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Comment by cdolan | Hacker News Reader

I am aware of the fact its popular to dislike the ultra-rich, but is this not worrying to the general public?

   ProPublica has obtained a trove of IRS tax return data on thousands of the country’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.

Someone leaked not only Gates, Bezos, Musk, etc data, but thousands of private citizen's intimate financial disclosures (edit: seemingly for the purpose of weaponizing the data against them).

What crime were these thousands of people convicted of to deserve this?

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It's not about disliking the ultra-rich.

It's about recognizing how the entire system is stacked against working people and that these ultra-rich pay 0% in taxes, while I pay 30%.

The backbone of this nation is funded by the middle class and the poor being taxed, while the rich externalize their expenses to the government and pay little to nothing in taxation.

If some IRS docs need to get leaked, then so be it. The reporting on this has been pretty responsible.

Government spending is almost entirely leveraged by debt and these documents prove that these "ultra-rich" pay a large absolute dollar amount of taxes (albeit lower than 30%). That is factually non-zero.

I am all for a healthy debate on the topic, but I disagree the reporting is responsible. Responsible reporting, in my opinion, would involve nameless "there is a $5 billion Roth IRA out there... the system isn't working", rather than naming private citizens who believe their tax returns from 2005-2020 are private information.

Edit: And I think it may be of public curiosity to know about what goes on in the billionaire class. I get that, to a degree. My original point was that ProPublica is admitting that they are in control of thousands! of American's tax returns for the last decade and a half. There is no guarantee that the IT administrator or summer intern is going to keep that data safe.

"these "ultra-rich" pay a large absolute dollar amount of taxes"

Money is power.

Because of the wealth they get to keep, these ultra rich are in many ways ruling the rest of us and turning more and more of us in to their servants, telling us how to run our lives, raise our kids, and what to believe.

Are you ok with that? I'm not.

Voters decide, not money. And the rich usually want a free world...

I don't recall ever reading such a naive statement x)

I don't recall ever reading such bland, uninteresting statement.

If you want to claim democracy doesn't work, post some explanation of your position. You might feel like your opinion is shared amd known by everyone, but that's just a social bubble.

I'm more towards your side than you probably think, btw.

I disagree. Many complain about Bezos making billions and not paying a fair share of taxes; yet they support and empower him to further do so with every purchase they make from Amazon. Sure, voters have power voting in occasional elections, but every other day they vote with their dollars—whether they see that or not.

Notice what the 'fair share' is, is never stated, and at the same time want to encourage behavior via the tax code, but then get mad when people use the incentives.

I see this article and thread as a general exploration/discussion of these concepts. I’d have suggested we could probably peg ‘fair share’ anywhere between zero and average American tax rate for the sake of this argument, but let’s just go ahead and say 24%. Do you believe an individual should be able to earn billions, and should able to pay less in taxes than individuals making under 100k? If you agree I’ll bet you can find several billionaire (and many more on their payroll) that’d agree. Look, I admit Ive made my share of contributions to the Bezos machine. Now I could vote for Bernie all the while, but ultimately my point in response above is/was that we vote with more than bumper stickers, social posts, and… well, votes. I might be hypocritical, but I’m not mad or delusional.

Also I don’t hate Bezos or Thiel for playing this game, and I’m not saying you should hate either, but heck I think it’s okay to say at some point, it’d be okay to look at the policy and say okay you made a billion tax free, nice one, but that’s enough we tap out.

And yeah I’d love to divorce business/financial decisions from politics/voting, but you know, Citizens United…

"it’d be okay to look at the policy and say okay you made a billion tax free, nice one, but that’s enough we tap out"

I'd make the taxation retroactive.

"Many complain about Bezos making billions and not paying a fair share of taxes; yet they support and empower him to further do so with every purchase they make from Amazon."

From what I understand, the vast majority of Amazon's profit comes not from the e-commerce website but from AWS.

And the overwhelming majority of Bezos' net worth comes from the value of Amazon's stock, does it not?

So aren't the people who are most responsible for his wealth the purchasers of Amazon's stock, not the users of the e-commerce part of the business?

It’s true they’ve rewarded shareholders and shareholders have rewarded them, but the profit metrics by division are almost trivial in this context. Amazon didn’t turn a profit for nearly 15 years- and not because they couldn’t have. The e-commerce has historically been run at near-zero margin, even willfully running categories at a loss to drive out competitors. As the consumer buying diapers from Amazon you might think you’re just saving a dollar vs diapers.com, it’s low margin so who cares, maybe you’re even sticking it to them if they’re really losing money on the transaction? But then diapers.com doesn’t exist anymore, and shareholders are rewarding Amazon. A single snapshot can only begin to tell the story.

So should we have been buying from Amazon's competitors instead, even if they have a worse selection, worse customer service, few if any reviews, slower delivery, and are much more inconvenient to buy from?

Variety, choice, and a healthy competitive ecosystem are definitely desirable and to be missed with Amazon's dominance, but there are many reasons Amazon is ahead of other e-commerce sites and brick-and-mortar stores.

It'll be interesting to see if/when Amazon finally starts to seriously increase its prices once the rest of its competition are dead and there's no where else for consumers to go.

Will there be a reckoning? Will Amazon be split up?

"Voters decide, not money."

The voters are told what to believe by the likes of Peter Thiel and Cambridge Analytica, or by the likes of Hearst, Bezos, and Rupert Murdoch owning newspapers.

The rich very often have the ears of politicians, with which (if they don't directly bribe) they can easily have lunch any day of the week to lobby for their special interest, or propose quid-pro-quo plans.

How often does the average voter have lunch with their elected representatives? For almost all of them the answer is never.

The rich also donate to foundations (if they don't own some outright) that lobby the government for their interests, they fund ads to the tune of millions of dollars, they sometimes use millions of their own money to fund their own campaigns for office (Trump being exhibit #1, and Bloomberg #2), etc.

>the rich usually want a free world...

There are plenty of Kleptocrats that aren't concerned with the world being free and fair; they're just happy to sit atop the pile, regardless of what the pile is.

Given the enormous reliance on advertising in US elections and the mindblowing sums that parties, candidates and PACs burn on them: money buys votes.

> turning more and more of us in to their servants, telling us how to run our lives, raise our kids, and what to believe.

This is not true in the country I live in.

> Government spending is almost entirely leveraged by debt and these documents prove that these "ultra-rich" pay a large absolute dollar amount of taxes (albeit lower than 30%). That is factually non-zero

These are such non points. Who cares about the absolute amount? We measure it in points for a reason, and the effective number of points the ultra rich pay is <1, while I pay ~25. You can't denormalize that away.

In principle it seems unfair. Case-by-case I have a hard time being against this sort of reporting because of how much influence that money might have. How is it that an individual has so much money? My feeling is that it was enabled in part by tax-funded infrastructure and insufficient government regulation. Too much individualism is trouble (see the USA response to COVID-19). Likewise too much central control.

If we’re collectively being exploited and some publicity is what is effective at change, so be it. I still see the super-rich as individuals, intrinsically no better or worse than anyone else, worthy of empathy, and answerable for their actions, which generally feel unethical.

Where might we cap wealth? What is a better way to go through life than playing the acquisition game and feeling like we’re not adults until we have the fancy, humorless luxury things? How do we otherwise meet the needs of those who thirst for more and more power and resources?

I'm pretty open to the ethical version of this article omitting Thiel's name.

I also think it would be interesting to talk about what it is in this reporting that materially harms Thiel. That he is a billionaire and that he owns PayPal stock was previously public knowledge. This only seems to introduce information about how much tax his Roth is sheltering him from - which the anonymous version of the article would also cover.

Forbes thought his personal wealth was 2 billion.

This reveal puts his ROTH IRA alone at $5 billion (it owns stock in companies other than PayPal and Palantir)

That is a material change in Mr. Thiel’s privacy.

> Government spending is almost entirely leveraged by debt

What does that have to do with anything? I literally have no idea what you're trying to imply.

> these documents prove that these "ultra-rich" pay a large absolute dollar amount of taxes (albeit lower than 30%).

Yes, and they also benefit from the work of society and government many times more than I do! From courts to law enforcement to bailouts to everything else. More generally: these people are not rich in a vaccum, they are only this rich because the rest of society exists, therefore they owe a debt back to society.

Absolute values count for nothing. It's preposterous that I work my ass off and get taxed 30 or 40% and they live off capital gains and get taxed zilch.

> What does that have to do with anything? I literally have no idea what you're trying to imply.

It means that government budget can be eventually consistent, unlike our personal budgets. Wealth is a leading indicator of income, and we all know that the vast majority of the ultra-wealthy will eventually pay taxes once they liquidate their wealth. When that happens, they will pay more in taxes than you or I, especially once you factor in inflation (which is one of the reasons why the long-term cap gains tax rate is so low to begin with, everywhere around the world).

Realistically, the government is already spending the money it expects to receive in eventual income tax collections from the ultra-wealthy. The best-faith attack on wealth is mostly around concentration of power, rather than tax revenue or even "fairness" relative to the middle class (the US has by far the most progressive taxation in the developed world[1][2][3]).

[1] https://opportunitywa.org/u-s-federal-income-tax-structure-m...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-fed...

[3] https://faculty.washington.edu/vmenaldo/Inequality%20Researc...

> and we all know that the vast majority of the ultra-wealthy will eventually pay taxes once they liquidate their wealth

I can't tell if you're serious, I mean it. Can you explain why you say this?

Because we tax income, rather than wealth? This is true for most of the OECD. None of this has changed, and it's true for any ultra-wealthy person who wishes to actually consume against their wealth.

By definition, the ultra-wealthy defer their consumption for the sake of investment. If they never ever choose to liquidate their wealth, then it's little more than a life high score.

One can certainly consume right now by taking on a collateralized loan against their wealth, but even if one were to do that, the loan would need to eventually be repaid. For this to happen, some gain would have to be realized somewhere. That money isn't free. No matter what, that wealth is eventually taxed.

A relevant response to an earlier ProPublica piece: https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/propublicas-bombshel...

As for the Roth IRA, the whole point was to extend the power of deferred consumption to the ordinary person (response to this specific ProPublica piece: https://twitter.com/cundillcapital/status/140809068240169370...)

And just a side note: generally assume that I'm being serious. I try to be as earnest as possible on this forum. Going in with this assumption for anyone on here is best for its general health.

I think two things can be true at once here…

1. We have GOT to close some of these loopholes now that we know what they are and…

2. Someone should go to federal prison for this leak

We can’t undo what we now know about avoiding taxes and we cannot condone egregious invasions of privacy like this.

If someone brings to light an injustice which prompts the legislature to fix the laws to better match the public consensus of fairness, that seems a perfect example of what the presidential pardoning power is intended for.

I understand that the word "If" is doing a lot a work in that sentence, and I have some sympathy for law-abiding billionaires who don't deserve to have their privacy invaded, but they should receive some form of compensation rather than legal punishment of the leaker.

I think that justice should be blind. Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to the same protections. We’ve gotten to a point in culture where some people “deserve it” so it’s ok if bad things happen to them. That feels like a dangerous exception to make.

I believe that if the leak is proven to be in the public interest, no one should go to jail (but that it should be the rare exception).

I also don't believe Snowden deserves to be in jail (or rather that he should be pardoned). Sometimes you can't fix things without breaking the law - everyone does it on a daily basis with few consequences (jaywalking, etc). Sometimes it has to be done on a larger scale in order to shed light on injustices - otherwise the power of the few will prevail over the power of the many.

> these ultra-rich pay 0% in taxes, while I pay 30%.

Then I have a modest proposal. If the median household net worth[0] in the US is about $120k, and the median household federal tax burden[1] is about $10k per year, then let's say that anyone with a net worth more than $1 billion should pay an annual wealth tax of 10%.

The G7 have already agreed to a global minimum corporation tax rate, so let's make this wealth tax global too, and forbid billionaire residents of non-compliant countries from visiting or passing through countries that implement this tax.

[0] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

A 10% wealth tax is quite a lot but otherwise I agree hat we absolutely need to move from income to wealth tax.

I’d support a progressive tax, something like 0 for the first 200,000 or something, then slowly rising to a few percent.

The really tricky thing though is that some assets generate income but others don’t, and we probably don’t want to put even more pressure on people to make rent on their assets than they already have.

So it’s a really hard problem but worth thinking about because taxing capital is really the only way to have a fair tax system in a capitalist society.

Do you know why a number of EU countries had wealth taxes but then got rid them?

Because they pushed the people to other EU countries without them - which wouldn't be true of a global minimum wealth tax.

It wasn’t only that. Setting up the infrastructure to actually measure and track wealth (nice pre-IPO stocks there, how much are those worth? Nothing? How interesting) is a massive undertaking and a bureaucratic mess.

It’s a tax with a massive administrative overhead to it.

The good thing about a law targeting billionaires (and taxing their wealth at 10%) is that the administration costs can be at least $100m per investigation and still break even.

(Admittedly at the bottom end someone might manage to sneak in under the threshold, making the investigation a waste, but there's no harm in the bureaucrats starting with the richest person and working their way down the list, gaining skills and efficiency as they go).

Even if all the money that the government collects ends up going to pay the investigators, at least that would be creating thousands of decent jobs. Also, assuming a balanced game, if the investigators are being paid $100m to find evidence then the billionaire would have to pay a similar amount to hide evidence, which means they might as well not bother hiding it.

What do you mean “per investigation”? A wealth tax has overhead that applies to every tax payer.

I'm imagining that the wealth tax would only apply to people with more than $1bn in net assets, so the overhead for almost every tax payer is to simply tick a box each year saying "I am not a billionaire".

More precisely, the law would require anyone with gross assets above some threshold, say $500m, to report the value of those assets to the IRS every year, based on some simple valuation rules, like "How much did you pay for the asset?" and "What is the market value of those shares / cryptocurrencies?". Only assets worth more than $1m would need to be declared.

Then, as I say, the IRS can go down the list of people with the most assets and do a more thorough audit, to make sure their valuations are correct, while also making sure that there aren't any billionaires who have forgotten to file, since it should be hard to hide that much wealth.

What country are you talking about? Because in the US the top 1% pay about 40% of taxes [1]. The remaining 2-5% pay 20%. Almost all taxes are paid by people in the top quarter.

1. https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-t....

Shh that inconvenient truth doesn’t fit the narrative.

>It's about recognizing how the entire system is stacked against working people and that these ultra-rich pay 0% in taxes, while I pay 30%.

Rather that have the rich also pay 30%, don't you think that it would be better if you too have to pay 0%?

The fight against the ultra rich usually ends up as a fight against the middle class with some token offensives against the ultra rich.

You mean like when Musk sold $1.5B in Tesla shares and paid $0.5B in taxes (33% rate) but then Propublica complained $0.5B was a small amount of taxes compared to his overall wealth (ignoring the rate for the transaction).

> complained

This is disingenuous. ProPublica pointed out that, regardless of the individual transaction, he amassed so much wealth that the .5B in taxes were a drop in the bucket.

PP isn't accusing Musk of cheating the system. They're pointing out that the system is broken.

No Propublica was being disingenuous. They note his total wealth, then took a snapshot in time of a single year, where he paid $0.5B in tax, ignoring his actual income of $1.5B

It’s like looking at a retiree and saying “you only paid $15,000 in taxes, but you have $1M in assets!!” ignoring that those assets were either already taxed or will be taxed in the future.

It’s really a bad article.

This article is about Roth IRAs and I don't know if Roth IRAs are "stacked against working people". That is because anyone who is working can open up and fund a Roth. I think Peter Thiel's returns are just highly unusual.

Actually, it's probably the opposite, a Roth is probably a very useful tool for working people as far as savings. For someone starting a Roth at 23 with $6000 and contributing $6000 every year, 10% market average compounded growth, it might be worth around $3M 40 years later. It's not hard to see how Buffett was able to grow his into the tens of millions. I think the Roth IRA is pretty reasonable for wage workers and definitely gives them an edge.

Its kind of surprising to me how obvious it has become to compare % as more or less instead of absolute numbers. I dont know anything else but taxes that people use this notion.

30% of a small number is a lot less than 10% of a massive number. Most definitely PT has paid a multiple of taxes than middle class: millions upon millions of it.

The most common justification is the subscription to the punitive usage of taxes: if someone has money, he should be punished more and more for it.

Maybe you could use another framework and say, how much of taxes and public services do you consume and how much do you contribute. And I assure you people like PT are very much net providers, whereas middle class will very often be a net consumer.

Some countries have public tax returns (Sweden? Norway? One of those Nordic countries.)

I think probably they should be public data.

That aside, for very rich people, having them be public is in the interest of the public as it reveals the shady stuff they do to dodge taxes (legally.)

Debating wether tax returns should or should not be public is a great debate to have, I agree. The country should be having that debate. And if we decide tax returns should be made public, it should happen in the future so everyone is on the same page.

The fact is that US tax returns are private information, regardless of what other countries are doing or what you and I think should be done.

> Debating wether tax returns should or should not be public is a great debate to have, I agree. The country should be having that debate. And if we decide tax returns should be made public, it should happen in the future so everyone is on the same page.

The same way the Snowden leaks were instrumental into regulation about surveillance, leaks like this are instrumental in crafting better tax policy, so I would say they are a public good. It's also not-quite possible to do it via completely legal means (as vested interest opposition is too big and has too much capital - the only way to battle against them seems to be to do it via not-so-legal means).

So in this case the fight is punching up against people in positions of power, not down onto people that have no power, so I don't see a direct issue with it. If you have power, you should also have the proportionate responsibility.

"Responsibility" is a very strange word in your comment to me.

Snowden leaked government program details. How in the world is that the same about thousands of private citizens (aka not public figures) personal financial details?

How are these individuals not being "responsible"?

The only unresponsible person is the person(s) who leaked the details, and ProPublica for monetizing it.

We have a disagreement in what makes a public figure then. I believe that over a certain level of wealth, the wealth alone makes someone a public figure or a figure of significance (since wealth = power, and public status also = power, and celebrity status = power).

If someone is powerful enough to have power over other people (which the wealthy certainly are), then they should account for that power with appropriate responsibility.

If you don't want to be a public figure, don't accumulate exorbitant amounts of wealth.

When I say public figure (which Mr. Thiel is, despite his harassment by Gawker and other quirks, but I get your point) I am referring to the thousands of non-public figures who have had their personal tax details stolen and shared with ProPublica, who seemingly did nothing to deserve this.

It is in the public's interest to transparently understand the activities and finances of anyone with outsized political power. Since money is freely convertible to and from political power, people with outsized amounts of money have outsized political power, and are therefore public figures. Are ProPublica publishing details of people who are not rich?

Do you know today what they will do with these thousands of files on other people’s personal details?

Do you think they will just… delete them? Because if so I’ve got a great time traveling hot tub to sell you

Welcome to the great panopticon remember the Telescreen sees all citizen.

You want family and friends to know exactly how much you make?

That's extremely problematic for a lot of people.

Congress already has access to tax returns for the purpose of writing tax legislation. It's not perfect but I really don't want my finances public, and I'm not doing anything shady.

"You want family and friends to know exactly how much you make? That's extremely problematic for a lot of people."

Can you explain why it's problematic?

Family can be very manipulative when they know you have much more money than them. It can end up massively hurting relationships.

I don't even tell my parents how much I make.

"Family can be very manipulative when they know you have much more money than them."

As I suspected, this is mainly a problem of the rich.

Most of the rest of us don't make much more money than anybody.

So are we going to make our laws to advantage the rich or the vast and ever growing majority of the population who aren't and never will be rich?

Ah yes, I'm the problem, paying around 40% in taxes.

People making 6-figures a year are not the ones manipulating the financial system. HN is particularly in this category.

But go ahead and lump me in with someone with like 6000x my net worth.

You don't have to be a billionaire to be part of the problem (though it helps).

I'm part of the problem with abuse of tax loopholes? What are you talking about?

I have lived in 4 countries, and 3 continents and everyone I have lived with agreed that it's not useful for the whole family to know how much you make.

Last year I learned that lesson the hard way...

I can see some reasons to not wanting your wealth public if you are reasonably worried that it would attract unwanted attention.

I can see why people tend to err on the side of privacy, but it doesn't seem to have destroyed Norwegian society to have public records.

I think it's a reasonable thing to discuss, then at least we can get some pros and cons out there.

seems like corporate tax transparency would be a good first step.

> Congress already has access to tax returns for the purpose of writing tax legislation.

while that is the law that Congress can request/subpoena returns under §6103(f) of Title 26 [1], if it can just be ignored then Congress doesnt really have access.

[1] https://irc.bloombergtax.com/public/uscode/doc/irc/section_6...

> if it can just be ignored then Congress doesnt really have access.

Then fix that! Why do you have to go to the absolute extreme here and make everyone's finances public?

Imagine hooking up the public tax returns to an image recognition system and database built from social media. It should be possible to create a dating app for women that lets you see the wealth of people on tinder, in the street, at a party. Men might also use that, but they already have their ideal "rating by physical appearance" app in tinder. Some gender differences are persistent throughout all human history.

There are some downsides to be sure.

Yes, this is the most pragmatic way to deal with privacy issue, as much as possible information has to be make public for everyone.

>You want family and friends to know exactly how much you make?

Not really but I would like the information to be public, that is they don't have to know but if they want to know they can.

Its great that I don't have to hide it or worry about it being leaked.

If this information being public cause me trouble then we'll find a way to solve that issue rather than fixing it by hiding the information.

> that is they don't have to know but if they want to know they can.

For the people that I'm defending here, there's no difference.

> Its great that I don't have to hide it or worry about it being leaked.

...so are you saying you're worried about a law like this?

> Yes, this is the most pragmatic way to deal with privacy issue, as much as possible information has to be make public for everyone.

I'm guessing you think the best way to deal with revenge porn is to have everyone post nude photos of themselves publicly?

>so are you saying you're worried about a law like this

What law are you referring to ?

>I'm guessing you think the best way to deal with revenge porn is to have everyone post nude photos of themselves publicly?

Yes, then fix the problem that cause by the photos being public, instead of making the photo private.

As technology progresses, trying to stop the flow of information is become harder and harder.

I rather we embrace the flow of information then we solve whatever issue that come up.

some countries have nude beaches but not sure if you want your private photos leaked to the public.

> but thousands of private citizen's intimate financial disclosures (edit: seemingly for the purpose of weaponizing the data against them).

Can you point to one instance of some of this data being divulged about random citizen's finances, or used for blackmailing someone? It seems silly to complain about legitimate journalism because the data might, but has not, been used for nefarious purposes.

Google "whistleblowing".

Whistle blowing journalism implies you are reporting on acts breaking the law.

Reporting things that are juicy but not illegal, is effectively gossip / tabloid material.

You don't get to break the law in order to effectively gossip.

Case in point. You don't get to break into the King of England's cell phone to report he's infertile, even if you think means English citizens have a right to know that the country will never have a Prince-heir.

That is not legitimate journalism, and its certainly not whistle-blowing. Its repugnant and tabloid journalism.

Personal privacy is never second to the mob. Period.

EDIT: unsafe, fraud, abuse, corruption, malfeasance of government/company funds, are almost always also breaking fed/state/opco policy or regulations, and as such they are illicit and fall within the spectrum of whistle-blowing.

Well said, take my upvote.

Personal privacy and the belief that you are innocent until proven guilty (no matter how "obviously guilty" you are), are two things we've really forgotten in the USA and perhaps the modern world in general.

The innocent until proven guilty only applies in criminal court, not in civil court by the way.

Personal privacy is good, but there are some societal things that should supersede the right to personal privacy in my opinion - I don't think any single right should be absolute.

The US Constitution would disagree with you.

Edit- the “Bill of Rights” sorry

Whenever two people have conflicting absolute rights, who's right is more absolute?

That's why rights are always relative. The Bill of Rights is a good starting place, but any law should pass the common sense/reasonableness standard - we already make many [reasonable, common-sense] exceptions to the right to free speech (i.e. shouting Fire! in a theatre for a cliche example, or incitement to violence)

> are two things we've really forgotten in the USA

You should one more point to that list, "Rich people should pay their fair share of the taxes" has been forgotten as well.

There is no requirement for whistle blowing to be strictly about illegal activity. Mismanagement, corruption, unethical behavior… are all considered under the term. It’s in the public’s benefit for this information to be public. All billionaires should be under far more scrutiny then they are. There’s no benefit to the rest of us for them to operate with impunity in the shadows.

> A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower)[1] is a person, usually an employee, who exposes information or activity within a private, public, or government organization that is deemed illegal, illicit, unsafe, or a waste, fraud, or abuse of taxpayer funds.

Morality ≠ lawfullness. Many things are perfectly legal but profoundly immoral or unethical. The public has a right to know that they're being cheated like this, that working class people have to pay their taxes but the very rich don't. It's very slimy that you try to equate this to curiosity about royalty.

It's reasonable for good journalistic organizations to have access to secret government records. They just need to be responsible with them. The same discussion happens any time there's a leak of intelligence/surveillance/military documents. What if the info puts soldiers at risk? Well, the ethics of that are up to the journalistic organization to tackle. They're the best equipped to do that, with their training and standards.

Now if someone just sold the records to TMZ or something, that's a different conversation.

The weird thing is that none of it is terribly surprising or unexpected. So information was stolen just to kind of confirm what everyone already knew?

If this was all new information I might disagree with you, but we already knew capital gains is horrendously undertaxed. And knowing the specific dollar amount doesn't change the conversation much, it just makes it that much more incendiary.

Counter point - Information was stolen and is being held that doesn't change the common narrative or introduce new information ("our tax system needs help").

Have you considered the amount of identity theft that can occur when you have 15-20 years of tax information on thousands of individuals? And that information has obviously been duplicated many times if it made its way from the IRS, through an informant, and into the hands of at least one person at ProPublica?

I don't intend to defend "the system" and the fact ultra-rich can become even more ultra-rich, or the morality/fairness of that. I do find it very alarming that its apparently "OK" that Pro-Publica has intimate financial details of thousands of Americans - enough to completely ruin their lives if in the wrong hands - and its "OK because they have a lot of money".

Thats not OK to have on any American, wealthy or not, in my opinion.

There is a difference between mutual knowledge (everyone knows X) and common knowledge (everyone knows X, and knows that everyone knows X, and knows that everyone knows that everyone knows X, etc. ad infinitum).

This brings the knowledge everyone sort of knew and makes it common knowledge. That can have a powerful impact.

> The weird thing is that none of it is terribly surprising or unexpected.

Have I been living under a rock? I think we may have suspected that the ultrawealthy was not paying their fair share, but paying nothing? Using elaborate loopholes to actually get out of any tax burden at all? I found that to be shocking.

I grep'ed the article for the word 'criminal' and came up empty. This is essentially a hit piece. Say what you will about Bezos, Thiel, et al., but they are just high profile targets that propublica is going after for the clicks. I question the ethics of these journalists.

Morality ≠ lawfullness. Many things are perfectly legal but profoundly immoral or unethical. The public has every right to know that they're being cheated like this, that working class people have to pay their taxes but the very rich don't.

Who cares if it’s criminal? Do you only read crime reports? I was unaware that a Roth IRA could be exploited like this until this piece enlightened me.

Maybe also grep synonyms:

> Victor Fleischer, a tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written about the valuation of founders’ shares, read the PayPal filings at ProPublica’s request. Buying startup shares at a discounted $0.001 price with a Roth, he asserts, would be indefensible. “That’s a huge scandal,” Fleischer said, adding, “How greedy can you get?”

What's the argument for keeping tax returns secret?

Mostly that you don't want random people to know how much you make, and unless you are a public figure there's no reason why it should be useful to the public.

So what exactly is the problem with a random person knowing how much you make?

How much do you make?

Nothing. I'm out of work.

Your turn.

So you got no skin in the game, take a hike.

Why are you out of work. If so, from where do you get the money to cover your expenses. Who and how much pays, or what are your savings?

24k/year.

134k

Relatives or "friends" asking for money, neighborhood rumors, I don't know. The world is full of random shitty people.

In the USA they have been private for a long time (forever perhaps, I don't know the full 200 year history on them). In modern times (2000 or later) they have certainly been very private, though.

Whats the argument for being selectively harassed by leaking your sensitive financial details?

What's the argument for keeping anything secret? Simply that it is my personal info and isn't anyone else's business.

ask Donald Trump

Same argument for regulating Google analytics which seems super popular on here

1. Don't worry, IRS has tons of data on you, but it's all secure, nobody gets access to it.

2. Oh, some journos hate you? Then it's totally OK to publish you data, that's a well known exception from privacy.

3. What? Punishing people that revealed private data? Are you crazy? It's the government, they don't get punished ever. But be sure all your private data is protected. Unless, of course, some journo dislikes you, then it's your own fault.

Maybe we should fund and staff the IRS properly so that they can properly police and audit the wealthy unsteady of relying on “leaks”?

It’s perfectly ok for the wealthy to lobby Congress so that the IRS is neutered, but when a person leaks their info, it’s a crime, huh? Seems like a double standard.

The only crime is ProPublica’s and some IRS people. Who’s next after “the rich?” Some impolite plumber?

Hey thanks for actually answering my (somewhat rhetorical) question haha.

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