the stigma remains and all public spending is filtered through a profit making entity.

I see a lot of propaganda expended on convincing the voting public of this "public incompentence", almost as if someone is paying to maintain this status quo.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#28

Post by tmnvix »

refurb wrote: post #11
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #2

As a side note: One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. For decades now. Imho, its a shift of the represented interests in policies. We should stop pondering enshitification or greedflation an start seeing it as a systemic issue, that we can observe everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Commodification#In_Marxist_th...

One of the primary reasons of how the rich get richer and how public services (our society) degrade is, that we stopped taxing them. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are pretty steady over time. We aren't really taxing less. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

You can both be right if you assume a shift away from taxing wealth to taxing income (or unearned to earned income).

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#29

Post by mycologos »

I know, I know, "bounties" are a fraught concept. Some people find "snitching" odious. But this is a tantalizing use case. All the author of this piece got out of their legwork was another article, but it also yielded some money for the federal government:

> Two days after I emailed Finwall in April inquiring about the Xie Foundation’s purchase of the house, the foundation filed records with the California attorney general’s office, stating that it had “discovered a self-dealing event” and including a federal tax return with the word “amended” handwritten at the top. In his email to ProPublica, Finwall said that, after amending its returns, the foundation “paid some excise taxes related to Mr. Xie’s stay at the property.”

Maybe we can give 1% of the recovered tax to forensic accountant bounty hunters willing to vet the appropriate nonprofit filings. As is, the IRS seems under-resourced for this kind of work, and there's no real incentive for anybody else to do it unless they're a journalist -- and you can only write this kind of story so many times. Maybe each submitted case costs $100 or some other fee sufficient to deter spammers. I strongly suspect there's a class of feisty semi-retired accountants who'd be happy to spend some of their golden years on this kind of thing. If we're worried about small nonprofits, we can set a minimum claimed deduction that's subject to a bounty.

Re: How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits

#30

Post by toyg »

koolba wrote: post #9
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US people have been brainwashed to think reasonable taxation is 'socialism' - something they need to have a religious objection to even if they don't know what it is.

There’s no such thing as “reasonable taxation” because it’s a subjective concept. It’s no better than saying “ the rich are not paying their fair share ”. Say you’re settling the tab for big dinner at a restaurant, if your rich friend pays for the steak he ordered, is that his fair share? If there’s 100 of you and he pays for 1/100 of the check, is that his fair share? What if he pays for half the tab, is that enough…

Rich friends used to settle the whole tab, no questions asked. Generosity was a value.

A rich friend arguing over the details of a tab is just an asshole.

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