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Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

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Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#221

Post by zdragnar »

littlestymaar wrote: post #190
SoftTalker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this puzzle you? It seems like completely expected behavior to me. Most people try to minimize taxes. Who do you know that gladly pays more than they legally have to pay?

> Most people try to minimize taxes No, most people don't care about their tax the way wealthy people do. I ended up in a wealthy family through marriage and I can tell you nobody I my original social circle spent even a fraction of the effort the wealthy do when it comes to taxes.

That's probably because your original social circle largely already had the government minimize their taxes for them, in the form of a standard deduction that exceeds what they could hope for with an itemized deduction.

In that regard, most people minimize their taxes by doing nothing. The wealthy have to put effort in to get the same effect.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#223

Post by m463 »

Symmetry wrote: post #176

Rather than the normal solutions, it would be really nice to just move to a progressive consumption tax. 1) All investments are tax deductible, not just 401Ks. 2) The sale of investments is treated as income. 3) Money from loans is also taxed as income, unless used for (1).

I keep thinking "tax what you want less of"

Is having fewer investments worthwhile for society?

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#224

Post by fallingknife »

xmprt wrote: post #111
SoftTalker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this puzzle you? It seems like completely expected behavior to me. Most people try to minimize taxes. Who do you know that gladly pays more than they legally have to pay?

I feel like if I were a billionaire or even a multi millionaire, I'd have better things to spend my time doing than worrying about taxes.

You wouldn't spend any time. You would pay a CPA $300K per year to save you millions in tax liability and never even think about it.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#225

Post by smsm42 »

lokar wrote: post #132
SoftTalker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this puzzle you? It seems like completely expected behavior to me. Most people try to minimize taxes. Who do you know that gladly pays more than they legally have to pay?

It’s more than tax minimization. It’s buying politicians and distorting society so they pay less.

How the proposed schema distorts the society? Sure, the federal government will have a little less money, but they still have trillions and are not exactly frugal with it. Between two worlds, one having that tax loophole and one not having it, I can't identify any societal difference that could be attributable to that loophole. Can you name one?

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#226

Post by fallingknife »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #199
danpad wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that unfathomable when you look at how governments spend the money. E.g. a public Czech university spent 80k euros to change their logo from this: https://cdn.xsd.cz/resize/21404adf37a83977870fe87fe0eb4ea6_r... to this: https://www.em.muni.cz/cache-thumbs/logo_muni_web-1580x790-2... Why does a public university, one of the most popular in the country, need a new logo? And if it needs a new logo, wh…

80K euro might sound like a lot until you realise it is around the combined annual salary for two mid-level employees in Western Europe, and for about a team of four to five in Eastern Europe. To ask a team of designers to do brand and marketing research and design a new logo for a big organisation that will use said logo everywhere is not a 1K euro freelancer job. To be fair, the new logo is a bit crap, but in the g…

The point is that a public university doesn't gain anything from a good logo, so really anything over $0 is too much. And that $80K doesn't take into account the probably much larger expense of updating that logo throughout the university.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#227

Post by deepfriedchokes »

1986 wrote: post #146
adventured wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no source for the claim. Here is all the New Yorker article says: "That lucrative maneuvering is the realm of specialized attorneys, accountants, and money managers, many of whom work for family offices: in-house financial teams that typically include a dozen or so full-time attendants. Family offices, which have roots in nineteenth-century operations that served John D. Rockefeller and a handful of his peers…

You folks are reading the sentence wrong. The $6T estimate is for all assets controlled by family offices _generally_

Thanks for the correction, but all these families and funds (don’t look up Blackrock, I should have listened) have similar goals of self perpetuation of a system that benefits them at everyone else’s expense so even though there are multiple players it is highly likely their goals are aligned as if they were acting in concert.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#228

Post by smsm42 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #190
SoftTalker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this puzzle you? It seems like completely expected behavior to me. Most people try to minimize taxes. Who do you know that gladly pays more than they legally have to pay?

> Most people try to minimize taxes No, most people don't care about their tax the way wealthy people do. I ended up in a wealthy family through marriage and I can tell you nobody I my original social circle spent even a fraction of the effort the wealthy do when it comes to taxes.

Mostly because there's really no way for them to. When I was young and poor, I didn't have much way to pay less taxes (not that I paid that much - but if I wanted to pay less, I couldn't) - I just had my salary, and whatever is deducted from it was it, I had no realistic way to change it. Even such things as charity donations wouldn't change it because to get out of standard deductions etc. I'd have to donate way more than I could afford.

When I got a bit more money, mortgage, stock options, investments, etc. then I started to have options - do I pay this way or that way? Do I invest in this account or that account? Does HDHP/HSA make sense for me or not? Should I sell the certain investment to harvest the tax loss or keep it? Etc. etc. then my asset structure is more varied, so are the opportunities to pay more or less tax. I imagine for really wealthy people (definitely not me, still) there are even more options how to pay less taxes, and they are doing right serious considering them (or paying people to seriously consider them) - if I ever get rich, that's what I'd do.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#229

Post by dymk »

hollerith wrote: post #219
barbazoo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point in my life I took a step back to look at my life and how I’m doing and how much I pay for that life. Maybe I’m just incredibly lucky. My conservative expectation is that we all have to start contributing a lot more over the next few decades if we want to maintain our standard of living, otherwise it will just gradually get worse. I hope I’m wrong.

What would the government spend the additional tax revenue on, in your conservative expection?

Healthcare, school lunches, diversion programs, research grants

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#230

Post by smsm42 »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #193
SoftTalker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this puzzle you? It seems like completely expected behavior to me. Most people try to minimize taxes. Who do you know that gladly pays more than they legally have to pay?

> Who do you know that gladly pays more than they legally have to pay? What paying more in taxes gets more done in the things paid by taxes. It's like there is a direct dependency between a money received from the taxes and the things made/built on the tax money.

For an average person, there's not. Like, if I pay twice as much taxes as I do now, literally nothing would change in anything paid by taxes, and I have no ways to effect that change. Same if by some miracle I stopped paying all federal taxes, there's literally nothing that would change in federal government's actions or budgets.
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