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We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

propublica.org

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Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#511

Post by bpt3 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #482
eplanit wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence isn't necessary for one who is already convinced. However, there is a lot that says that the 1% actually pay the vast majority of taxes collected: https://www.publishedreporter.com/2021/04/05/op-ed-top-1-inc... https://howmuch.net/articles/high-income-americans-pay-major... https://taxfoundation.org/top-1-percent-pays-more-taxes-bott...

> , there is a lot that says that the 1% actually pay the vast majority of taxes collected: What a strange argument. I will personally pay 95% of all taxes in the US if I somehow make me make 99% of all income. Which seems fairly equivalent to your point, except both of my numbers are slightly exaggerated.

Right now, the top 20% pay a significantly higher share of the federal income tax collected than their share of income.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#512

Post by mjmahone17 »

mciancia wrote: post #160
mjmahone17 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if I want to keep that diamond but cannot afford to because of the taxes? Then you have to sell it. This is no different from game show awards, where the “car” you ein is taxed at the car’s value, so unless you have enough savings, you have to sell the car to pay the taxes. I don’t really see any problem with this though? Absolutely we should force Bezos to sell some of his stock to pay taxes: employees alread…

I mean, it's possible he paid tax on stock he got when he started Amazon. It just wasn't that much back then. Also, forcing people to selling stock seems like something that can be abused - imagine stock spike like we had with GME this year, during change of address year followed by significant drop. You would probably have to pay more tax than stock is actually valued at.

Note this happens all the time to people who vest stock, and then before the next trading window the stock tanks in value. The employee owes income tax on the stock they vested, at the time the stock was granted, then have capital losses for the drop in share price. Losing 90% of the value of say $1,000 of stock, you could still owe something like $300 in taxes on what is now worth $100. This is the normal world for employees.

I’m not totally sure why we would want billionaires to shoulder less downside risk than their wage earning employees?

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#513

Post by sklearncowboy »

silicon2401 wrote: post #82
pmoriarty wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the ultra-wealthy have little or no income. What needs to be taxed is wealth, not income.

I disagree, at least not with so simple an implementation. I don't want to live in a world where we're unable to escape working by constant taxes. There should be at least a minimum threshold where wealth is completely untaxed so that people can live freely and not have to work until they die. Enough for a house, some property and land, and a retirement fund. I'd consider it more justifiable to tax someone like Bill…

Isn't the problem though that any time you introduce a threshold the threshold gets gamed?

A tax on people making $400k a year causes a giant spike in people making $399k a year.

I think no matter what you do, bad unintended consequences will occur.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#514

Post by TrackerFF »

bwestergard wrote: post #7

In Finland, everyone's taxable income is a matter of public record. One theoretical benefit of such a policy is that it eliminates information asymmetries between workers and employers in wage bargaining.

Same in Norway, but the result isn't very accurate.

For one, the wealthy don't tend to have any serious income - it's mostly capital gains for one of their holding companies or similar.

Second, those numbers can be seriously "massaged" by having debt - your income will show much lower if you have any significant debt (no mater how low the interest rate is).

For normal / regular people, the public figure gives you a very rough estimate.

Again - the rich and wealthy will almost always show up with income 0, tax 0, assets 0. You don't even need to be filthy rich to get it structured like that.

edit: What it did create, though, was a cottage industry of tax snoopers. Over here, you can see who's been checking you out - and nosy people not wanting to do that, will pay a couple of bucks for some service where others will check out your information.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#515

Post by sklearncowboy »

mstipetic wrote: post #102
silicon2401 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, at least not with so simple an implementation. I don't want to live in a world where we're unable to escape working by constant taxes. There should be at least a minimum threshold where wealth is completely untaxed so that people can live freely and not have to work until they die. Enough for a house, some property and land, and a retirement fund. I'd consider it more justifiable to tax someone like Bill…

Won’t that just increase prices of the things you’ve mentioned? I feel we should somehow work to become more distributed instead of forcing people to come to large cities because all the opportunity is there

I think the main problem is we think that power laws are not natural and that nature distributes everything on a normal distribution.

That is true for the height of humans. Most other things with humans, not so much.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#516

Post by jjeaff »

lumost wrote: post #144
fairity wrote: post #109

One of the primary mechanisms for tax avoidance is taking out loans against appreciated capital assets to avoid realizing capital gains. What's stopping the average citizen from exploiting this tax avoidance strategy? For example, every time I try to submit an order to sell stock that results in short-term capital gains, my broker should be asking me whether I want to take out a collateralized loan instead. If there…

The average citizen can't borrow to pay off debts indefinitely. At ~2% interest the billionaire can borrow against their assets and keep borrowing to pay off interest. The assets gain in value at 4-6% per year so they are actually coming out ahead and paying 0% tax. Even a middle class retiree typically needs to draw down their savings to pay expenses. Giving up 2% to avoid taxes wouldn't be viable. The bank would al…

And 2% is really high. Billionaires are likely getting less than 1% interest rates. Big banks are willing to lose money even, just to court these billionaires.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#517

Post by ksec »

ALittleLight wrote: post #506
ksec wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in our roughly 20 person company took home roughly 100k in salaried income each And Fresh Grad from US are demanding 200K from FAANG.... I think it will be hard for countries not currently doing it to have this system in place. But we could at least start with price bracket. The biggest Win for me isn't the peer checking or market rate. It is that we can also stop HR and Recruiting Agency on their constant lying and…

Assuming the parent comment is referring to earnings in Euros rather than USD they're talking about ~250k USD. It doesn't seem at all strange that leadership in a small company is making the same as entry developers at FAANG. For one, small business. Two, the company leadership gets more equity and a more interesting job.

>in Euros rather than USD they're talking about ~250k USD.

Not ~120K USD?

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#518

Post by jjeaff »

tootie wrote: post #183
fairity wrote: post #109

One of the primary mechanisms for tax avoidance is taking out loans against appreciated capital assets to avoid realizing capital gains. What's stopping the average citizen from exploiting this tax avoidance strategy? For example, every time I try to submit an order to sell stock that results in short-term capital gains, my broker should be asking me whether I want to take out a collateralized loan instead. If there…

That's not a tax loophole though. You still have to pay back the loan with interest. And it has to be paid with cash from somewhere. People like Bezos do this primarily to retain their equity because it's worth more than money to them. It's their ownership stake. For others, they are just betting the assets will appreciate more than the cost of the interest. It's income optimization not tax avoidance. You can do the…

HELOC definitely isn't a tax dodge because the first $250k-$500k of profit on the sale of your home is not taxable anyway.

But there is something to be said about being able to defer taxes effectively forever. Only the ultra-wealthy are able to do this.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#519

Post by ALittleLight »

ksec wrote: post #517
ALittleLight wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the parent comment is referring to earnings in Euros rather than USD they're talking about ~250k USD. It doesn't seem at all strange that leadership in a small company is making the same as entry developers at FAANG. For one, small business. Two, the company leadership gets more equity and a more interesting job.

>in Euros rather than USD they're talking about ~250k USD. Not ~120K USD?

Oops, you're right. I was more confident I knew the exchange rate than I should've been.

Re: We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%

#520

Post by RhysU »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #483
ksec wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>eliminates information asymmetries between workers and employers in wage bargaining. WOW! Never heard of this as an argument. I think it is a very good one for working class.

Price transparency is necessary for the proper functioning of any market. Otherwise there is no clean signal of the supply and demand curves. Lack of price transparency results to inefficient markets, e.g. someone consistently ending up with outsized profits.

Price transparency makes sense when goods are fungible. Employees are often not fungible.
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