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Comment by throwaway122378 | Hacker News Reader

Luxury beliefs. The elite promote agendas that will never impact them directly but will fulfill their internal needs to feel righteous

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I like Bill, but I agree.

Notice how averse Bill was to Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax idea. That's a tax that would actually impact his bottom line.

Instead he supports an income tax -- which would effect working people the same way a wealth tax would effect him -- but would have almost no impact on his personal wealth.

If only we could combine the two for a wealth-based income tax. If you're already worth 20M, should you be paying a higher rate on your 500k in interest than if you just sold your first company for 500k and previously had nothing? I think that's a reasonable way to address income inequality in the long run without forcing people to liquidate assets, especially those like Elon Musk who have most of their wealth tied into companies they actively manage or people whose entire net worth is tied up in historical family properties.

Not sure why you get downvoted. Most people with more money and especially on his level have only little exposure to income taxes. Even the estate taxes will not have a big impact when doing proper tax planning.

He or she missed the entire point of the article.

> he proposes raising the estate tax, and closing certain loopholes “many wealthy people take advantage of.”

It would have been great if he went into details on how to close those “loopholes”. Most the “loopholes” are on purpose to stimulate business growth and support legitimate charities. The advantage of wealthier people is that they can structure their assets as businesses or charities so cracking down on those “loopholes” is not easy without affecting the economy.

If he is serious he should advocate for a wealth tax. That is one of the best ways to close the “loopholes”. But for now it seems he tries to keep out of that discussion.

What? He's explicitly saying it will impact him directly.

It won't, and Bill will and has spoken out against any serious proposals to tax wealth, which is a different kind of taxation than an income and even an estate tax.

Seriously this happened only a month ago, how has everyone already forgotten about it?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/07/taxing-bill-gat...

Whether Bill likes it or not, a wealth tax is likely a non-starter anyway. It's amazing that several candidates are running on a wealth tax when it is pretty likely that it would require a constitutional amendment. Courts already found the carriage tax unconstitutional, which is effectively the same thing.

Are you sure?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylton_v._United_States

I must have misremembered that detail. But I believe the point of what I had read was that a direct tax would be unconstitutional. A carriage tax was found to not be a direct tax apparently. But a general wealth tax likely would be.

Why make such blatantly false statements?

In that article, Bill Gates said that he has paid 10% of his wealth in taxes, and proposed paying 10% more, but expressed concern about paying 90%.

I applaud you for having the chutzpah to link to a source you brazenly misquote.

Allowing the billionaires to set the reasonable taxation rates of this discussion is a testament to how brainscattered people are on this. 10% would still leave an enormous amount of money left over and far more than he would ever need. His great great great grandchildren would still be multi-billionaires.

lol at 10% more. A whopping 20%.

US Federal income tax for 2020 is 24% at $85,525 for a single filer ($171,050).

The long-term capital gains tax rates are 0%, 15% and 20% under the 2018 changes.

Is he proposing a tax on capital gains or income? Where do you think Bill Gates gets his money nowadays?

In dollars, sure, but he’s already giving most of his money away, so it won’t really meaningfully impact him. For decades, Microsoft benefitted from there being no personal income tax, making it easier to recruit employees to its Redmond headquarters. It would have been more meaningful if he came out in favor of the income tax in the 90s, rather than right now.

The key part here is he gets to decide who gets his money and how much.

It's almost always the case that more well off people are against taxes because they naturally contribute more than they use of the tax pool. People with low incomes are usually the ones benefiting the most from higher tax rates.

At least read the beginning of the article.

> ”It was nearly two decades ago that my dad and I started calling for an increase in the federal estate tax and for an estate tax in our home state of Washington”

ha you just don't want to pay your fair share.

If he were poor, he'd be accused of egoism. If normal upper or middle class, of hypocrisy. There's a suitable ad hominem for everyone.

At a certain level of wealth people become unbiased. They can look at a system from an impartial point of view because they are so wealthy they are no longer part of the system.

Bill Gates is so rich that income tax is no longer a factor for him anymore. When he says that Washington needs an increase in income tax he's giving an unbiased point of view. I trust his intentions more than I trust my own.

I am not elite, therefore I participate in the system. My own individual wants and desires tell me that I don't want to be taxed. My view of the system as a whole is therefore clouded by my own selfish desires.

Perhaps his position needs to be rebranded to be even more inline with intentions: An exclusive tax for the elite.

> At a certain level of wealth people become unbiased

I'd modify this to "at a certain level of wealth, one can afford to be unbiased."

Plenty of the very wealthy are biased. For those with inherited wealth who never learned any productive skills, debating higher taxes could feel existential.

Yeah you're right. I was more referring to this specific context.

> At a certain level of wealth people become unbiased.

Strongly disagree. Consider people like Gina Rinehart or various Russian oligarchs - their wealth is well into the billions yet they do not act as though they are above the system.

Bill Gates and other modern tech-billionaires are different to the rest insofar as they share a meritocratic ethos and didn't inherit their wealth (granted, many of them had privileged upbringings, but it's not fair to compare Gates' upbringing as the son of a highly successful lawyer to people like Rinehart).

And of course, the current US President - assuming we can believe his claims about how rich and successful he actually is.

Yeah, you're right. Another person mentioned that I should edit the post to say that rich people can afford to be unbiased which was more inline with what I was trying to convey.

So a bit of a rewording here to make my point more clear:

"In this specific context, I believe what Bill Gates is saying about income tax is unbiased because he is so rich, he can afford to be unbiased."

Washington doesn't have an income tax ... personal or corporate. Yep, it only has a sales tax. (That tax runs from 6% in rural areas to 10% in Seattle.)

It's a good and way-overdue idea ... however it affects Gates personally. That's just part of his proposal, and he's not the only wealthy WAtonian calling for more taxation.

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