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https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax


I am forced to post this, because a lot of people have been brainwashed into thinking that the Democrats are in favor of higher taxes for the rich. Democrat heavyweights such as Michael Bloomberg and George Soros always argue in favor of higher income and capital gains taxes. But the truth is that the Democrats only want the middle class to pay taxes. Billionaires such as Soros and Bloomberg never pays a penny in taxes, because they never sell any of their assets. Instead, they take loans by mortgaging their assets. And yet, they are thick skinned enough to gloat in the public that the "rich" should pay more taxes.

This is the reality behind the new "American families plan" by Joe Biden. The additional $6 trillion burden will fall on the middle class, while the uber-rich will continue to pay near-zero taxes.

According to the research by ProPublica, the billionaires in the US saw their wealth increasing by $401 billion between 2014 and 2018. And they paid a total of $13.6 billion in income taxes during this period (which corresponds to a rate of 3.4%). An upper middle class family in high-tax states such as California and New York are required to pay close to 60% of their income as taxes, while these people are paying around 1/20th of that amount.

If people still believe in Biden and his stupid spending plans, then the future looks hopeless for the United States.

I'm sure there was mention of a wealth tax a while ago which would be a useful thing for governments to add at least (taxing people with net worths over €40 million).

There's the other idea that a government could just order to take a share of all companies incorporated (eg 5% and do it retroactively).

This is a priblem the world seems to be dealing with as countries don't want to move their wealthy people to other countries that have less laws and some larger companies are harder for governments to just liquidate/take control of.

It is curious how some of these guys are in theory favourable to increasing the tax for "the rich". I guess their rationale is that they do not really fall into that category, that is, they are not in the 10% or 15% richest but rather a different class of the 1% of the 1% of the richest, which will retain all manner of loopholes and tricks for avoidance that are only available when you can spend millions in making sure you do not pay a dime more than strictly required.

I am now on the countdown to hear Elon brag about him paying much more taxes than the others  ;D ;D

That wealth growth is a bit misleading.

Let's assume you have bought 1 million in BTC when it was at 3k and now you're up 10x times at 10 million, you har a $9million growth in assets but you didn't sell a dime, you shouldn't be taxed for those gains, right? Same for shares in a company, those are unrealized gains I doubt Buffet has sold 24billions of shares lately and probably the same is for almost everyone on that list.

That article is heavily biased, and I can't really take seriously any paper that has its main category of news labeled "racial justice", it's just another of those attempts to make the rich look bad and that we have to tax them as much s we can so that the new social paradise can be built. The wealth tax has failed miserably in Europe, France has tried it two times and the consequences have been so clear I doubt they will try it the third time, you simply lose more money than what you get.

As for the democrats, they also know the truth, if they tax the rich they will lose more money from capital outflow than they would make, so this whole taxation thing is just propaganda to get more votes for the poor class, and since obviously they can't hit those ones with taxes the only once they can fleece is the middle class, as usual.

If you check the table, you can see that many of them have realized gains and income. But using various loopholes they have avoided paying taxes. As per ProPublica, these billionaires take advantage of "tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people". For example, according to the data that is released, Michael Bloomberg had a taxable income of $10.0 billion during 2014-18. Yet he paid an income tax of only $292 million. Here, I am not talking about wealth growth or unrealized gains, but taxable income.

Ofcourse such things should have been published already out in the open in every newspaper, this way these people will themselves realize where the problem lies. I do think that most of the times they fund political parties and at the same time are involved in numerous things we don't know about. Therefore the democrats do make rules always in their favour.
Much like what Kylie Jenner did on Instagram, asking for people to fund for the operation, when she was honestly so capable of doing so herself. This is nothing but a political view. People need to be taught that in schools.
When we are talking about the idea of "taxable incomes", we should understand that rules change every now and then, plus people are always willing to hide the most that they can. Plus since they are rich and powerful , they always get away with it. It's easier to bribe an officer rather pay so much tax!

And Warren has realized 125 million and paid 25 million in tax, according to the same sources that's 20% and nowhere near the 0.10% that Pulitzer socialist piece of ....paper claims. As I said, presenting a distorted image incites the masses to grab their pitchforks, even labeling that as "true tax" when they obviously know that's not the case, they float around the billions in unrealized gains and that's all.

Plus:


I still see Bloomberg paying $294 million, I somehow think that he paid more than Bernie Sanders even if we add "the Squad" by quite a large margin, in my opinion, fair share means everyone pays the same as they are benefiting the same from what the government provides. I don't understand why me in the EU for example I pay 5 more on health insurance than others, I don't think I'm going 5 times more to the hospital, nor that the government spent 5 more with me on scholarship, nor that I have one extra line in traffic. Really can't see that "fair share" everyone talks about.

That's because they have did somethings that are considered as tax write offs like charities or giving stocks to their employees like what Jeff did with Amazon. To be honest, if these laws still exist, we will continue to see more billionaires not contributing to society through taxes and as long as lawmakers are easily manipulated through lobbying then the results won't change at all.

It happens almost every where not just in US.There are just laws they can use to evade tax and make it like they are law abiding still. They don't call it taxable income if it shouldn't be taxed.

Charities and foundations are always used by the waelthy people to accomplish what they want. You having billions of money but don't want to pay responsibilities. They're not just cheating the government but to the people too.

The percentage is derived after dividing the tax paid by the growth in wealth for the 2014-18 period. 18.96% paid by Warren Buffet is still far below the long term capital gains tax rate. Well, in case of Buffet we can say that at least he paid some amount of tax. But what about Bloomberg? He paid tax at a rate of 2.92%. Even if all of his income comprised of long term capital gains, the applicable tax rate is far below what ordinary people would have paid. My issue here is that people like Bloomberg argues in favor of higher taxes all the time, and still refuses to pay even the normal tax rates.

You seems to have missed the most important point raised by ProPublica:

I've also read articles about the richest man in the US not paying his wealth tax.  Even the funniest thing is, after the data was published they took the issue of data leaking to legal action.  If the data is not leaked then people will assume that they are always good and obedient to taxes, in fact they are just rich people who are very stingy and do not want their wealth to be reduced by sharing in the development of the country.  Yes, this is human nature.  Greedy with the results of his wealth even though there is a meaning to share from excess wealth.  If the Biden government is wise, the tax policy should be tightened for the richest people in the world.

i don't think this has anything to do with Biden or Democrats that you are singling out because this didn't start today. it started years ago, i believe it was Reagan that started changing everything in favor of the wealthy and we are talking about 80's which is 40 years ago now. he basically brought Capitalism to America and made it thrive. then the wealthy that used to pay the highest taxes (percentage wise) started to pay less and less. eventually they got the power over US laws and shaped it to benefit them the most. and this continued happening during both Republicans and Democrats alike.
any president these days both doesn't care because it benefits them too and doesn't even have the power to change anything.

Deductions, credits, exemptions. Now replace all of that with a flat tax.

Not at all, I've just read the whole paragraph  ;D


So, as I said, they don't do anything illegal. Anyone could do it, there are no laws broken, and there no quotas in those laws, where you have to be at least worth $100m to benefit from some of those. If you want to discuss how billionaires are avoiding this in a way the average Joe can't feel free to give one example that can't be replicated by an average income citizen.

This hunt for the rich will end badly as it has always done.

As for the other part:


Of course, what do you expect?
The basic requirement when being a socialist democrat or a true socialist is to care about the other's money! Yours will always be the exception.

     This is really unfair for the people in the middle class. Specially when you think about how much work they do for only a few bucks whereas these billionaires barely do anything than use their heads in running their companies and checking on their investments. How can this be even called okay? People should do something about this. If not entirely equal, at least make some efforts to lessen the taxes of middle-class people. Doing such would go a long long way. Tax is needed but there should be equality between the middle-class people and the higher class people.

I am not saying that they are doing anything illegal here. The loopholes have been created so that these people can pay almost nothing in taxes. I will give on example:

A billionaire purchases 20 pieces of real estate worth $1 million each. Out of these 20 plots, 2 (A,B) goes down in value by 20% each. Another 4 (C,D,E,F) neither appreciates, nor depreciates. And yet another 4 (G,H,I,J) pieces go up by 10% each.  And the remaining 10 plots go up by 50% each. Now the total net worth of the 20 plots have gone up from $20 million, to a total of $25 million. The net worth of the investor goes up by $5 million.

Now comes the interesting part. The investor sells the plots A to J, and he receives a total of $10 million after the sale. Now on this $10 million he needs to pay zero tax, since the losses from plots A and B makes up for the profits from the other plots. And meanwhile, he is still left with $15 million worth of property.

Ordinary people can't do this, simply because they can't afford to purchase dozens of different properties in different regions. And this is not just applicable with real estate, but also with stocks or cryptocurrencies. As such there is nothing illegal in doing this. But it puts the super-rich at an unfair advantage compared to the others.

This is why billionaires keep on increasing their wealth while the common man pays perfectly and gets nothing from the government in return.

In my country a man earning $7000 is supposed to pay 5% as tax. One who earns more than $15000 needs to pay $200+10% on the earnings above the provided slab. Beyond this citizens need to pay $500+15% on the earnings.

I don't know governments are always standing with corporates and billionaires giving the burden to the common people.

I don't want to defend these guys, but I think it's pretty normal the richest a person is, the less taxes (in % proportional to their total wealth growth) he is going to pay. If it didn't work this way there wouldn't be incentive for people thrive in life. Who would make a lot of effort to increase their wealth if once achieved, they would have pay proportional taxes?
Being a rich or a poor would mean the same thing, from net profit perspective, with the difference the rich would have a lot more responsabilities and appointments without any extra reward for that.

The problem with these titans of the world is that they are hypocritical and demagogic. Instead of teaching common people the path to success and how the show is played behind the curtains, they just deceive the public, pretending to be the nice, funny, friendly, philanthropist, empathic guys towards the sheep. These billionaires preach a life they don't live, while donating pennies of their fortunes to the sheep. That is modern slavery, their real sin.

Federal taxes are weird things, when you get 100+ billion dollars richer but it is just on paper, you do not pay any taxes at all because you didn't cash in on that. If Jeff Bezos cashed out and sold all his stocks that made that much profit, then he would have paid the biggest tax anyone has ever paid in the history, but since he didn't and he is still holding, dude paid zero. Can you imagine the difference, without selling he paid zero, with selling he would have broken any record and by miles as well not even close, that is the difference.

Maybe we should find a way to tax people who made over a billion dollars in profit in any shape or form, a billion dollars is just like 10 people at most, and nobody should be against it. However republicans will ALWAYS be against tax hike, not just lawmakers neither, people who make 30k per year will say "if they tax billionaires today, they will come after me eventually" and be against it as well.

Perfectly said ... in my opinion, in this discussion, people forgot to mention donations, because this is exactly the option when you play with the tax system and get public approval. I'm pretty sure that the article that the OP refers to misses this aspect, so the figures of taxes paid by these guys may differ significantly from reality (charity is actually one of the forms of taxes).

Yep, I agree.  And you know what?  If the super-rich can find loopholes in the tax code or other methods in order to pay less taxes, good for them.  That's not their fault, is it?  Wouldn't you or I do the same?  I sure as hell know I would, because who wants to willingly give more to the government than they have to?  Just because Bezos, Gates, Buffett, and all the rest of them are ultra-wealthy doesn't mean they have to let their wealth trickle down to the less wealthy (if that even happens).

So I bear no grudges whatsoever toward the billionaires who legally pay the minimum amount of tax that they can.  I don't begrudge them their wealth either.  They've worked hard to get to where they are, and most of them run companies that employ thousands, if not millions, of people.

Some celebrities, movie stars, musicians, athletes, politicians and dictators of small countries pay similar extravagantly low tax rates. (I think in exchange for pushing woke narratives.)


....

The goal of generational wealth in the US has somewhat become an impossibility due to the 40% estate tax (death tax).

I think that many of these famous figures avoid the estate tax through the utilization of offshore tax shelters and loopholes.

The reason politicians and celebrities will never truly support closing these loopholes for the rich. Is they themselves use them.


https://i.imgur.com/hB4A93M.png


Most elected officials are super rich and own 5 luxury houses.

Why would they close tax loopholes for the wealthy, on themselves?

The problem here is that it is near impossible for the middle class to make use of these loopholes. They have been designed in such a way that only the wealthiest of the wealthiest can use them. Biden administration want tax rates to go up for those who earn above $400,000 per year. Obviously the welfare rats are charged up, since they think that the rich are now paying more taxes. That is not the case in reality. Someone who earns $400,000 per year will have $200,000 in hand after taxes, if he is residing in California or Oregon. I would consider such an individual as "upper middle class" rather than "rich". The rich are the ones who earn tens of millions of USD per year. And they don't really care about the income tax or capital gains tax hike, because they pay almost nothing in taxes irrespective of the hike in tax rates.

You still haven't answered my question. My question is, whether these billionaires have the right to call for higher income tax and capital gains tax (fully knowing that they won't be impacted). People like Soros have campaigned for higher taxes for the "rich". How can these people do this, when they themselves are paying almost nothing in taxes?

Check this:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tax-the-ultra-rich-more-george-soros-and-17-other-american-billionaires-urge-2019-06-24

Tax the ultra-rich more, George Soros and 17 other American billionaires urge

How shameless these people are, when they themselves are using all sort of loopholes to avoid paying taxes, and at the same time asking others who are not as wealthy as them (and unable to use these loopholes) to pay a higher rate of tax?

There's something wrong with that infographic.
The taxes are paid upon their reported income,not their wealth growth.
The idiot that made the infographic doesn't know,that taxes are paid for your income,not your wealth gains.
Income tax and Capital gains tax are very different.
Even if you own assets worth 200B dollars and your reported income is 200 million dollars,you pay income taxes for your income,not your assets.
I don't know about whether of not those ultra rich people are involved into tax evasion schemes,but having 125 million USD yearly income out of 100 billion USD assets doesn't seem normal to me.   

And when he sells those he will pay tax, right? So what has he avoided?
Exactly what I've said, you're looking at all this without trying to analyze the situation one step further, you show a general situation and you draw a conclusion before it is even finalized. What if those plots fall by 50% next year? Why should have paid taxes for losses?


Unfair? They are putting more money into an investment than others, what's unfair? They might gain more and they might lose more,  he gained 5 million but he risked 20 million, the average Joe can invest 5$ in 20 investment funds and do the same! You don't need a full bitcoin, right? Wow, that rich mofo, he bought 20 plots, and look at the price it went up, he took the risk just as the seller took a risk too and end up losing potential gains. If we're taxing unrealized gains probably the next step would be to tax the seller also because look, he could have made 5$ if he hadn't sold!!!  ;D


Tell me one of those loopholes that only the wealthiest of the wealthiest can use!


He knows perfectly, but that newspaper is socialist to the core, the article is just one of those "investigations" with the only purpose of propaganda.

There's a limit to how much you can write off in your taxes through donations although it is a pretty big number and the remaining balance is carried on to the next year. The reason that they pay zero taxes is because of lobbying.

cause they employ tons of people. make them pay taxes and they wont hire as much

In this case, the total purchase price for the 10 plots is $10 million, and the selling price is also $10 million. So in the end, the individual pays zero taxes, since the capital gains amount to $0. But it will be unfair to say that only the super-rich can do this. For example, I am using this strategy (with stocks, and not with real estate) for the last one decade to avoid paying any capital gains tax (here in India, long term capital gains up to a certain limit is exempted from tax). One negative that I could foresee is that people like me may face financial emergencies, and may need to sell stocks that are up by 100% or 200%. The super-rich may have enough liquid cash in their hand, to take care of these emergencies. So they don't need to sell such stocks.

I guess that's how things work. You can experience it first hand on a job; people in a higher position contribute less on projects, just giving most if not all the tasks to their low position employee. they make their money work for them.

if there were loopholes then i would agree, anyone else who is wise enough could have used them too. but the problem is that there is no loophole, it is the tax law that lets them get away with it. the same law that they have put there to benefit them! compare the tax laws of today with tax laws of 1980 for example and you'll see how over the years the same wealthy people have inserted favorable laws silently ;)

This looks like a t top list of criminals and interesting thing that most of them hate Bitcoin, and we can include Elon Musk there because he keeps trying to manipulate price.
Just look at Warren Buffet who paid only 0.1% true tax rate and situation is similar with his 97 years old partner and Bitcoin hater Charlie Munger.
What about Bill Gates who also avoids paying taxes with his Gates Foundation who allegedly is trying to help people while Bill is playing world scientist and doctor.

That mans is such a joke and he will probably be remembered as worse American puppet president in history, he is increasing taxes like crazy and most recent thing he said is new 15% global tax for all world.
There is no reason for people to trust this crooked dirty politicians, billionaires and their fiat system when we have invention like Bitcoin.

The exemptions need to be done away with. If needed, then the tax rates can be reduced. But the exemptions make tax calculation very complicated and it results in some people paying disproportionately higher amount of tax and some others paying almost nothing.

BTW, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as usual has gone in to ballistic mode regarding the tax leaks. He wants those who are responsible to be "hunted down and thrown into jail". I don't understand this over-reaction from the GOP. If you check the list of billionaires, 95% of them are left liberal. Their political affiliation ranges from moderate-left (Warren Buffett, Alice Walton.etc), to far-left (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg.etc), with a considerable section being rabidly left (Jack Dorsey, Sergey Brin.etc).

I don't understand what the GOP is going to gain by supporting these left-wing billionaires. Times have changed and white working class make up the core support group for the Republican Party. Rather than siding with them, leaders such as McConnell are siding with the billionaires who never support the GOP.

As I understand, you're talking strictly about wealth tax here, right? On the one hand, yes, it seems somewhat unfair and even strange that the richest men in the world pay fewer taxes in % than average people. But on the other hand, they bring huge money from the business they create in the form of income taxes, as their companies are still obliged to pay taxes. In addition, they create thousands of working places, reducing the unemployment level and, thus, have a rather positive effect on the economy.

It's what they do. They are proud to say that secret to wealth is learning how taxes work. Trump also did say he evade tax. This is why there is going to be transparency soon when this CBDC is going to be used. I guess by that time, there will be younger millionaires because Musk or Bessos won't be able to stop someone that's small to become bigger like them.

This is a sad reality, and this is happening not just in the US but also in most countries as well. If the wealthy can do this in the US where the IRS is supposedly functioning pretty well, it could be more easily done in other countries, especially developing ones, where the rich people are always above the law.

The advantage of these wealthy few is that they could hire the best lawyers and accountants who could easily exploit the law, particularly the shortcomings and imperfections thereof, in their favor.

The question is not only regarding the wealth tax (in the US, they don't have the wealth tax anyway). From the table, it looks like the billionaires have used various legal avenues to avoid paying the income tax and capital gains tax. Else how can you explain Bloomberg paying a tax of $292 million on a realized income of $10 billion? They are using various loopholes that suits them. And the Biden administration just want to increase tax rates to the right, left and center, without removing these loopholes. That means that the billionaires will continue to avoid paying taxes, and at the same time those who are in the upper middle class will see an increase in their tax liabilities.

Do we really think there are still loopholes in the tax laws? These were crafted, deliberated/debated/discussed for hours and hours, then probably revised through the years right? These are not loopholes now IMO but were intentionally placed there by politicians that would probably benefit from the same laws.

Elon's tax advisor isn't doing a good job ;D

It's not necessarily less laws but laws that offer more tax incentives or lower tax rates.

That may be because he got most of his income in the form of salary or short term capital gains, rather than long term capital gains. Anyway, I would still say that it looks as if Elon hasn't used the loopholes that were used by the other millionaires. Forget about the "True tax rate" that is given in the chart. I understand that no one needs to pay tax on gains, unless they are realized. Here is the tax paid on realized income:

Warren Buffet: 18.96%
Jeff Bezos: 23.06%
Michael Bloomberg: 2.92%
Elon Musk: 29.93%

It can be seen that Buffet and Bloomberg paid a rate that is even below the long term capital gains tax. So obviously they have made use of loopholes. In Bloomberg's case, I am intrigued by the extremely low rate. I am not sure what sort of loophole he used.

 

I kinda meant laws. You can control/police someone more easily if they live in your country.

Some areas like Scandinavia have done well to police online webservices like amazon (by banning some of their operations - example below) but they still don't have much control other than completely blocking them or completely allowing them. I think the US could directly pass laws on amazon's working conditions too for example.

Example - Iceland and Sweden require a democratic union to exist for a company that takes on employees there. Amazon don't want to have to deal with this and thus have to rely on other countries' distribution centres and postal systems in the nordics.

If bezos moved amazon to the Netherlands and started allowing cannabis to be sold internationally, it'd be more difficult and delayed to try to ban this than if it was still headquartered in the US.

Someone mentioned a wealth tax not working in France and that was probably because people can just hop country within Europe and kinda internationally too.

France used the typical socialist approach, by just imposing sky high taxes without thinking about the practicality. When Hollande was the president, the rate of income tax was raised to 75% for those who earn more than 1 million Euro. The tax collection actually went down, because many of those who earn at this level simply moved to the other EU nations. Wealth tax is another controversial topic. In many of the countries, it is launched with a lot of fanfare, but the actual tax collection remains at negligible levels.

Those that are super rich understand that it does not matter what kind of law is passed they are always going to find a way to avoid taxes because this is why they pay super lawyers and accountants to make all kind of fiscal entities that helps them to avoid taxes, this is why I have always been on favor of an extremely simple tax system that applies to everyone and there are no exceptions, even in that system the rich will still avoid paying taxes but there will be less incentive to do so.

It is not about getting lower taxes to keep those companies in your country, you can lose those companies to other nations that have lower tax rates, but if those companies want to work with you then they have to pay those taxes, if you are a rich nation then you can put in a ton of taxes because people will want to sell something to you and then they will maybe charge higher price and then pay more taxes and still end up with more money.

Which one would you prefer, exclusively sell to Norway with 50% of your income go to taxes? Or selling to Bangladesh with 0% taxes? I would personally pick Norway. That means it is not about lower taxes, it is about having a nation that has leverage, if you have leverage against these companies then they will one way or another pay that tax to you and that is what these rich democratic socialist nations in Europe does to companies.

I would add to the title "George Soros and Bezos have paid almost zero taxes" also "while journalists manipulate data in 185% of their information materials." When you read such materials, a double feeling arises - either journalists, to put it mildly, are mentally retarded and absolutely do not understand the topic, or they deliberately manipulate data, pull out some parts from the general picture and present them as the main essence, twisting the information in one piece and adding "artistic fantasy" ...

Yeah, you're right, I only focused on the wealth. The $292M tax from the total income of $10B is very low, that's like slightly above 2%. That's pretty lame, in such a case. I always thought that some billionaires are doing a great thing running huge companies because they bring a lot of revenue to the government. But now, despite the fact about creating workspaces, which I pointed out earlier, they seem pretty useless if they avoid taxes like that. Such a disappointment...

Where's the manipulation here? None of these billionaires have claimed that any of the data being revealed is wrong. The reaction from Mitch McConnell was to demand the arrest of the individuals who leaked the information, rather than looking in to how these billionaires avoided their taxes. I have a big question here: Why should the tax returns be kept secret? What is the issue, if they are revealed? Ordinary people like me has the right to know how much tax these billionaires are paying. Because I am paying tax at a rate which is much higher than many of these billionaires.

George soros bezos other billionaires avoid income tax the reported weight is that some of these richest americans have paid zero income tax in just a few years and included social and financial giant george soros. One of the richest people in multiple tax proposals pays much lower than the official 3 percent rate on maximum income if their taxes are compared if forbes magazine reports that their wealth has increased in one year. I think they paid this zero tax on purpose.

I think the reason for that is that they have a loophole to exploit and they don't exactly lack any money to do those loopholes, remember that charity is a big tax write off for them, it is unfair yes but the problem is that the people who made the laws got bribed into making it possible for the elite to evade taxes legally and it's not easy to remove those laws because these elites are going to fight for it to stay there because they lobbied for it to be built.

The loopholes will be there, because many of the charity donations are just a cover used to bribe politicians. Many of the NGOs, which receive these donations have close associates of various politicians as the board members. In other cases, the bribing is more direct. For example, Hillary Clinton and her husband received a total of $153 million as speaking fees during 2001-16. And a large part of this contribution came from the organizations which received charity donations from the billionaires.

The best example is Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Originally Bill Gates owned around 10% of the shares of MSFT. He was never taxed for this holding, because he never sold any of the shares recently. Now comes the interesting part. Bill Gates has transferred most of his shares to BMGF, which means that these shares will never ever be taxed. Just from BMGF, the federal government lost around $20 billion in taxes. Now I am not going to deny that the BMGF did a lot of good work in places like Africa and South Asia. But at least a part of the money was used for salaries and for organizing conferences (indirect ways to bribe politicians).

That's why I said that the elites are lobbying, which is just a complicated and fancy term for bribe but it's not just any bribe though, for example, the company wants to do something and the lawmakers don't budge then the company will pull out their factories causing people to be unemployed so it's basically a limbo that both sides fight be on top. At least, Bill has something to show for his donations and charities unlike those with really obscure ones that you aren't sure if there really is a help.

Manipulation is that information is given "torn" from the general picture, and presented in a purely non-negative form. There are a lot of solutions to optimize taxes - from registering a company in countries with a more acceptable tax burden, to "barter" solutions with the state - for example, a tax exemption of 10 million dollars is given, but the company is building several schools and or hospitals for this amount (estimated cost) and transfers them to state ownership. These are just quick examples.
Why is the tax return hidden? It's hard for me to say, but are we talking about a business that pays taxes or an ultimate beneficiary? I am not familiar with the legislation of a particular state or states, I will say that in our country all data on the tax return of all citizens are legally open. But to be honest - for example, the largest businessmen declare income, but it is not indicative, the value of the assets they own and the turnover (profit, income, costs, taxes, ...) of their companies are more indicative.

There is no point in asking the tax returns of private companies to be made public. But IMO, there is nothing wrong, if we ask the tax returns for the individuals to be revealed to the public. At least they should reveal the annual income and the tax that was paid on this income. I don't want a detailed breakdown of the source of income. At least those who have a net wealth of $1 billion or more should reveal these figures. Ordinary people like us pay 30% or 40% of our salary as taxes. We have the right to know how much these people are paying.

I'm one of those mentioning France twice and indeed didn't actually happen because of the EU free movement alone, many have fled to a lot of other countries outside Europe and decided to keep only their business there as shareholders. There is no country in this world that will not welcome a billionaire who says, look I plan on living here, but a few hundred million in your banks, buy a lot of property and employ a lot of fo people here, every country nightmare is capital outflow, capital inflow is for some more like the philosopher's stone, a lot of countries try to sell only their citizenship for a few hundred thousands euros, imagine what they will do for millions.

And you can't stop them, doing this will simply make a lot of people stop investing in your country, who the hell is going to bring in money when he knows he can't take the profits out? A lot more countries in Europe used to have this wealth tax, many have dropped it, some have just modified it to tax only some of the wealth but the trend is clear, taxing in excess wealth will lead to not having anything to tax in the long run.


Please let us know how much you made last year and what you paid in tax and how much crypto you own and how much profits and taxed you have earned and paid from them. We have to know, right?


Same for you, please make your IRS filings public, why should yours be a secret?

Makes sense, but the problem is that most of the time, these billionaires are the ones controlling the governments. May sound like your typical conspiracy theory but considering how these people can get away with just about anything due to their money and influence, it wouldn't be too far stretched to believe that some if not all, are the ones who sponsored politicians behind the scenes and put them in place so that these billionaires can control them at will.

It does sounds like a silly conspiracy theory. These people are not getting away with it , in fact they are giving more to the society. Look, the fact that they employed alot of people and keep on expanding their business to employ alot more actually benefit the country alot more compare with giving raw cash in form of taxes. It will takes years for the government to use that money to build some company that would benefit people by employing them.

Everybody should do their fair share for the country and these guys literally have done theirs which is why the country favours them by giving them better treatment.

This is not a conspiracy theory, but quite an everyday reality, especially since in the United States of America lobbying is quite an official activity and you can quite officially read what articles of laws corporations spent money on in their lobbying activities among legislators. Also, let's distinguish between the activities of corporations for the benefit or harm of the economy and how the top officials of these corporations pay taxes on their tens and hundreds of billions of dollars of income. We should not idealize them to such an extent, we just need to be realistic and understand what an unfair world we live in at times.

It is a big deal because they should be the first ones that are responsible for paying high income taxes.
You're right that they employ thousands of people but that doesn't mean that they can pay little or evade taxes. I think these cases are always normal. I've been seeing such in the past on TV when I was still on my teenage days that there were reports like this.

I don't have any issue in making my tax return public (I am a citizen and resident of India). For last year, I haven't taken any exemption on my income tax and my taxable income was equal to my salary (I opted for the option to have lower taxes if the tax return is filed without exemptions. Those from India would be able to understand). I don't have anything to be afraid about my tax return and I am ready to make it public. I still don't understand why people are so upset about revealing their annual income and tax liability.

They have lobbied the government and they have a lot of charities that they have donated to for their tax write offs so there's no surprises that they didn't pay their taxes. It's unfair to us in the lower point of the pyramid but I don't think that we can do much about it.

The fact is rivh people knows how to avoid paying the taxes which is legally right and one who have skills to do that will do it as long as they can do, if you are an investor or businessman you have high chances and lot of ways to report the earnings into the expenses and avoid paying the taxes whereas a salaried person has no way other than reporting their actual income and pay the taxes accordingly.

In reality, the rich people are really those who are smart enough for paying fewer taxes, they are good at manipulating their records and adding some stuff to the business to minimize the taxes. They understand that taxes are the lifeblood of a country but if they can find some strategy to lower the taxes they'll do it.

We have regulators to audit their financial reports, if they are not in charge of tax evasion, then I guess they are not doing anything wrong.

By simply based on some data presented, I think that is not fair as we are not accountants and we only saw the tip of the issue.

Though we think that Biden's tax plan will be a success, the reality is that there are still many holes that need to be closed. I don't know how much tax rates they managed to get from an uperclass like the multi billionaire mentioned above, but it's pretty bad considering they can get away with it easily, and I'm sure there's still a lot that we don't know and don't disclose to the public, imo.

I read this recently as well. Whereas with Soros and Bezos, it didn't surprise me. It surprised me much more with Buffett, because he has been an advocate for a long time, and has also publicly demanded several times that "his class", the super-rich, should be taxed more. And then, of all people, he is the one of the super-rich who pays the least taxes. This is exactly my sense of humor!
In general, however, it shows that the U.S. has a problem with taxation in general.

Biden's tax plan will take the wealth away from the upper middle class and distribute it among the poor. The rich are not going to get affected, because they almost never sell their assets and take loans against the assets to cover the monthly expenses. In the end, the rich and the poor are happy about the Biden tax plan, while the middle class get royally screwed. The rise in corporate tax means that almost all the commodities and essentials will become costlier. Also, families with one or two children are at a disadvantage, as the new tax plan favors those who have a dozen or so children.

With all due respect to you, I can assume that you are confusing the meaning of the words "income" and "fortune".
His income may be close to 0, but at the same time his state is growing, this is a normal situation. This is a rather subtle question, since for example, a person may own assets in other countries where he pays taxes by developing a business. This means that in the country where he is a resident (in this case, the United States), there are no grounds for paying taxes. But at the same time, having built a couple of factories, for example in Swaziland, his condition will grow, because these assets belong to him, but he will not pay a cent in the United States. This is a very primitive example of "optimization" of taxation, but this is how it works, and for this reason, many people who do not quite understand the essence, there is, in general, a reasonable question - "where are Bezos's taxes, because I pay them !? " :)

This is right!
The problem here is the lack of education again! People don't know much about assets and when they hear that Jeff Bezos owns 99.0 Billion, they directly think that it's the paper money that he has saved somewhere.
Then comes Biden and states that rich people will pay higher taxes but in reality that doesn't happen and people have illogical expectations. All that politicians do is saying beautiful words that people want to hear.
People are addicted to beautiful lies and eternal hope.
The world belongs to rich, so, just saying that rich peopel will pay more than average people is a very funny lie. Especially if we consider that there are offshores for a reason, there are loopholes in every law and it's done for a reason!
Russians have some great verbs that really have place in our world:
1. Laws/rules are written for stupids!
2. Laws/rules are written to break!
3. Laws/rules are great when everyone protects it except you!

Unfortunately, this is so and I do not see anything surprising in this, because it was clear even before the Democrats came to power in the United States. Everything is aimed at making the rich even richer at the expense of the middle class and manipulation in the market. But I don’t think that it will be so in the future, probably in the litter of the future this should radically change. But in the meantime, people will again observe financial injustice.

And don't forget where Biden (just like the Republicans) got their enormous campaign contributions. From the super-rich. He will go easy on them and largely burden the richer in the middle class, because why should the Democrats hurt themselves by alienating their best donors.

While what you are saying is true in the sense these people generate jobs and wealth and this is why they are given preferential treatment at the same time they should pay some taxes, however we know this is incredibly difficult because it does not matter what kind of legislation is passed they have lawyers and accountants that will find a way to reduce the taxes they have to pay so this is something that cannot be solved and any attempt to do so will only introduce even more problems.

You know what was the initial idea for these type of people to not pay high federal taxes and then slowly begun to be zero? It is so that these people could provide something amazing for the nation so that they could benefit that way. A ton of workers, a lot of money, selling internationally to bring money to usa, basically when a nation has a company like amazon then they are doing better even without getting taxes from amazon.

But, what happened eventually? Because of how horrible working conditions are, and how much turnover there is, it didn't help anyone, and now slowly it is moving towards automation, which results with worse and worse working conditions because humans can't keep up with inhuman automation numbers. This caused people to either quit, or being paid way way less than poverty levels, so they got benefits from government and that is paid by tax payers. So what should be beneficial even without tax, became a burden on tax payers.

The burden will obviously fall on the middle class, because as per Biden's plan, anyone with a taxable income of more than $400,000 will witness a tax increase. Imagine this, the top earners is states like California and New York are all ready paying 55% to 60% of their income as tax. If you increase it any further, then these people will have only a small portion of their salary remaining after tax deductions. This is why I suggested lowering the tax rate, but at the same time removing all the tax exemptions.

Since they know how to manipulate their taxes and take advantage of their previledges in business will make them stay away in huge taxes in legal way. But the justice should be fair for everyone. If they can take advantage by having businesses that helps the government we might be able to do oy too in a right time and plans we'll our businesses.

It is kind of sad how far America has let itself fall. Capitalism is the best choice, but it has to work for the benefit of the whole society because huge inequality just breeds resentment and anger. Sadly instead of paying their fair share - the super rich of the world hoard it, hide it and pay people to make laws that will protect it from a wider benefit to the average person. America is one of the biggest banking privacy havens in the world after they have forced other countries like Switzerland to divulge client details for catching tax evaders. Instead of using their huge might for the good of the world they have simply bullied the money from smaller offshore banking havens into their own banks while protecting the abusers behind it all. All these billionaires should be ashamed of the wealth they are sitting on instead of helping the poorest of their country men and women.

Capitalism has its good traits as well as its bad traits and social injustice is clearly not one of the good things. America has been building its economic policy for centuries in promoting entrepreneurship, private initiative, and making money, which in the case of large fortunes does not quite align with the interests of the poorest, and we are faced with the dilemma that economic growth seems to be stimulated by lower taxes, but the poor and middle class suffer from this tax cut, when the rich, who are not at all poor, become even richer by paying little or no taxes. And a sense of shame is not the best helper in overcoming these contradictions.

I don't think that capitalism need to be blamed here, because there is no other alternative. Capitalism means that the vast majority of the people may have comfortable living. On the other hand, socialism has failed terribly. You can look around and examine what happened in countries such as North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. The reason why these billionaires escape from paying tax is not because of capitalism, but because of loopholes that were added in to the tax code by politicians who support them. There is no need to blame capitalism for it, because these loopholes are not a part of it.

It is not difficult to imagine why this is the case, do you remember what happened in Cyprus years ago? There was even a thread here in the forum about the people that had bank accounts there got their money confiscated in what can only be described as institutional stealing, it is likely that the reason the US is attacking tax havens but not doing anything to reduce the loopholes that allow the rich to do the same in the US is that they are thinking on doing the same at some point in the future.

This is a problem that is being faced everywhere . Wherever you go there are always cases like this or similar to it, where the upper class are being favored more than average and the lowest. I don’t live in the US, but this is the same issue that we are facing here in my country, the rich guys are the only ones that are being favored by the government.

The whole taxes are being dumped on the middle class, while the upper class enjoys paying less and making more money. And sometimes, some of them even avoid paying taxes. And it gets worse when it’s a country where corruption is high, you can hardly do anything against them because they can and always buy their way out of it.

I completely disagree with your notion!

1. Income tax is charged on "Incomes" earned during the year. When we say Incomes earned it's actually the incomes realized on which you pay taxes. A person needs to have cash to pay his income tax, if a law comes in that a person has to pay tax when he gains wealth and doesn't matter if he realized cash or not. People will always be short of cash  to pay taxes and it would hamper the middle class the most.

2. Wealth tax is charged on holding certain wealth. You cannot say that Income tax should be charged on the Unrealized Profits of people. Also if someone like Jeff Bezos sells all his assets today and realizes his wealth chances are he would be able to realize just 20% of his total wealth because stock prices would crash too much before enough buyers kick in. So how can you expect from him to pay taxes on this sort of wealth??

3. The idea of calculating taxes as a percentage of wealth built and presenting it to make it look like they paid less tax is absurd. Because this way Satoshi Nakamoto would be the biggest tax offender in history.
 
I don't think we can or we should blame them for this. This is the intelligent tax planning that they do with their assets to make sure they don't pay a dime in taxes. But does this means they will never pay tax? The answer is a plain No! Whenever they would sell off the shares of their companies they will have to pay taxes on them. Most of them might propose the idea of rich paying more taxes. but if a rich intelligently saves tax legally, how can you blame the rich for not paying enough taxes??
 

The example of Bill Gates was given in one of the previous posts. He never paid a penny in tax, despite owning around $100 billion worth of MSFT shares. The shares were transferred to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and that means that these shares will never be taxed (because the foundation is classified as a charitable trust). The case of Bill Gates is known to everyone because it was publicized a lot. Other billionaires keep such transactions as secret. Nowadays charity trusts are one of the loopholes used to avoid tax.

These are the loopholes used by the super-rich to avoid taxes:

Source: https://www.topaccountingdegrees.org/taxes/

See I'll keep it this way. Taxes are designed in a way that people are expected to pay it only when they utilize the benefit of that Income. Bill Gates did transfer all his shares to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but did he sold those shares to and used the "actual Bank Receipts" for his own personal benefit/ luxury? If someday this foundation is dissolved they will have to pay taxes and if the foundation sells the shares the proceeds will remain with the foundation and cannot be used by Bill Gates for his personal use, at least Legally!

Also, a few of these methods you have listed down are tax loopholes and are categorized under "TAX Avoidance" and not Tax planning unlike the previous one. It's obvious that people having more money can hire more intelligent and experienced accountants to set off their Taxes. Trust me if you hire an accountant tomorrow he will tell you 100 ways to go zero tax if you have even a small business. So, it's too communist to blame a billionaire for using tax planning techniques.

Also Loopholes aren't always intentional but the laws are so complex that loopholes are automatically formed. Trust me writing a law is much more difficult than you think.

This is how the world works. Poor are getting poorer and rich are getting richer and its all because they know the secrets of taxation. They probably reading and practicing how to avoid taxes legally. Rich people really hated taxes while poor people and middle income earners are suffering from this taxes.

Most of the loopholes that are being used by these billionaires are not present in the original tax code. They were mostly added in the 1980s and 1990s. And I am surprised with your lenient view on the $20 billion tax avoidance by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates may not use the proceedings for his own personal use. But the truth is that he caused a loss of $20 billion to the US treasury. What if the other billionaires also do the same? Charity is just an excuse used by billionaires to spend money the way they want, without paying a fair share of tax.

Instead of repeating republican talking points about how democrats = taxes = bad, maybe read up on the fact that republicans created this system and always fight to keep it that way because if it wasn't for the rich and the religious extremists, they couldn't find anyone to vote for them.  What your post ignores is that Buffet and Bezos don't pay much in taxes because they don't really have income; their wealth comes from unrealized capital gains that aren't taxed until sold, and even then at far lower rates than income.  I haven't been in favor of a wealth tax, but when you put it like this, perhaps unrealized gains should be taxed. Republicans ought to sit down and shut up now, they are the reason the system is as screwed up as it is.

See my Lenient view comes from the fact that

1. Law is created in such a way that it is equal for all and everyone is tried in the same manner. The facts and the substance of the case can sometimes or in fact many times get ignored due to the form of transactions but our courts are designed to punish only on the basis of "form" and not "Substance". Think of it in this way, what if you and I really honestly want to open a charity and decide to donate everything to that charity. Should it be taxed? If your answer is no. Then even Bill Gates cannot be taxed. How will the courts or the tax authorities determine the difference of intent between us and Bill Gates? If your answer is yes, make sure you are going to give 30-40% of the charity which we want to do to the government itself?

2. Now let me keep this in a manner you will not like. Microsoft and many other companies developed infrastructure worth Billions in the US Alone! If the US today is called the biggest superpower it's solely because of these companies! Now, these companies could easily argue that we have delivered a profit of much more than 20$ Billion to the US Treasury itself. Also, we have provided thousands of jobs to the citizens of the US making their livelihoods better. This is the leverage that these companies carry and they use it to make sure they get these advantages in their favor.

3. Tax Planning is a tool that every citizen in every country uses. Even a little bit of avoidance too. I have not met a single individual saying that Hey government takes away 40% of my taxable profits because it's your right. If you have done it then you really either are too patriotic as well as empathetic or you have never gone to any Accountant. We do curse these corporates when we see them as citizens but when we ourselves make our business we make sure that we pay the least in taxes.

PS: I am not being a rightist who favours the corporates. I am just telling you the brutal reality! No one is here for charity and trust me "charity" is really a myth. Humans have always been competitive when it comes to survival and money. You are saying that Big Guns and these big corporates are enemies to society but they can easily argue that one cannot reach this level where they are without satisfying all their stakeholders!

Also, it's not that all Billionaires get away with Tax Evasions! Just heard today that Mcafee killed himself as he was being extradited to the US.

This is the essence of America ... Biden received 150 million purportedly anonymous donations, four times what Trump received, (therefore, I tend to agree that such measures are aimed at the pockets of wealthy middle-class Americans.). I would not be surprised that the lion's share of these donations was made by Bill Gates, since he fiercely criticized Trump in everything + he publicly approved the idea of raising taxes. One way or another, I will continue to adhere to the opinion of the Biden administration's distorted views on the current situation, (a simplistic view of wealth and disregard for financial discipline).

They have ways to not pay taxes and they are a big company so I think that it's pretty understandable that they didn't pay any taxes. Remember that US has lobbying so we should get used to companies not paying taxes.

Your arguments are not right. Here the tax avoidance is being done by Bill Gates and not by MSFT. Someone who hold $1,000 worth of MSFT shares need to pay 20% capital gains tax on his profit. But Bill Gates, who own $100 billion worth of MSFT shares will never pay any amount if these shares are sold, because the sale will be done by BMGF, which is a charitable trust. If the authorities are extending this tax benefit to all of the shareholders, then no one will complain. Here Bill Gates is getting a preferential treatment when compared to the other share holders.

I don't think you are getting what I am saying. If you too tomorrow create a trust and transfer your shares into that you too will not be taxed. This is the law. BMGF is a 501(c)(3) organization. There are around 1.6 Million such tax-exempt foundations in the U.S. It wasn't bill gates who got preferential treatment, even a person like you can create such an institution if you have the right knowledge. If you are in India too, you can easily open a charitable Institution u/s 11 of Income Tax Act,1961.

Whenever your foundation sells the shares they will not be taxed. This is how it works.

While I am giving you a way of tax planning, you are just cribbing about the fact that Bill Gates used a tax loophole for tax planning. I am telling you the law is the same for a 1000$ Shareholder and Bill Gates if both of them don't sell it but transfer it to their charitable organization.

What disregard for financial discipline is that again? The majority of the top 10 budget deficits in history are under republican administrations. Republicans routinely run up the deficit by increasing spending and cutting taxes. America wouldn't be in such a dire financial situation if it wasn't for the massive debt accumulation that started with Regan and accelerated under Bush Jr. and Trump, who inherited the best economy in decades and shrinking deficits and managed to blow the deficit back up to over a trillion dollars a year.

In addition, the Biden administration's claims that the tax code update will ultimately bring in trillions of dollars are absolutely correct.  Clamp down on the tax cheats by hiring more IRS personnel and the program will pay for itself multiple times over without changing any tax laws, just enforcing the laws already on the books.  That's such an obvious fact it's stupid trying to pretend otherwise.

That's technically both a great thing, and also not something we should care at all. I hate the rich as much as the next guy, I hate Bill Gates personally as well for his past (nowadays not so much) but giving all of your stocks to a charity foundation is not a tax fraud if it actually does work. He is not getting that money back, he is not profiting from it, and his charity actually helped Africa save tens of millions of people from dying and on top of that his latest investment turned out to be a company that saved the whole world with biontech.

So long story short it is a great thing that he did it, look at Jeff Bezos, dude got 10 billion dollars bail out money for his space place because he can, just because he can, not because he needed it, not because he couldn't do it without it, he had the money, dude literally bought james bond series a day later, he HAD the money, the only reason he got it was because he can and that's it. THATS the bad guy.

Lobbying for lobbying is a discord and lobbying does not necessarily have to be aimed at non-payment of taxes by large companies or very rich citizens. This is precisely why there are such branches of state power as the executive branch and the legislative branch, which must ensure that there is no abuse of such things. It is one thing when entrepreneurship is encouraged by low taxes, and it is quite another thing when large corporations with hundreds of billions of income enjoy such benefits.

How many of us can do this? You are posting, as if registering a charitable trust is an easy task. It takes a lot of paper work and is not financially viable for someone who holds MSFT shares worth $1000 to go through all these formalities. Now comes the next question. How can you be sure that BMGF used 100% of the funds for charity? A large part of the revenue earned after selling the shares were used for paying salaries and organizing conferences. Politicians or their cronies received indirect bribes in the form of salary or speaking fee. I don't have an issue if Bill Gates want to donate all his money to charity. But he should pay his taxes first before doing it. I don't care how the money was spent. Someone earning $3,000 per month has to pay his taxes honestly, and these guys who earn billions every year refuse to pay taxes. That is not fair.

Now I am feeling as if I am the lawyer of Bill Gates and his foundation.  ;D Anyway's I'll try to answer your question.

A Median household income of a person in the United States was [url text =$68000]https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-270.html[/url] for a year in 2019. Fast forward it to 2021, let's assume a fall of $10000 due to covid it's still around $58000.

Now firstly I already said that you need to have that required knowledge with you. Now Opening a 501(c)(3) trust account in the United States would cost you around $700 to open up as per this blog: https://www.bossonabudget.com/blog-1/2020/6/10/how-much-does-it-cost-to-start-a-nonprofit. Let's assume it's $1000. Now if a person whose tax is more than $1000 for the year can choose this option as it would be less costly for him than paying the tax directly. So a person has both the option it's up to him where he feels he is getting more advantage. Just Basic marginal costing of any business. Trust me opening a 501(c)(3) in the US or a Section 11 Organization in India isn't that difficult. Also if you are saying there is a lot of paperwork and everything, the same thing applies for Bill Gates too, he is also complying with the same formalities it's just that he has attorneys to handle that because his differential between tax and cost of setting up this institution is much higher.

---

Again a wrong Argument. I hope you understand activities known as Ancilliary activities. These are the activities done to achieve the primary goal of the institution and in every law around the world, these get the same status as that of the core activitiy.


So answer my simple question. You mean to say if a person earning $3000 per month decides to open a charity u/s 501(c)(3) because he is really a philanthropist, he too should be charged for 20-30% taxes first, and then he can do his charity?

I am not saying what Bill did was right, but I am trying to say what Bill has done can actually be exercised by anyone if your economies of scale allow.

That doesn't mean that they won't do lobbying for tax deduction or exemption though, they know their power over the congress so they try and exploit it as much as possible while being subtle about it.

But there is nothing to do, corruption exists everywhere even on the rich countries so the rich can just buy the politicians and pass laws that favor them, in fact they can even arrange laws that on the surface will make them pay a lot of taxes but it has so many loopholes that in fact helps them to avoid paying taxes, this is why bitcoin is a step on the right direction as it is a system that cannot be manipulated and changed at will, if only another satoshi appeared and could do the same for politics that would be great.

OK.. so you don't have any issue, if these "ancilliary activities" are being used for tax evasion or bribing. The justification is that some of this money is being used for charity in Africa or other regions and therefore we should tolerate this.


Yes. They should pay the tax. Just because some of the money is being used for charity, it should not be tax free. At least that should be the case for amounts in excess of $100 million. Here the American treasury is losing funds to the tune of $20 billion. The money that should be going to reduce the unemployment and welfare in the US is being diverted to some other country. That should be prevented.

I love this, wish i could show my brother aaahahahaha. but hes only a democrat because im not lol. Claim no party, claim no state of life. I am myself. and i am content. but these people and all of their deluded bullshit. its all just manipulation, but, hey. guess thats the way the world works now, right?
  ::)

See I am not a conspiracy theorist. Ancillary activities like confrence etc. Are perfectly fine but talking about bribery Is there any proof of that? Just a few conspiracy theorist article? If they have so much of proof why not drag him down to the courts? Power of masses has always been more than any business tycoon. If we are believing every conspiracy theory then illuminati are everything, what can us government do?

Hahaha. You seem to be funny on this. you mean to say when a person does small charity, he shouldn't be taxed, but if he is doing bigger charity of over 100 million, he should be taxed?? You know how this law will be handled by any government? They would say that this type of law would encourage people to do lesser charity.
Also I suppose you live in Indian subcontinent, just tell me why do governments give tax saving options to everyone if they make investments in the economy?? Aren't the government losing that tax too? It's a delusion in the minds of people that taxes are everything in an economy.

No, of course there is no evidence. People with low IQ just hate the rich because they themselves are not rich and they think the only reason someone could be rich then is because of corruption and not because they built a company that has become dominant in a major part of the economy. So they make up a lot of excuses and crazy conspiracy theories about why someone like Bill Gates could be rich while they are poor.  And the simple answer they don't want to believe is that instead of spending their time believing crazy nonsense, Bill Gates built a valuable company.

Haha actually I don't Blame those people too, people Never see the story on the other side, it's true for the riches too, they too are arrogant sometime and don't respect the story of the poor, but yes it's true that corruption , politics are part of story of every rich, but just corruption cannot take you anywhere, if it was so easy everyone could get rich by bribing a government official. It's entirely the hard work ,smart work and fortune of a person which can make him rich.

Every billionaire who started from scratch had their struggles and no one cares about those and once they reach their days of riches after their hard work and dedication everyone seems to call them arrogant because they only see the money side of things while they are unaware of the struggles they went through before they became a billionaire, i am not sure about the taxes but how come they are not paying any tax which i think is not factual.

I will give you something one better. Maybe you heard or maybe you haven't, Bill and Melinda gates is getting a "divorce". Now this may or may not surprise you, after all divorces are getting more common these days, nearly half of all American marriages end up in a divorce, that is just how it is these days.

However how did two people, who have been a couple for 27 years? Was it only just differences in opinion or they just do not love each other anymore? Maybe, maybe that played a big role, but you do not see a couple getting a divorce and living on the same house do you? That surely should make you wonder what happened.

Simple reason is, because Biden is increasing the tax rate on super wealthy, with two different accounts with two different finances, they are no longer a couple, which means they will save up to 6 freaking billion dollars by divorcing and living together, instead of staying married. Yes you heard it right, Bill and Melinda gates got a fake divorce just to save 6 billion dollars on taxes.

Typical Democrat response. Anyone who disagree with them is low IQ. All I am asking is that tax liability should be made equal for everyone. And in case of Bill Gates, you can defend him as much as you want. But in the history he will be recorded as the largest tax evader, after refusing to pay a tax bill of $20 billion.

In your case, in one of your post I saw you supporting income tax of 80%. But you are perfectly fine if Bill Gates pay $0 in tax. The reason - he built a valuable company. I am glad that now people get to know how these Democrat supporters think. The taxes should be paid by the middle class and the billionaires don't have to pay anything and they can evade taxes in the name of charity.

I am in favor of lowering the tax rate, and that can be done only if we remove all the exemptions that are being used by the billionaires to evade taxes. Democrats are not going to like this, because they are the biggest defenders of this group.

Indeed, it often happens, those with poor mentality think that everything in life is supported by a conspiracy.  No one gets rich without stealing and cheating but there are many better things to do than think that way.  However, this condition will continue to occur because even though the rich and the poor start from 0, the mentally rich will rack their brains to get their wealth while the poor will be busy mocking the hard work of others.

What sort of hard work is involved in tax evasion? You can't divert the discussion by mocking those who speak the truth. There is a reason why people are upset with billionaires such as Bill Gates and Bezos, and not that much with people like Elon Musk. The topic here is Bill Gates using the charity loophole, to avoid paying a tax bill of $20 billion. I would call this as tax evasion or tax avoidance. IMO, if Bill Gates want to spend his wealth on charity, then he is free to do so. But first, he need to pay tax as per the prevailing long term capital gains tax rate. Here he has paid $0 in tax, because he moved all his shares to a charity foundation. All sort of excuses are being given by his supporters. But none of them makes sense. There are a lot of billionaires out there, who became rich as a result of hard work. But not all of them do tax evasion like Bill Gates.

Or maybe... hear me out on this, I know it is going to sound crazy to you... rich DO steal money? I mean you do not have to find some "secret Illuminati meeting where politicians and rich get together to murder a virgin" type of deal, it is all out in the open, it is not a secret. I don't know if you want to talk about any particular rich person, but since this topic says Bezos, let's go with him shall we?

I can list 10 other things about just Bezos, or we can talk about other rich people, but that is stealing money from both worker and public all at the same time. Getting rich in a proper way is fine, getting rich in amazon way should be illegal. There is nothing "secret" about this, it is all public info.

Yeah, Amazon is a place that makes people work with minimum wage, give them so much work that people have to pee in bottles and even amazon themselves said people should not "go number two" in their cars, all because they are not given a proper break, and 28% of all amazon warehouse workers are so underpaid that they are getting welfare from government, not the full one (because they have a job) but the one that covers the difference to 40k (which is poverty in many states so I assumed 40k but could be different).

It means Jeff Bezos pays his workers so little that government ergo YOU (because governments money is the tax you paid) pay those workers the rest of the money they need to survive.

How? HOW? HOW is this a democrat reply? I mean it is the progressives like Bernie and AOC and many many alike that is trying to bring the rich to pay the tax while it is the republicans in congress and senate that helped them evade 2+ trillion dollars in taxes just few years ago, HOW is this a democrat thing? It is obvious that we are talking about something that is caused by republicans because they are allowing those corporate friends they have.

I could give you a billion examples how raising taxes for the wealthy and giving it back to poor people was suggested by democrats yet republicans declined, I can give you more examples but you know it. All these zero taxes things coming from republicans in power, if democrats were ahead in senate (and people like manchin didn't side with republicans all the time) we would see those rich people paying a ton more taxes.

The so called "tax raises" for the wealthy doesn't affect these billionaires and it will impact only those in the upper middle class bracket. That is the reason why Republicans oppose these sort of crazy tax increases by the Democrats. If the billionaires need to be taxed properly, then the loopholes need to be eliminated. And the Democrats are in favor of more exemptions, so that billionaires such as Gates and Bezos can evade (avoid) taxes. Under the new tax plan from Biden, people like Bill Gates and Bezos will continue to pay almost nothing in taxes. On the other hand, the tax burden will double or triple, for those in the upper middle class bracket.

The overwhelming statistical evidences only proves the inefficiency of current market policies in bridging the gap between the developed and striving nations. Moreover, we have seen that income inequality is not only domestic but also international at the same time.

For me this situation is clearly an economic imperialism and this is the result of letting the market live on its own with less political interference or  regulations.

Poor people believe that rich people will be the ones that will be the most affected by the rule of "taxation" and all these taxes will be for their benefits, but based on some videos I watched, rich people have ways of controlling how much tax they will be paying by creating corporations which pays lower tax than an individual alone. Besides, some working poor and middle-class people, are also being taxed, because of the rule of law, which initially created to help them.

To address this issue, indeed the rules must be ammended locally and globally and this is the challenge knowing that every country has their own agenda.

That also means that if the shares were transferred without Bill Gates ever selling them, then they were never income and never subject to income tax.  And because they're now owned by a charity, Bill Gates doesn't have that as part of his personal wealth anymore.  So there's literally nothing wrong with the example you used yourself.

See Sithara, Poltics aside but I think calling someone tax evader for the tax liability which never accrued on him is quite funny. Emotions and economics can never be mixed together. You might remember bill gates as a tax evader while lessons of this tax planning by bill gates will be taught to accountants all around the world because for them it's an exemplary piece of art.   All I am against are the conspiracy theories, it's an evident fact that Bill gates got away from a hefty tax bill, some would cribble about the fact for the rest of their life while others would do smart tax planning for themselves by learning from these folks. I am neither giving you a democrat approach nor a republican approach I am giving you a pure businessman approach which Bill Gates actually used.

Name just one such person with a concrete proof who never evaded taxes.

I don't agree 100%. The ownership change is only nominal. Previously Bill Gates was owning these shares in his personal account (i.e direct ownership). Now he owns these shares indirectly. BMGF owns these shares and BMGF is under the control of Bill & Melinda Gates. The revenue from the sale of these shares are still being spent as per the preference of Bill Gates. If he hadn't moved them to BMGF, then these shares would have got taxed at the time of his death (he is 65 years old now).

The thing we are all talking about here is not even if they should pay taxes or not at this point, it is if it is normal for them to evade tax or not. I mean there is a group saying everyone would evade taxes when their taxes are in billions, while the other side is saying they wouldn't do that and it is not nice to do that.

However anyone, anyone with a grain of sand size brain would tell you that... of course they "should" pay more taxes, that helps the whole nation and why would you not want something that would help the whole nation? What would be the reason someone could come up and say "I do not want the nation to have 10 billion dollars more money from these rich people"? So the question is, are these tax bills enough? Or should we find another way to charge these companies?

We should probably charge them based on their revenue in order to just force them to calculate tax in there, and for regular people we should just tax based on their total net worth, that way we can charge less, but constantly charge it anyway.

I was just pointing out at the irony. An upper middle class individual is supposed to pay as much as 55% of his income as tax, if he is living in a high tax jurisdiction (even higher if he is residing in a city such as Portland). And then we have users who argue that people like billionaires like Gates don't need to pay tax, because he is using his money for charity in Africa and Asia. How charity in Africa is going to help the homeless people in the United States? Bill Gates is essentially playing Robinhood here. But the difference is that he is not stealing from the rich people. He is taking money away from the poorest in the United States and redistributing that money in other countries. If other billionaires also follow his example, then the US treasury will be empty in a matter of few years.

It does not impact those who are in upper middle class, it only impacts the very wealthy, and if you really think that republicans are against it all because it doesn't impact the billionaires then you haven't paid attention to who donates to republicans and how republicans vote. Just to give a very very simple example, when trump gave people 1200 dollars to help with stimulus package all the democrats voted for it and people got it right away, when Biden did it all the republicans said it is bad for the economy.

If the republicans care about poverty so much, the minimum wage offer was 15 bucks, which is not even enough yet it was still declined by republicans. Same republicans went ahead with 2+ trillion dollar tax break to very wealthy companies that declined 15 bucks minimum wage. This WILL impact the billionaires believe it or not, republicans saying it won't is a big lie, let's do it and you will see how much it will impact, but nooo republicans can't do anything that will upset their donations.

Lol, I'm not a democrat, but I could see how you could make that mistake because some of my beliefs are liberal, but then democrats would accuse me of being a republican because some of my beliefs are libertarian.  Truth is I'm neither.

There's a couple things you're conflating though in my posts.  I'll try to simplify them.

1) I would support a much higher income tax on the top 1% of income earners.  The exact percent can be debated, but what you've probably seen from me before is noting that the top marginal rate used to be in the high 70 percent range not terribly long ago.  That's not the same thing as advocating for a top marginal rate of 70%.  Also, top marginal rate doesn't mean all your income is taxed at 70%.  If you don't understand this, you probably need to research how it works.

2) I would support a wealth tax on the top 1% of the wealthy to cut down on their ability to game the system by passing their estates on through tax loopholes or delaying or avoiding income realization for decades into the future.

3) Avoiding taxes by using the existing laws is not tax evasion.  If Bill Gates legally avoids taxes by exploiting the system as it was written, that's legal.  You do the same thing every time you take a tax deduction on your income taxes, so I'm not blaming anyone for using the law as it is written.  But see point two above about cutting down on the ability to do this.

Now see how these very clear points contrast very sharply with the strawman argument you built for me.  I'm all for lowering the tax rate, but not until the budget is balanced and we stop accumulating debt.  Closing the legal loopholes the rich use to avoid paying taxes will go a long way towards this.  (Also, if you do even the slightest bit of research, you'll find that republicans are the ones holding up tax reform and they are the party that created a slew of new tax loopholes for the wealthy just 3 years ago.)

It's not a nominal change, it's a legal distinction.  Bill Gates does not own indirectly the shares after he donates them because he does not own the charity.  Controlling a the charity is not the same as ownership, and he cannot do whatever he wants with the shares as a principal of the charity because charities are regulated and have to fulfill a charitable mission to keep their tax-exempt status.  So it is 100% wrong to say that Bill Gates indirectly owns the shares or that he can do whatever he wants with them.  So we're back to Bill Gates never realizing any income from the shares, hence no reason for him ever to pay taxes on them.

It's shady no matter how it may sound because it only looks like they are looking for a way to avoid paying the tax. Foundation had been the way to be doing this by the big corporations. This is just for the press to show the people like they are giving back the achievement they got through the people, helping the cancer patients, the poor by the charity works but in reality, they are just as crooks as robbers. They could have just told the truth like Trump who actually admits to doing it at least we know he isn't a bad liar.

I also see the same thing, they are just doing everything they can to avoid being taxed by opening their own foundation.  By transferring the money they have to the foundation it will not be taxed.  This is what is often found in many countries, large companies with a view of caring for the environment open foundations to avoid their taxes. Cover their bad work by opening a foundation.  Isn't this a very interesting idea for companies to do on their tax deductions.

By transferring it to a charity, which is regulated in how it can spend it, it's no longer the rich person's money, so there's no benefit to them for doing so.  The thing that keeps getting repeated over and over again is that the BMGF is controlled by Bill Gates, like that somehow makes it so he didn't actually donate the money and can spend it however he wants.  That's not true, not even a little, and so continuing to repeat the lie isn't changing the fact that nothing has been done wrong, and nothing shady has happened.

For a moment, let's assume that BMGF has spent zero funds on consultation, salaries and speaking fees (popular ways to bribe politicians). How much of that money is being spent on American citizens, given the fact that the US treasury suffered a loss of $20 billion? As far as I know, less than 1% of the money was spent on US. Now what will happen, if the other billionaires follow the same example. Let's say that Elon Musk sets up a charity with $100 billion worth of shares from Tesla. He then decides to use that money, to help poor white South Africans (his own ethnic group). Will it be OK for you, or are you going to object, since he is supporting the "politically incorrect" group?

As a charity focused on vaccine development and distribution which requires the infrastructure and scientific proficiency of the US, not to mention operating in the US, the vast majority of economic activity directly attributable to the charity's activities I would expect goes to the benefit of the US economy.  Your 1% "as far as you know" is laughably inaccurate, but also embarrassing since you've never tried to know the truth with any degree of accuracy.  How about doing some basic research instead of making wildly inaccurate assumptions about things you don't know the slightest bit about?

Even though the charity focuses on the developing world where they feel the improvements they make in health infrastructure and sanitation will do the most good and save the most lives, in 2019 the charity spent approximately 524 million dollars on US programs with the vast majority going to educational initiatives.  I have no problem with a charity helping the developing world.  Charity is charity, and saving the most lives is what matters.

Can you give  a breakdown of this 514 million USD figure? I want to know how much of it was spent on organizing conferences and on speaking charges. Does that include speeches from politicians such as Hillary Clinton (who charge anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million as speaking fee for a single event)? I also don't have any problem in Bill Gates helping developing world. But that shouldn't be done at the expense of the tax payer in the US. Is it that hard for Mr. Gates to pay 20% of the amount as capital gains tax, and spend the remaining 80% in Africa, or wherever he want?

Not sure where these figures come from. Google search did not give me any result which would fit to these number. I would be interested too, to know how they can be broke down. Also, because the number is pretty low for the whole US for one year. Usually, such an amount in charity are made from single persons alone. And besides, the sum would be far too little for me, compared to what the super-rich save in taxes.

The loss for the US treasury is measured at around $20 billion. The figure quoted (~0.5 billion USD) represents a tiny fraction of that. But the devil lies in the details. We need to know how this $0.5 billion was spent. The US government would have used this money on food stamps or other welfare measures. If the BMGF claims that they used this amount to promote courses on gender studies and LGBT issues, it is not going to compensate what the local authorities lost. And that amount could have helped a lot of people within the states, during these tough times.

Well that is why its called the real power is in money plus Only richer can be richest and middle-class has to stay middle-class and poor becomes more poor. If i am not wrong only middle-class has tp face the more problem in tax. They are aware they afraid thats why they paid tax. But richest people has a support of poletical parties so they don't need to worry. They have a very good relations with poletics for funding poletical parties so they got the chance to avoid taxes. Its my opinion others can be different thank you.

It doesn't look that way at all and it only appears shady to you because you're determined to view it only as a conspiracy.  Contrast the people you keep ripping on for running actual charities with trump who was forced to shut his charity down because he actually was committing fraud through the charity.  Gates actually has something to show for the charity initiatives of his foundation, which is all the advancement in vaccinations in Africa.

Go read the Gates Foundation annual reports, they give details about spending initiatives. Bill Gates never had income from the stock to pay a capital gains tax, so there's no taxes to pay.  You still can't seem to grasp the difference between what constitutes income and what doesn't.

Also, what's with the ridiculous conspiracy theories?  Can you even find one instance of Hillary Clinton speaking at a Gates Foundation event?  Why do you think she made so much money from the Gates Foundation?  In reality, nothing like you keep alleging has happened.


Read the Gates Foundation reports.  I took it directly from what they reported they spent on each of their initiatives.  US education isn't one of their main initiatives, they've spent billions of on clean water infrastructure and vaccination campaigns in Africa to improve the quality of life for the world's most vulnerable populations.

I do remember some advice on how to not pay taxes on your account, And if I remember correctly then you have to create a bank account with a special account "I forgot the name of that", It's linked to a business account and you're using that account to store most of your money which has to pay fewer taxes.
In the end, you can expand your business by saving more than 5% on taxes compared to classic accounts.

Not a very intelligent idea. You can transfer money from your accounts to the company account, but in the end there is no guarantee that the business will be returning a profit. You can show the transfer as an interest free loan. But if the business closes down due to bankruptcy, such loans are given the last preference. The first preference will be given for financial institutions which had given out loans to the company. And with corporate tax rates going up, I don't think that the potential returns justify the risk that is being taken.

I think that the title is a bit misleading.

Especially with Buffet and others, it's likely that most of the 'unpaid' taxes simply came from the fact that they are unrealized capital gains.

When you don't dispose of assets, you don't get taxed on them - it's that simple. This is the case for everyone, high or low income.

Check the article again. It doesn't refer to "unrealized income", but the income or gain that was realized. Michael Bloomberg reported an income of $10 billion, and yet paid 2.9% of that as tax. In case of Buffet it is slightly higher. He reported an income of $125 million, and paid a tax of 18%. But even in the case of Buffet, the tax that he paid is three times lower than the marginal income tax for the highest slab in the United States. Democrats are proceeding with the tax increases, because they know that it will have an impact only among the middle class (esp. upper middle class). For the top 0.01% who comprise the ultra-rich, none of this increases matters. They will continue to avoid taxes. 

Actually the article is talking about unrealized income because it's comparing total rise in wealth over the time period they looked at vs. income tax paid.  Since the vast majority of the wealth increases were unrealized gains on assets, the "true tax rate" that the article calculates is actually a tax rate on primarily unrealized gains.  When you use the actual income reported by the people they looked at (Bezos, Buffet, Musk, etc.), the tax rates on income are many times higher than the "true tax rate" they reported as being in the extremely low single digits.  The income tax rate paid was generally around 20-25%.  Still far too low if you ask me, but nowhere near the 3% or so numbers they were touting when doing calculations based on unrealized gains. Bloomberg is the exception where his income rate actually is 2.92%, but the others are Buffet 18.96%, Bezos 23.05%, Musk 29.93%.

Wrong.

The article mentions "reported income during the period". How can unrealized capital gains be included in "reported income"? As far as I know, capital gains are not reported unless the assets are sold.

The "Wealth growth", which you are mentioning is given in a separate column. The percentage is not calculated based on "wealth growth", but based on "reported income". You are trying to confuse the readers between the two.  

For example, Bloomberg's wealth grew by $22.5 billion during the period, but he reported an income of $10.0 billion. And he paid an income tax of $292 million, which represents 1% of the wealth growth and 3% of the reported income.

Anyway, the users can now see the hypocrisy. A left-wing user is trying to defend tax evasion/avoidance by the uber-rich, while a right-wing user (myself) is voicing my displeasure over it. This is the real picture of "tax the rich".

The problem on an "unrealized profit" is the fact that it is unrealized as of that moment, which means that it can't be taxed properly. Normally if you are apple and you sell iphone and make a profit from it, that is income and that could be taxed, if the stock of apple goes up because they sold a lot of iphones and you do not sell your stock then you do not get taxed the same way.

This needs to change, there is basically close to zero difference the two, selling an orange gets taxed but owning the increase valued orange farm doesn't get taxed properly. If you change that and make sure that everyone pays even on unrealized profits then it will be a lot easier for the whole nation overnight.

This is why I am of the opinion that the current system of taxation unfairly targets the middle class. There are several loopholes for the rich, where they can evade or avoid taxes. We don't exactly need a wealth tax. But we need a system that eliminates the loopholes that are being used by the rich, such as charity and business losses. Bill Gates along caused a $20 billion loss to the US treasury, when he transferred his shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The justification being given is that the BMGF is a charity organization, mostly active in Africa and Asia. But even then, the question arises. Why should the US tax payer suffer for Bill Gates doing his charity work in Africa? And then Bill Gates got divorce from his wife, just to reduce the tax bill even further. He is one of the biggest tax frauds I have ever seen in my life.

In 2007 and 2011 Mr. Bezos, the CEO of Amazon Corporation, did not pay federal income tax even when Amazon's stock price doubled.
George Soros – investor and philanthropist did not pay any taxes for 3 years from 2016 to 2018 because his investments all suffered losses.
Unlike most people, most of their income often benefits from tax avoidance strategies that are beyond the reach of the average person. Furthermore, their wealth is often based primarily on rising stock and real estate prices, which are not considered taxable assets unless sold.