How the Richest People in America Avoid Paying Taxes | Hacker News Reader

How the Richest People in America Avoid Paying Taxes

theatlantic.com

28 pointsbdev1234517 comments

Donating to political parties seems to work well.

Well Actually I think you mean corporations exercising their right to free speech

This crazy notion that money = free speech is wild. If corporations are equated to real(TM) people that have a right to free speech, they can speak all they want, but buying politicians is not free speech.

Take a loan against your assets. No taxes (debt is untaxed), no interest (stock raises cancelling out the interest rate) and no money is lost. You get to feast on the tax contributions of your salaried folk (roads, educated workforce, public health agencies, law enforcement, etc)

The secret: they do pay taxes, enormous amounts. A small handful of people pay billions in taxes a year. A wealth tax is not only deeply immoral, but it's a bad idea, and every country that's tried it has watched it fail. If someone with billions in assets doesn't take home a salary, then they don't pay income tax on a salary that year. Get them when they sell stock, like they did when Elon paid ~12 billion in taxes, or when the companies they run pay corporate taxes, like when Berkshire Hathaway paid ~26.8 billion.

It's frustrating because I suspect billionaire taxes are deeply interesting, but that's not what this article is about. The article reads like someone who's 5'9 complaining about NBA players

> A wealth tax is not only deeply immoral

A wealth tax is deeply immoral?

Morality means different things to different people. Some even believe that freeing a slave was immoral because it deprived his owner of an asset.

Only if you forget that money is supposed to function as a lubricant for satisfying needs and think that it is somehow a good reflection of someone or something's worth to society.

Reducing accumulation of money (by means of for instance a wealth tax) is incredibly important to keep the economy as a whole going and to maximize the needs satisfied, but if you only think in terms of "but poor people don't deserve free money!", you miss this point and say dumb things like "a wealth tax is deeply immoral".

Wealth tax mostly works here in Switzerland but it's hard to enforce when it comes to subjective items like artwork. But it's so low here they probably should just scrap it. But then you have so many wastes of humanity here that inherit all of their money and do nothing with it other than have a good life of good food, nice cars, mild plastic surgery, etc.

Spain’s wealth tax works fine.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/16/spain-put-u...

Spain GDP per capita

2008: $35,603 2024: $35,297

US GDP per capita

2008: $48,570 2024: $85,809

Seems to be working great!

Wealthy people continue to reside in Spain as a tax resident subject to a wealth tax on global assets. It clearly works to raise tax revenue versus “meaningless line goes up.”

Are you implying a wealth tax stunts GDP? I'd love to see some evidence and thought behind that implication rather than a cheeky quip.

There's tons of research showing that excessive taxation drives wealthy people out and shrinks the economy. France tried it and reversed course when it was a disaster economically.

The UK is currently experiencing an exodus of wealthy taxpayers due to high tax burdens.

If you want to kill your economy, the fastest way to do so is by ripping off those who employ most of the economy through their business ventures.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.34.2.119

There might be a little more going on with Spain's (and the US's) economy than just Wealth Tax.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiymTzsZfoA

Huh.

How is it the author managed to name drop Trump, but avoided Pritzker?

Fair is fair. If you’re going to bash the rich, at least bash fairly.

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