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Who died and left the US $7B?

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

#341

Post by dwater »

mbrumlow wrote: post #336
pintxo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get you intro argument. An estate tax is like the poster child of value moved: from the parents to the children. In contrast to a wealth tax.

I can see the reasoning. But the value did not really move. As the estate is family owned. The family did not die, a member of it did.

Seems like splitting hairs to me. If the estate is put into an LLC or similar then the death of a member doesn't involve movement of money. If the estate is owned by an individual and then inherited by their beneficiary then money moved from the deceased to the living. The Family is not a legal unit; the beneficiary doesn't have direct benefit of ownership while the owner of the estate lives.

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

#342

Post by hardtke »

Estate tax valuations of assets should be made public, particularly the taxed value of professional sports franchises. We know that NFL teams are worth $6+ billion dollars, and seeing the billionaire owner families pay tax on 1/10th of that might infuriate voters enough to demand reform.

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

#343

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

dh2022 wrote: post #143
schneems wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should probably celebrate gifts to the US government more than we do. I had the idea that we should put a donation box on tax forms. The 100 top donators get on the “US 100” list (like Forbes) but it’s based ONLY on how much you donate, not how much you claim to be worth. It’s one thing to claim to be rich to a Forbes reporter, it’s another to have the (tax) receipts to back it up.

Billionaires flaunt their wealth via yachts, mansions, space rockets and super-PACs. Which to me seems way more fun than getting your name on a tax list…

That's not flaunting it; that's just buying things you like because you have the money. Flaunting would definitely be getting your name on a list that you don't need to be on.

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

#344

Post by Adverblessly »

_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…

> These all suck, and the government generally collects money on assets as they move not assets at rest.

The government can also collect money on assets at rest (or at least, on cash at rest). They do so by creating money. It could be an interesting tax regime where the only forms of taxation are taxes to discourage action (e.g. tax on tobacco) and money creation.

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

#345

Post by pembrook »

kombookcha wrote: post #260
pembrook wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Damn, that guy is citing sources, must mean he's wrong and there is no need for you to examine any of the vibes-based assumptions you are making about the real world then.

The point is, there’s no way to evaluate if this commenter is wrong, since nobody is going to read 7 books to verify the validity of an internet comment.

It’s a classic logical fallacy; appeal to authority. There is no reason to believe any of these writers have a better understanding of how the world works than any other “authority” of the past like Karl Marx.

Just because someone says something in a book doesn’t make it true.

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

#346

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

kombookcha wrote: post #260
pembrook wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Damn, that guy is citing sources, must mean he's wrong and there is no need for you to examine any of the vibes-based assumptions you are making about the real world then.

He's not "citing sources." He's outsourcing his argument to textbooks. The point stands: if you want to refute an argument, do so yourself, possibly with reference to corroborating sources. Don't just say "you're wrong. Go read this stuff to figure out why" -- that's no way to have a discussion.

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

#347

Post by schiem »

vlovich123 wrote: post #150
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.

What percentage of the wealth did they control?

By summing up the top 60 entries for UK billionares from The Times Rich List for 2024 (which is data from 2023), I get almost exactly 500 billion pounds in net worth (£499.55bn). According to Wikipedia, the UK had a total net worth of $15,972bn USD, which comes out to £12,298bn at the current exchange rate of 0.77 pounds / dollar.

That comes out to around 4.1% of the total wealth. However, the number from Wikipedia is from 2022, so this figure isn't going to be entirely accurate.

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

#348

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

vkou wrote: post #83
bko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that obscene? Presumably the person created something very valuable to the world. Sure there are zero-sum ways to generate wealth (e.g. suing people, theft, front running trades) but generally that kind of wealth comes from actually generating something that people value.

> Presumably the person created something very valuable to the world Or they are a rent-seeker, or a straight-up thief that sucked a lot of value out of the world. (Or one of their ancestors did, etc, etc.) Or they robbed Peter to create value for Paul, and took a share of the difference. These are all tried and true mechanisms for wealth generation. Without any information, you shouldn't assume that their contributi…

Barring evidence to the contrary, some of us prefer to assume that people have good intentions.

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

#349

Post by a_c_s »

_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…

Getting a loan against assets is another way of "using" it, so why not make that a taxable event?

Just like now your stock value would not be taxed while it is invested. But now it would be taxed if you use it as collateral for anything. If you don't want to pay capital gains by selling the underlying stock then you can just get a bigger loan and pay the taxes out of that.

There, now you don't have to liquidate but the taxpayers benefit too when the wealth is "used" by the owner.

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

#350

Post by triceratops »

bluGill wrote: post #301
bialpio wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. This reminds me of what my SO says: if you have to work, you are not in the upper class. I don't think I agree with this statement fully (I personally think that top decile by income is already upper class), but I feel like I'm becoming more open to re-evaluating my opinion...

Most upper class work. They work different jobs, but they are generally not sitting around retired. They might or might not get a paycheck, but they are working. (if you own a restaurant you will probably pay yourself minimum wage when you do work - dishwashers start at double that - talk to your accountant but this is often the best legal way to handle your hours that are trackable) Steve Job's was famous for taking…

But they don't have to work.
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