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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

#251

Post by more_corn »

mschuster91 wrote: post #123
tlb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How to take money from society whose elected representative set up a specific program to hand out" Which I also refuse to take, myself, but for different reasons than refusing to steal.

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 the rules require that work be done in the area, that property be improved, that gains be reinvested in the area. Rich arseholes who never set foot in the area can still pour buckets of cash into areas WE DECIDED need it most.

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

#252

Post by more_corn »

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.

“This rule sucks because someone might cheat and not follow this rule.”

No people who cheat suck.

The rule of followed actually brings a lot of investment and improvement to areas that need it.

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

#253

Post by diob »

seibelj wrote: post #91
diob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism these days feels akin to joining a game of monopoly where everything has already been purchased. But feel free to have a jolly time going around the board and paying rent :)

At least in capitalism you can start a new business. The folly of the Monopoly board game is the limited spaces which makes things a zero-sum game. The world is only zero-sum when the government doesn’t let you build new stuff through artificial constraints. In a free market always get new stuff.

Free market != capitalism, by the way. The market for the most part in "capitalist" America, has been captured.

Second, the world is a zero-sum game. In one breath folks will say "resources are limited, so we need to allocate to those who can use them best" or "life is unfair", and then in the next claim resources are unlimited and hard work is all you need, no need to get fussy about inequality.

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

#254

Post by lukas099 »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #189
lukas099 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense that people who benefit disproportionately from social spending would be pro-social spending, and vice versa for people who pay disproportionately more into the system. It troubles me to see comments here acting like the rich are all sociopaths, when really, everybody rich and poor is generally going to favor what is in their own best interests.

It troubles me to see apologist comments here for ultra wealthy tax avoidance.

Everybody avoids taxes to the maximum extent allowed. It is ubiquitous and expected.

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

#255

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

bombcar wrote: post #226

Anyone interested in the actual map, it can be found here: https://cimsprodprep.cdfifund.gov/CIMS4/apps/pn-nmtc/index.a... The purpose of the QOZ is to encourage investment in those areas, and it does this by favorable tax conditions. Some of these areas are surprising, at least around me I see areas designated that aren't much different from the surrounding areas. And there are rural ones, too. Looking at some of th…

The eligibility criteria:

The Opportunity Zone Selection Process

As prescribed by law, governors nominated which census tracts should be designated as Opportunity Zones by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. To be eligible for designation, a census tract must:

- Have a poverty rate of at least 20 percent; or

- Have a median income below 80 percent of that in the State or metropolitan area, or for rural census tracts, 80 percent of that in the entire State; or

- Be contiguous with a census tract meeting one of the above conditions and have a median income less than 125 percent of the qualifying contiguous census tract. [0]

[0] https://www.rd.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ImpactofOpportun...

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

#256

Post by lukas099 »

ericmay wrote: post #195
lukas099 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The spirit of the tax benefit, like all tax benefits, was to help some special interest avoid their taxes.

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

#257

Post by lukas099 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #231
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…

If all you have to encourage people not to use those loopholes is an appeal to their morality, then you should not be surprised to find a bunch of amoral people and amoral corporations ignoring you. The rich must be forced to do the right thing, otherwise they will not do it. Expecting otherwise is lunacy. Maybe one or two foolish and good ones will try to do the right thing, but they'll be swiftly out-competed in ou…

Not just the rich. PEOPLE must be made to do the right thing.

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

#258

Post by more_corn »

mcv wrote: post #206
ericmay wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't say it was ok to exploit it. I say it's unavoidable that people will exploit it. I do wish we could run society purely on goodwill and people's intrinsic morality, but we've got a society that pushes people to crave more and more wealth, and those two don't go together.

Maybe every society everywhere.

The fact is that wealth and power protect themselves and always have.

While crafting a fair society we must recognize this and deliberately skew the rules to favor those without wealth and power. In the US we mean we’ll but have utterly failed to do so. Our legal system is a prime example. The fact that we more often tax minimum wage workers than billionaires is another.

Our society is shamefully unfair. But I actually think opportunity zones are a step in the right direction.

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

#259

Post by refurb »

throwawaygh wrote: post #242
refurb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

got rid of special deductions for normal folks I assume you're talking about the SALT deduction? The one that mostly benefits the highest income earners? Interesting how when people personally benefit from a tax break it's "entirely justified", but when someone else does it's a "massive special interest handout".

A two earner household with a cop and a nurse benefited from SALT. The average beneficiary of opportunity zones is generationally wealthy. A pair of tech workers pulling down 7 figures a year are stupidly wealthy and still would probably not have enough capital to be the primary beneficiary of an opportunity fund. I’m not going to defend the salt deduction because I’m not a fan of it for the reasons you mention, but…

Generationally wealthy seems like a statement that needs some data there.

These investments can be as simple as opening a store. Youre putting up a straw-bogeyman that doesn’t actually exist.

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

#260

Post by trasz »

Retric wrote: post #74
imgabe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is not a charity. If they have deemed something to be non-taxable, it's because the government (and by extension, the people it represents) want to incentivize that particular activity, in this case investing in economically depressed areas. If at some point we no longer want to incentivize that behavior, the government can simply remove the tax break. Moralizing about how people shouldn't engage in th…

The US government is the worlds largest charity, it also does a lot of other things. However it accepts donations and supports the poor, arts and sciences etc. There are even plenty of things people might want to donate too that only governments do, the Red Cross etc are hardly building space telescopes or US highways.

I'm not sure if the positive contribution by US exceeds its negative contribution, such as destruction of Middle East and large parts of South America.
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