Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

politico.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#751

Post by kshri24 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #610
andy_ppp wrote: post #109

I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of d…

She didn’t even suggest that she supports that policy, it’s just assumed for some reason despite the fact that she’s already made her own choices on tax policy.

Her campaign supports Biden's 2025 tax proposals which includes tax on unrealized capital gains.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#752

Post by kshri24 »

djur wrote: post #677
jpadkins wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a coalition that contains RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk are now far right?

Hard to argue that Musk isn't far right at this point, and the other two are right-leaning opportunists.

[flagged]

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#753

Post by throwaway2037 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #109

I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of d…

To me, this looks like a wealth tax by another name. I Google about the plan and found this:

    > households worth more than $100 million would pay an annual minimum tax worth 25% of their combined income and unrealized capital gains.
Ref: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kamala-harris-supports-tax-un...

To be clear, Norway has also had a wealth tax for years. Summarised: The wealth tax rate is 0.7%(local)+0.3%(national) and is calculated based on assets exceeding a net capital tax basis of NOK 1.7 million for single/not married taxpayers and NOK 3.4 million for married couples. (Ref: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/norway/individual/other-taxes)

And regarding "taking out loans against their own share portfolios": Yes, I agree, this is genius tax avoidance strategy. And, I am pretty sure the interest paid on that loan would be tax deductible in the US! Most large investment banks have a separate trading desk that facilitates these loans via private bankers.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#754

Post by ProAm »

I feel this is mostly political posturing now that we are close to the election. Whoa is me for doing something the government requested (not demanded) I do during a pandemic. Not the end of the world, but lets not act like the timing is too convenient for a political hot button issue of 'big government'. The feed in FB is already hot garbage, if he really felt this hurt his business he would have said no at the time. Just my opinion.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#755

Post by shawnc »

axus wrote: post #523
rnd0 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A few years back it started showing me obvious political ragebait. I ignored it and then it started showing me pictures of women whose nipples were obviously showing through their clothing, which was an improvement, but still not the reason I signed up for Facebook. Same experience. Then, after ignoring that, I've started getting posts from mystery people who seem like they could be aquaintences (because hobbies) bu…

How about a choice for which social circle you'd like to view at one time. We could call it "Circles".

Can I just say, the comments that have happened here before mine, have been stellar. Wow. And also, it's so weird to have some nostalgia for all of this now...

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#756

Post by throwaway2037 »

rv3909i wrote: post #286
kjkjadksj wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well when you have over 100m in assets in your pile of gold in the dragon lair, its time to be extractive.

How do you know you have over 100m in assets? One never really knows the worth of something until it's sold. (i.e. try selling a used car. there's what you think it's worth and what you get...) And once the asset is sold, that's a taxable event.

You raise a good point. I found this page from the Norway tax authority. (In a previous post, I noted that Norway had had a wealth tax for a long time. About 1%.)

    > When calculating wealth tax, you must include any assets that you own at the end of the year. These assets must generally be valued at what the asset is worth on the open market. However, an exception is made in the case of housing, and a lower value, known as the tax value, must be used when calculating wealth tax.
Ref: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rates/tax-value-of-housing/

Two things stand-out to me:

(1) "assets must generally be valued at what the asset is worth on the open market". I guess there will be GAAP accounting rules about how to value less liquid assets. Tradable securities are easy to value; other things, like artwork are less easy to value. In the case of a car, an accountant could reasonably use an online used car marketplace to find a value. (The US has something called the Kelley Blue Book.)

(2) "an exception is made in the case of housing". It sounds like there is a totally different set of rules for taxing housing (land+building).

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#757

Post by sbsudbdjd »

Loughla wrote: post #736
sbsudbdjd wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ppl's obsessions (on both sides) on taxes is so weird. Governments can fund themselves in numerous ways, not just taxes. Either way you'll pay. The key issue is do we want a federal government expenditure of 20-25% of the economy? I'd say no.

What other ways are there?

Glad you asked. There's the obvious three ways to finance government:

- Taxes - debt financing - seignorage

The latter two aren't taxes, but people end up paying for the expenses anyway.

Governments can also plunder other country's money. While this sounds very Roman empire, it's still a thing. Case in point freezing another country's foreign exchange reserves, refusing to return their gold, confiscating the interest on the reserves, etc

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#758

Post by Nathanba »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #402
this_user wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody with assets over 100m has a "pile of gold", as you put it. Those assets are always productively invested in some form or another. But you would prefer that those investments be pulled, because the government are clearly much better at employing those assets productively?

Its not a question of who is better at managing money but more who needs benefit in our society. The government supports welfare programs. Someone throwing 100m in the market does not unless they are taxed to do so.

But they are being taxed for anything they will do with their 100m in the market... including property tax if they do nothing

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#759

Post by codedokode »

drdaeman wrote: post #499
Malidir wrote: post #152

In Pavel's interview with Tucker Carlson, he mentions how he (VK) met with Zuckerberg, and he told them new features they were planning. And Zuck nicked them all. Zuck is on a major PR campaign drive, I would not trust a word he says.

> In Pavel's interview with Tucker Carlson He also said that he doesn't visit Russia anymore, yet a recent FSB leak indicates that he was frequenting there. And before that he heavily marketed Telegram as ad-free forever. And before that there were quite weird populist PR tactics when professional cryptographers pointed out Telegram's crypto is a mess. YMMV, but I wouldn't trust a single word from this guy.

This is not the first time Pavel being not very truthful. I rememeber when he was the CEO of Vkontakte, in 2012 he published a post claiming that he is living a modest life: "I don't own planes, cars or homes. My world is walking or riding the subway and sleeping in a 215 sq ft rental apartment. Those who want to be me would also have to give up meat, alcohol and expensive clothes". And just a year later there were the news that he broke the traffic rules while driving a Mercedes, hit a traffic cop, showed an indecent sign to him and ran away into Vkontakte office located nearby while his guard blocked the cop trying to chase him.

There also was a story when he claimed that Telegram is developed abroad but it turned out that many of Telegram employees actually worked at the same beautiful historical office building where Vkontakte was located at that time.

Also, a fun fact, when he was a CEO of Vkontakte, one day he was throwing banknotes into the crowd from a window in that notable historical building. Maybe he was conducting an experiment with universal basic income, who knows.

Re: Zuckerberg claims regret on caving to White House pressure on content

#760

Post by anigbrowl »

chrisco255 wrote: post #240
andy_ppp wrote: post #109

I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of d…

Unrealized gains taxes is an extractive and totalitarian tax. Someone is always risking 100% loss until they realize those gains. It's an affront to entrepreneurial risk-taking and it's capricious. It would be just as ridiculous to allow someone to write-off unrealized losses.

OK, but in that case people shouldn't be allowed to put up securities they own as collateral for loans ( a popular kind of financial engineering among very wealthy people).
Post reply on HN