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Comment by attentive | Hacker News Reader

Pay taxes once vs pay interest forever? At what point it'll break even and go negative?

Let's say you're worth $100bn. You don't need to spend $1bn a year, just even a few tens of $ millions will be plenty, so you're borrowing a minute portion of your net worth. And your stocks will be going up in value, typically, so... you'll never run out of money. Plus you'll be a great customer for the banks that lend you money, so you'll get preferential interest rates. You'll never run out of money. You'll die and still have the lion's share of your wealth, only now it will pass to your heirs and charitable foundations.

> You'll die and still have the lion's share of your wealth

and i don't see anything wrong with that at all.

It seems, recently at least, that a lot of people believe they're somehow entitled to the wealth that these high networth individuals have managed to accumulate.

> and i don't see anything wrong with that at all.

Read my comments on that post. I never said there was anything wrong with that.

IMO we should stop double taxing dividend income.

> a lot of people believe they're somehow entitled to the wealth that

Do not count me among those.

So, same as never selling your stock?

None of that matters. What matters, is if interests paid is more than taxes paid. Which at some point it will be. And at some point both loans and interests will be paid in full. Because its secured by stocks. And assuming there is no other assets, it'll be stocks sold and capital gain taxes paid.

Unless the argument here is that lender will be fleeced due to borrower's death. Which, if correct assumption, is fucked up.

Let's say every year your portfolio goes up 10%. Every year you borrow 3%. You never pay down the principal, and I think you can just let the interest payment get added to the principal. Also, the interest is tax-deductible.

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