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Comment by 9999 | Hacker News Reader

So let me get this straight: rich kid at Harvard gives his bright friend some money to rent servers to run a service that gets popular. Rich kid doesn't contribute any more. Rich kid gets cut out of company because he's not doing shit any more, then sues the company. Company sucks it up and pays him off. Then rich kid renounces citizenship and splits for a tax haven with all of that money, completely avoiding contributing anything further to the environment that made him billions of dollars.

And the popular narrative is that Zuckerberg is the asshole? Huh.

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You're assuming he is leaving for tax purposes. If he doesn't live in the United States why would he retain his citizenship? He could be denouncing it for entirely unrelated reasons, someone stated below that to get citizenship in Singapore you must be a citizen of only Singapore. Nowhere has it been confirmed, this is all speculation. He hasn't just suddenly "split", he left the US almost 2 years ago. He already paid taxes on hundreds of millions, I really doubt that he hasn't paid his "fair share".

If you are a US Citizen, you have to pay taxes, regardless of where you live, so I am guessing taxes paid a role in his decision.

Would he also have to pay taxes in Singapore? If so, I can see how this move would be acceptable.

Even if not, I don't think many would find this unacceptable if he had done this before the mention of the IPO. It's possible that he has been considering the move for a while, and hasn't bothered to go through with it until a significant chunk of his income became at risk.

Singapore doesn’t have a capital gains tax.

A 15% long-term capital gains tax rate on $3.84B (4% of Facebook),

He saved $576 Million by giving up his citizenship and moving to Singapore.

I'm not a lawyer, but this seems plausible. Singapore doesn't have a comprehensive tax treaty for the USA[1], which would otherwise prevent double taxation.

[1] http://www.iras.gov.sg/irasHome/page.aspx?id=812

He could simply want to live elsewhere. If you don't live in the US, you wouldn't want to keep paying them taxes for no reason. I see no problem with renouncing his citizenship for tax reasons if those tax reasons are "I don't want to keep paying a country I no longer have ties to".

Taxes probably played a role in the decision, but it could easily have been a minor one rather than just "split[ting] for a tax haven".

> And the popular narrative is that Zuckerberg is the asshole? Huh.

Not sure what Zuckerberg has to do with this story, so bringing him into the discussion seems like a red herring. Whether Zuckerberg is a good guy is a separate question; maybe Saverin and Zuckerberg are both assholes (or maybe neither).

> So let me get this straight: rich kid at Harvard gives his bright friend some money to rent servers to run a service that gets popular. Rich kid doesn't contribute any more.

Not terribly different from Seed/VC funding.

If being intelligent enough to make billions off (in op's opinion) no work, makes you an asshole, then count me in.

Also, popular narrative is "Steve Jobs is an asshole." Popular narrative also wonders who this Mark Zuckerburg fellow is. Does he sell hard candies?

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