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Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

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Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#231

Post by fallingknife »

sxp wrote: post #20
IncreasePosts wrote: post #16

Is there any indication the ultra rich structure loans like this to avoid taxes? Or is this just a meme that, for the most part, financially illiterate redditors like to throw around?

One famous person who did this was Larry Ellison using Oracle shares. This almost caused a problem for him in the 90s due to the stock dropping in value: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Inside-look-at-a-billion...

This is not an example of "buy, borrow, die." It is just borrowing against his shares. Everybody with a brokerage account does that.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#232

Post by fallingknife »

mrkeen wrote: post #152
IncreasePosts wrote: post #16

Is there any indication the ultra rich structure loans like this to avoid taxes? Or is this just a meme that, for the most part, financially illiterate redditors like to throw around?

Billionaires like to declare no income, which is why they pay such low taxes. But they spend like kings, not like people who have no income. But you can't spend unrealised gains. So they either realise their gains and pay taxes, or get their spending money elsewhere. Since they spend a lot of money, and "elsewhere" wants its money back eventually, it sounds like "elsewhere" has to be a bank. It seems like the most pl…

No. The most plausible explanation is they sold stock and paid capital gains. They do it all the time. Don't believe me? Just look at the insider transaction reports that all public companies file. e.g Bezos sold 1.2 billion last month: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/insider-transactions/

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#233

Post by PaulHoule »

pixl97 wrote: post #184
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…

I'm not sure if you've ever seen how much it costs a corporation of the same size to change logos, but you'll see similar expenses

And frequently equally bad results, such as picking a logo almost exactly the same as another company in the same sector. For instance, the NBC TV network in 1975 hired consultants to make a logo almost exactly the same as Nebraska Educational Television:

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2011/09/one-of-nbcs-great-blun...

I worked as a webdev for the Cornell University Library (more than 70 web sites) at the time when Cornell changed their logo from a nice little square that looked like the J.C. Penny logo except it said "Cornell" on it and then they made everybody doing any kind of visual communication change their logo including hiring a friend of mine as a consultant for almost two years to change all the letterheads and similar things for suborganizations that didn't have graphic design talent in house.

We got this thing instead

https://brand.cornell.edu/logos/

which I think is OK graphically on its own but unlike the square it is demanding on the environment that it is in and might force you to change things around it to look good whereas I liked the square because you could just put the square near an edge or a corner and it always looked OK.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#235

Post by Bloating »

I have the solution - someone else should pay!

When you say "the rich" don't pay enough, you're essentially saying "don't tax me" then launch into a selfish, ad hominem tirade about how greedy "those" other people are

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#236

Post by lazyasciiart »

zdragnar wrote: post #221
littlestymaar wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not quite - even among those people who take the standard deduction, contributing to a tax advantaged account would reduce taxes for most of them. And a significant proportion of low income people don’t even file a tax return, so by doing nothing they literally give away money.

https://dailyyonder.com/low-income-families-risk-losing-thou...

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#238

Post by smsm42 »

o11c wrote: post #91
ashkankiani wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make an exemption for a primary residence. Everything else can go. Stop letting people hoard wealth like dragons.

Is it that common for people to hoard dragons?

No, you have to be very wealthy to afford one.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#239

Post by photonthug »

zdragnar wrote: post #210
photonthug wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had the time and resources, wouldn't you try to affect change in government? This is going to be hard for the politically inclined to understand, but no, it's simply not the case that everyone everywhere is preoccupied with finding/creating legal ways to push their will/preferences onto other people.

This is going to be hard for the ideologically blind to understand, but not every rich person everywhere keeps politicians in their back pockets. Some don't even have their own PAC!

I'm not making any comment on whether rich people are more or less likely to be politically inclined than average people, draw your own conclusions.

I'm also not sure who you're suggesting is ideologically blind. All I'm saying is that given resources like a huge pile of money, many would not wish to use that money to coerce others or otherwise change their local political situation to better suit them. Instead they'd use those resources to increase their own resilience, i.e. simply choosing to leave the neighborhood or situation that was bothering them instead of trying to change it and assuming their own interests are the best and most appropriate ones for everyone.

As the parent is pointing out, everyone thinks they are doing TheRightThing(tm) when they collect/use power to force their views on others. Instead you could have power/wealth and just choose to not fuck with other people. That's not being ideologically blind, it's just an ideology that says, you know what, even my strongly held opinions could be wrongheaded, and maybe I shouldn't be using my arbitrarily acquired wealth/power to steer anything besides my own life.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#240

Post by mempko »

bhauer wrote: post #51
wmf wrote: post #42

If this is accurate, it finally explains something I've been asking about for years: The loan is paid back after the step-up in basis. That's the loophole. If the loan was paid back before step-up, the estate would still have to pay capital gains tax.

The step-up in cost basis on death is the original sin that underpins the entire debate over unrealized gains. It's disheartening to see so much thought and deliberation going into an obviously toxic idea (taxing unrealized gains) when the obvious solution (removing the cost basis step-up when assets change hands) is being ignored. Inherited wealth is the least earned, so it should be politically palatable to change…

We already tax unrealized gains. The US has property tax. When you buy a house, you pay a tax based on it's worth. We just don't have a tax on legal fictions (paper property like stock). The question is, why not? Why can't we also tax that property?
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