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Comment by talkingtab | Hacker News Reader

Wow. The number of comments in this thread which focus on the trees, trees, trees rather than the forest is astonishing. The forest is clear, many people in the US with enormous wealth do not pay fair and reasonable taxes. But let us ignore that and focus on - well not even the trees but the leaves, leaves, leaves.

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HN has a lot of 1%ers who despise the concept of paying taxes. As such, they love standing up for the <1%ers who pay no taxes and as such, shift the burden entirely onto the 99%.

Obviously, if we could distribute tax contributions proportionally, it would help everyone. But HN can’t fathom that.

HN has a lot of ~40%ers who imagine that they will be 1%ers some day. "Temporarily embarrassed millionaires", as it were.

Actual 1%ers are substantially over-represented, but they are (by definition) a very tiny fraction of the overall public.

Yea... you're talking about tax code. It literally is the trees and leaves of the issue. What do you want, a Bolshevik revolution? That'll fix things.

What lots of people still aren't realizing, all tax codes apply to everyone. There are no class distinctions. New tax codes apply to the 99% as well. When the whole GameStop/AMC stock ride happened, a lot of people realized "I now have an opinion about capital gains taxes... I don't like them". You have access to all the same loopholes the 1% have access to.

Realistically speaking, most people do NOT have access to the tax loopholes that the 1%+ does. I didn’t realize this was an actual argument, because it’s well established.

Using meme stock millionaires as an example is hilarious. That’s maybe a handful of people in comparison to the rest of the normal working class population.

Here’s a great example of how the rich can creatively avoid taxes, fresh off the press:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/sequoia-m...

I do not have access to the same loopholes as the 1%. I do not own a foundation, corporation, or trust, and have no means of creating these.

You most likely do - founding a corporation is trivial in most European countries and the US. But you don't even need any of these things to get "access to the same loopholes" as "the 1%" - buy some stocks and hold them. You've now achieved the same tax "avoidance" that the ProPublica article is talking about.

That's not nearly all that the ProPublica article is talking about.

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