"when owners sell their teams, they have to pay back the taxes they avoided by using amortization"
You can't combine both. If you use one you lose the benefits of the other, see my sibling comment.
>non-profits are a third
Sure, moving your wealth to a nonprofit is tax free. But then what? If you want to spend it (on personal stuff, not curing the word of malaria or whatever), you still get taxed.
>carried interest is a fourth
I skimmed the wikipedia article and it looks like it's just like ISOs, but for investment managers?
>The logic was that the non-financial partner's "sweat equity" was also an investment, since it entailed the risk of loss if the exploration was unsuccessful
If you are saying that investment manager inventives should be taxed as "performance-based compensation for management services", then you are arguing for it to be taxed as regular income. This is how bonuses are taxed for everyone else.
What would capture a lot of revenue from people like Bezos is to tax stock option gains, when realized, as regular income.
Then companies couldn't shelter their CEOs from tax by paying them mostly in options rather than salary. And the CEO would still care about growing the company so that their after-tax gains are maximized.
but the strike price of such options have to be the market price (when they're granted). They can't give bezos options with $0.01 strike price when AMZN is trading at $3600[1]. In that sense, it already works like how you want it to work.
[1] well they can, but they wouldn't be ISOs and would be taxed at regular tax rates.
"But even if owners ultimately repay the taxes they skipped, deferring payment of those taxes for years, sometimes decades, essentially amounts to an interest-free loan from taxpayers. An owner could reap huge gains by investing that money."
"If owners die while holding their stake, as many do, the tax savings may never be repaid. And their heirs can generally restart the amortization cycle anew."
These are each clear loopholes. The first sentence is about how time value of money matters when talking about billions of dollars. The second sentence gives you an idea of why it was so "important" to weaken the Estate Tax in 2017.
I cant speak to the tax burden on inheritance, I know debts and expenses are often paid out of an estate first however.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stepupinbasis.asp https://www.peoplestaxpage.org/buy-borrow-die
Basis step up should be eliminated though. I can't see any economic justification for it.
The actual headline: "Government providing depreciation that amounts to an interest free loan to billionaires in exchange for investing in capital assets" doesn't fit with the sensationalist nature of the piece