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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%

#541

Post by bpt3 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #530
bpt3 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now you're shifting the goalpost. You're revising it now to income taxes. It's most certainly not true of all taxes, and I don't even believe of all federal taxes.

I'm not shifting the goalposts, this conversation is about federal income taxes and every reference in the post you originally replied to is discussing federal income taxes.

On top of that, the top 20% of income earners do pay a larger share of taxes overall than their share of revenue, even according to organizations advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/13/tax-day-taxes-statistics...

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

#542

Post by [deleted] »

ineptech wrote: post #534
rascul wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to this? > The act permanently exempted from taxation the capital gains on the sale of a personal residence of up to $500,000 for married couples filing jointly and $250,000 for singles. This exemption applies to residences the taxpayer(s) lived in for at least two years over the last five. Taxpayers can only claim the exemption once every two years. As I interpret the text, the middle-class homeown…

You are misinterpreting that part; you can claim the exemption in a house you've lived in for two years. "Two years out of the last five" means you can live in the house for two years, then move out of it (presumably because you bought another house) and rent it for up to three years, and then sell it and still claim the exemption. Even after that, you can sell it and still not pay taxes on it if you use the proceeds…

[deleted]

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

#543

Post by rascul »

ineptech wrote: post #534
rascul wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to this? > The act permanently exempted from taxation the capital gains on the sale of a personal residence of up to $500,000 for married couples filing jointly and $250,000 for singles. This exemption applies to residences the taxpayer(s) lived in for at least two years over the last five. Taxpayers can only claim the exemption once every two years. As I interpret the text, the middle-class homeown…

You are misinterpreting that part; you can claim the exemption in a house you've lived in for two years. "Two years out of the last five" means you can live in the house for two years, then move out of it (presumably because you bought another house) and rent it for up to three years, and then sell it and still claim the exemption. Even after that, you can sell it and still not pay taxes on it if you use the proceeds…

I don't see how our interpretations differ. You showed that there are ways for middle-class homeowners to pay the tax. Sell the house after less than five years and don't use the proceeds to purchase another house. That scenario seems to happen often enough from what I see, and it appears that the IRS will be collecting money in those cases.

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

#544

Post by httpsterio »

ksec wrote: post #502
httpsterio wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I for example learned that my two bosses (CEO and CMO) in our roughly 20 person company took home roughly 100k in salaried income each, out of the 3 million or so turnover. Company earnings, turnover and profit, are easily found for all Finnish companies as well. It's pretty easy to weed out the companies on an unhealthy base. I also saw the salaries as a sign that they're in it for the long term as they could'v…

>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…

I should've clarified that I did indeed mean euros.

The CEO for example owns a very large home in the most affluent part in the city. the CMO drives a new Tesla and has a villa that's about a 30 minute drive away from our capital city.

A 100k salary is not insane here, there are obviously people making more as well. Those are usually startup founders building something on loaned money or celebrities.

Im living in one of the larger cities, it takes me 10 minutes to drive to the city centrum, so it's a pretty decent location. I pay under 700 euros for 65 square meters with our own sauna. I'm roughly spending 25% of my income on rent for two people.

So, the cost of living is obviously a lot lower here, even if our salaried don't look exactly comparable. You can stretch a 1 million turnover to cover for 10 programmers and tech workers easily instead of getting just one senior developer from the Bay Area :)

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

#545

Post by silicon2401 »

naasking wrote: post #426
silicon2401 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment perfectly encapsulates the political/societal leanings I completely disagree with. This sentiment of "nobody can have anything nice unless there's enough for absolutely everyone to have an equal amount." Life's not fair, and no amount of politics or regulations will change that. There will always be some people with better health, more attractiveness, more intelligence, more charisma, better connections,…

> This comment perfectly encapsulates the political/societal leanings I completely disagree with. This sentiment of "nobody can have anything nice unless there's enough for absolutely everyone to have an equal amount." That's not what the OP said. They said that they're against a system that permits some to escape work while others never can. In other words, some people can comfortably retire when they're old, and so…

> In other words, some people can comfortably retire when they're old, and some are basically forced to work until the day they die, and some never have to work at all. That's not at all the same as saying that everyone should have equal outcomes at all levels of the game, so much as saying that everyone should eventually be able to cross the same finish line.

That's exactly what I was referring to. Unless everybody can retire, nobody can retire. No thanks. I will do whatever it takes to keep the US from becoming that kind of a dystopia.

> What you're failing to recognize is that wealth disparities are artificially created by government policies.

I don't hold that belief. Disparities and inequality are fundamental to human life, which is why I gave the example of attractiveness, health, etc. I also mentioned careless people because you'll always have people who are self-destructive or unable to support themselves, and you can't help every single person. I'm not bothered by that, I accept it as reality. Thus I think it's utopian to believe it's possible to live fully equally, and it only keeps anybody from having nice things just because there's not enough for everyone.

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

#546

Post by silicon2401 »

naasking wrote: post #430
silicon2401 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> collectivism Collectivism is overrated and unnecessary. I'm a misanthrope and I don't want to live in a collective society, I want to live in a society where I can get away from other humans and keep to myself. Taxes and laws are enough to keep society civil and functional; going beyond that is imposing your own personal beliefs on everyone else, like a theocracy or dictatorship.

> Collectivism is overrated and unnecessary. This is a pretty hilarious take IMO. Cooperation is literally the only reason humans are the dominant species on the planet. But sure, "overrated and unnecessary".

There's a difference between collectivism and cooperation. I contrast collectivism with individualism; i.e. valuing the collective over the individual vs valuing the individual over the collective. I want to live in an individualist society, not a collectivist one.

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

#547

Post by tootie »

jjeaff wrote: post #518
tootie wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This doesn't defer taxes, it defers realizing profits. The loan payments have to be made with cash that came from some source which can likely be taxed. Anyone with assets can do this proportional to their assets. Admittedly most people don't have sufficient assets to make it worthwhile. Nor do they exercise the voting rights on stocks. But really any middle class investor with a nest egg could do it.

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

#548

Post by zepto »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #439
zepto wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a straw man. Firstly we have no idea how many of the 50 individuals data were public or not. All public data can be discounted since the state actor can just copy it. Secondly, for the private data, the definition of ‘private’ is unspecified. It really just means not part of a published record. If propublica has access to it, then why couldn’t someone else? I agree that if there were 150 separate sources with…

I’m assuming good faith on ProPublica’s part, that a reasonable amount of the data was private and that it was truly private. If I didn’t trust them I wouldn’t read their reporting.

Hardly a defense of claim that ‘probability’ means a state actor would need to be ‘omniscient’ to manipulate them.

Indeed you have proven my point - which is that they don’t give us enough information to do anything except blindly trust them.

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

#549

Post by naasking »

silicon2401 wrote: post #545
naasking wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This comment perfectly encapsulates the political/societal leanings I completely disagree with. This sentiment of "nobody can have anything nice unless there's enough for absolutely everyone to have an equal amount." That's not what the OP said. They said that they're against a system that permits some to escape work while others never can. In other words, some people can comfortably retire when they're old, and so…

> In other words, some people can comfortably retire when they're old, and some are basically forced to work until the day they die, and some never have to work at all. That's not at all the same as saying that everyone should have equal outcomes at all levels of the game, so much as saying that everyone should eventually be able to cross the same finish line. That's exactly what I was referring to. Unless everybody…

> That's exactly what I was referring to. Unless everybody can retire, nobody can retire.

No, it simplifies to "everybody can retire, period".

> I don't hold that belief. Disparities and inequality are fundamental to human life

When someone refers to "wealth inequality", they're not talking about disparities of 1 or two orders of magnitude, they're talking about 5 or 6 orders of magnitude. Show me a disparity in beauty or health of 6 orders of magnitude.

It's pretty clear that these analogies are not remotely faithful to what we're discussing here.

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

#550

Post by rocho »

cj wrote: post #130
tomp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how this works, how it avoids tax? Taking a $100 loan still means you’ll need an income of $100 (plus interest) future income and tax paid on this income... If you’re gonna say “they benefit in the extra capital gains between now and when the loan is repaid” - no, that can’t be it, that’s exactly equivalent to taking a $100 loan and investing in stocks instead (i.e. leverage).

1) You purchased $100 of SPY on June 15th, 2020 2) You're buying a house, and you need $100 today. 3) You sell $100 of SPY, and pay short-term capital gains (up to 37%) OR... 1) You purchased $100 of SPY on June 15th, 2020 2) You're buying a house, and you need $100 today. 3) You take a loan for $100 4) You wait until June 15th, 2021 and then sell $100 of your SPY holdings, paying long-term capital gains (15-20%) 5)…

That's not accurate. It has several benefits (like interest payments being deductible expenses) and wealthy people can continuously borrow to pay off other debts as their other assets appreciate. You just need the rate of appreciation of your assets to be higher than the interest rate. For very big loans, it's quite possible.

Finally, it's also possible to roll the gains into a trust and the cost basis is adjusted to zero on death. [0] So yes, it's tax avoidance.

[0]: E.g. this is how it's possible to do that: https://wellergroupllc.com/taxes-resources/tax140-guide-dete...

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