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Who died and left the US $7B?

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Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#181

Post by koolala »

patwolf wrote: post #158
sdenton4 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, dragons are important stabilizing influences in dungeon economics. The hoard of gold isn't inflationary until the adventurers liberate it and start buying wands and stuff.

Reminds me of something I read years ago about how Ultima Online would create "gold sinks", super expensive items that served no purpose other than help remove gold from the economy and prevent inflation.

I guess the trick there is they don't spend it. The money leaves the virtual economy. IRL that's impossible.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#182

Post by lowkey »

cperciva wrote: post #171
_bin_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family fa…

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. In Canada, assets are deemed to have been disposed of upon death (or gifting) so the estate pays capital gains taxes on the accrued profit. There are a few exemptions for political reasons, e.g. to allow farmers to pass appreciated farm property to their children tax free, but they're sufficiently limited that they don't cost very much…

Amd this is why there are no mid-sized family businesses remaining in Canada, except for the occasional farm. Billionaire oligopolies are all that remain as only they are sustainable in the tax farm once known as the great white north.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#183

Post by geysersam »

metacritic12 wrote: post #179
_bin_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family fa…

The obvious fix is to not step up basis on death. The estate tax already means that the estate of a person who dies may need to sell / divide / split stuff to pay the government. There already is no fundamental protection for an asset passing unscathed from a parent to a child. I don't see how not stepping up basis qualitatively changes this. And your argument of "you want a child to be able to inherit a family busin…

It's a funny argument the one about the family farm. In this case it's not even about inheritance tax. It's a sob story about a guy who couldn't inherit the farm because his dad owed the state money because they had let him not pay tax on his capital gains for a long time.

Sorry for not tearing up.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#184

Post by dclowd9901 »

whatshisface wrote: post #105
cipheredStones wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says that he made it by stock trading. It is, at best, difficult to articulate how that could be creating value rather than capturing it. Many of the world's billionaires made their money that way. Doing something positive-sum is a way to become a billionaire, but many people are very handsomely paid to ensure that their clients are on the good side of zero-sum transactions.

Taking money away from mismanaged companies, and giving it to well-managed ones, is a net positive of stock trading. Another net positive of stock trading is making buyers and sellers available all day, for anything on the market. Yet another benefit of stock trading is to make it more difficult to manipulate the market - there's a reason why pump and dump scams only occur with assets that see very little attention (…

Does the quality of management of a company actually dictate its positivity to the world at large? Seems like a quite unrelated signal.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#185

Post by bdndndndbve »

lowkey wrote: post #182
cperciva wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. In Canada, assets are deemed to have been disposed of upon death (or gifting) so the estate pays capital gains taxes on the accrued profit. There are a few exemptions for political reasons, e.g. to allow farmers to pass appreciated farm property to their children tax free, but they're sufficiently limited that they don't cost very much…

Amd this is why there are no mid-sized family businesses remaining in Canada, except for the occasional farm. Billionaire oligopolies are all that remain as only they are sustainable in the tax farm once known as the great white north.

Billionaire oligopolies are everywhere, this isn't a uniquely Canadian problem. TFA points out we live in an era of Gilded Age inequality.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#186

Post by 1024core »

> Last year, observers with the economic equivalent of a radio telescope detected a radiating anomaly on the February 28, 2023, daily balance sheet of the US Treasury Department: a $7 billion estate- and gift-tax payment.

Where can one find this daily balance sheet?

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#187

Post by fallingknife »

_bin_ wrote: post #162
Jedd wrote: post #94

A fascinating reddit post was mentioned here about a month ago - about the mildly famous (if a little macabre) 'Buy, Borrow, Die' cycle used by the obscenely-wealthy to - multi-generationally - avoid tax obligations. https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408772

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family fa…

You missed the obvious one - borrow against the asset to pay the tax.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#188

Post by geysersam »

_bin_ wrote: post #162
Jedd wrote: post #94

A fascinating reddit post was mentioned here about a month ago - about the mildly famous (if a little macabre) 'Buy, Borrow, Die' cycle used by the obscenely-wealthy to - multi-generationally - avoid tax obligations. https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408772

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family fa…

> The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things,

This is a bad argument. Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc.

It's a very common fallacy of people criticizing public spending to point to the stock market and say "Look! Imagine how rich we would be if we had just invested the public spending instead." Completely falling into the trap of discarding the value growth of public investments just because they are not measured and advertised the same way.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#189

Post by ak217 »

1024core wrote: post #186

> Last year, observers with the economic equivalent of a radio telescope detected a radiating anomaly on the February 28, 2023, daily balance sheet of the US Treasury Department: a $7 billion estate- and gift-tax payment. Where can one find this daily balance sheet?

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/daily-treasury-stat...

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#190

Post by fallingknife »

arcticbull wrote: post #169
leprechaun1066 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2021/2022 there were 60 people in the UK who probably fall into that last group. Together their taxes accounted for about 1.4% of the UK tax bill despite being something like 0.002% of the population.

Are you familiar with the concept of noblesse oblige? Further does this include all taxes or just income taxes which are only a portion of revenues used to make less well off people look like moochers. For instance, in the US, there’s social security and Medicare taxes -- and payroll tax, the social security and Medicare tax contributed on behalf of employees by employers. Renters also pay their landlords property ta…

Renters do not pay property tax in the US. That liability is entirely on the owner.
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