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Comment by factorialboy | Hacker News Reader

Tax avoidance is not a crime. Evasion is. All these billionaires know how to skirt the rules.

If they're skirting the rules, that's just called following the rules. Why should we expect billionaires to file their taxes suboptimally? The rules are what need changing.

Yes- that's why people in the comments keep griping about how little tax he has to pay

Well, but the complaint is "Bezos should pay his taxes". And we've now established that he has. So... To the comment you replied to's point: we should be upset at the tax code not at people who (as we've established) are probably following the law.

OK, a charitable reading is that two things are being said:

Bezos should pay a fair amount of taxes ie. we ought to close loopholes and raise the rates for billionaires

& 2. Bezos should pay a fair amount of taxes ie. by using legal loopholes and lobbying the govt. for lower taxes, he is acting immoraly and should stop doing so

Both of which I believe is what's meant but are harder to make into a pithy slogan

My point in my earlier comment is that I don't agree with #2. He pays what the government says his "fair share" of taxes are, and why would we expect him to pay any more than that? I bet every one of us here pays exactly what we owe in taxes and not a cent more. That includes taking tax deductions. Even if you take no deductions, you're given a free $13k deduction on your taxable income.

Obviously in some theoretical moral sense billionaires are underpaying. But what's the income level you need to cross before you should willfully avoid tax deductions and ways of avoiding taxes. Now codify that into the law in some way.

Hey yeah, I agree with you, that's the useful thing to do. Tbh think you're rationally right about this point.

I just also think that Bezos in particular is underpaying and screaming into the void at him is fun and ok

I personally feel a moral obligation to pay my fair share of taxes, especially if I expect my community to be a place I want to be. I could itemize more stuff and pay less but I'm in a position where I can still live comfortably taking the base deduction. In my opinion ultra rich people should be doing the same whether the rules change or not.

The "ultra rich" likely have a different perspective into how tax dollars are continually squandered and abused, which tempers their desire to give it away to some of the most inefficient and corrupt organizations on the planet.

If you feel so strongly about giving your money away, nothing stops you from writing a check to your favorite causes.

How do you decide what your fair share is though? Do you not take any deductions, even the standard deduction? I'm happy to pay my taxes in full too, but I pay my rate for what they say my income is, including applicable deductions to that income. That's what the billionaires do too. They just have way more tools available to them.

And it’s only evasion if you (or someone else) tried it once before and it was ruled abusive. If enough money is at stake, you can go a long way using novel tax schemes to avoid paying taxes long enough to profit, even with civil penalties. Billionaire tax management is a whole ‘nother world.

All the billionaires pay lots of money to advisers who will arrange their finances for them.

I bet most billionaires couldn't even name half the companies they control, because they're all shell companies for shuffling funds overseas.

Are they not paying their taxes or deferring? Because, whatever billionaires do, you can do too. It's legal.

Have you ever taken a tax deduction?

Why are you avoiding taxes if so?

They aren't skirting anything. If you want to get rid of charitable deductions then advocate for that. People are attacking billionaires because the have unpalatable policy positions.

> Tax avoidance is not a crime. Evasion is. All these billionaires know how to skirt the rules.

The corrupt politicians they pay off insert these loopholes, or tax avoidance wouldn't be a thing.

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