"seeing the ultra rich paying far less taxes then they are."
Is this actually true? I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes.
Is this actually true? I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes.
Link - https://itep.org/washington-post-rich-not-paying-fair-share/
You are talking about effective taxes rates, which are different. To discuss that, I would have liked to see a bit more detail in the article, like what the income sources were and the deductions and losses to offset gains. I think changes around capital gains and loans against equities could use some adjustments. The other taxes like payroll are basically moot as Bezos's payroll income is only about $90k per year anyways.
At minimum, taking out a loan based on the current value of an asset should trigger immediate realization of capital gains/losses for at least those assets used as collateral. After all, the gains are already de facto being realized for the purpose of the loan.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to address the other side of things - that said loans often don't have to be repaid so long as the assets continue to gain. As such, the capital gains are actually being realized continuously by the loan, but I doubt it's feasible to properly handle that in tax law.
They wrote that whole article out just to make it all meaningless with 3 words in parenthesis.
"The plane crashed and everyone lived! (not including those who died)"
What in gods name would you call that otherwise?
> But we don't have a wealth tax on a federal level at least
And that somehow justifies rich people paying less taxes, because they navigate the system better than regular people?
Instead, a better alternative is to invest that same amount into an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 and after a 40 year working career the individual would have almost $5 million assuming a median wage and current employer matching on payroll tax. This would give them a yearly $200k payout which grows at 6% per year if they follow the 4% rule on withdrawals, lasting them indefinitely and leaving something behind for their children when they pass away. In contrast, social security right now, on average, pays $26k per year.
This would also generate federal taxes through transactions of the companies composing the S&P 500 which would give the government an additional tax revenue source.
He only paid income taxes on $80k while at Amazon.
The wealthy often make their money as capital gains, which if they held for at least one year, are exempt from the income tax and taxed at no higher than 20%
Billionaires literally have their own set of tax brackets in this country: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc409
Not even close. As your link shows, "the wealthy" pay taxes on long-term capital gains. The lowest rate (for "the wealthy") is 15% but they can owe 20% or even 28% in certain circumstances.
Capital gains are not taxed as income, it is taxed as a capital gain, which has significantly lower rates than income tax.
Let's say you own some stock and it increased in value last year. Do you feel like you "made" any money from that? I did and it did and I do.
As long as the economy continues to grow, these people will thrive. All while avoiding to pay their share for society.
My point was simply that income and wealth are two different things, at least for tax purposes.
Whether or not we should have a wealth tax and at what level that should apply is an entirely separate issue. I'm quite sure Bezos pays all the taxes he's legally obligated to pay.
You’re really strawmanning here. Instead of arguing as if we’re morons who don’t know that unrealized gains aren’t taxed and think Bezos is committing tax evasion, convince us of why it’s wrong to think that Bezos should be legally obligated yo pay more, maybe by taxing those unrealized gains.
Surely, he’s not using loans, write-offs, and legal tricks to fund a Great Gatsby lifestyle while pretending to have no actual income?
Right?
Imagine you had to pay income taxes every year on the unrealized gains of your 401k, house, and car value. You too would be said to be paying a very low income tax rate. But again that's not how income taxes work because none of those things are income.
If Bezos were to sell those shares and actually realize those gains then he would be rightly taxed but that would also likely tank the stock as his 8% ownership is significant enough to drop the price drastically. 55% of Amazon is owned by 401k and other retirement accounts so if the price tanks average Americans take a huge hit.
Bezos does sell shares, all the time actually. You can see this in the SEC filings. And he is rightly taxed on those realized gains. But he's not going to sell all of his shares as that would be damaging to Amazon, the workers, retirement accounts, and his own investments.
Instead, the money stays in the company paying worker wages, buying new facilities, etc. This is even better for the economy because it keeps the funds in circulation. This generates even more tax revenue than if he did a 1 time sale of his investments. That's why unrealized gains don't get taxed, because its financially a worse outcome than keeping the money in circulation.
You can read the balance of explanations off interest rates, you can read it off of valuation metrics, you can read it off of judgement calls about the quality of the marginal investment opportunity. You can't read it off the anus of a billionaire or the turd of self-serving think tank propaganda it pinched out, though, and that's where you are clearly looking for it.
then have the government spend that tax money on services and infrastructure that also increase overall money circulating in the economy
Rich people always borrow money on the stocks they own. In effect, those unrealized gains help them borrow money which they spend like income. I will spend part of my paycheck to buy a cup of coffee and they will spend part of the loaned money to buy the same cup of coffee. They can also buy a house with that money. All they need to do is keep paying the 4-5% interest rate on that loan meanwhile the underlying stock appreciates at 15-20%.
Is this a loophole that rich people enjoy? Absolutely. Does this loophole need to be closed - absolutely.
Property tax on stock is a better place to aim.
1. Corporate income tax 2. Employee Federal income tax 3. FICA Payroll Tax 4. Sales Tax on transactions 5. Property Taxes
Now multiply that by each node on the graph. Each employee, vendor, business that comes in contact with your company spends the money you paid them and is taxed on it as well. It grows exponentially after just a couple of nodes. If each of those nodes is trying to make a profit from their own capital it generates even more tax revenue for the government.
Contrast that with capital gains tax which is a 1 time event at a maximum of 20%. That 20% needs to be taken out of the business in order to pay the taxes if you're going to tax unrealized gains. That means that 20% only gets taxed once instead of going through the graph and getting taxed exponentially many more times as it grows.
Folks, we've found it! Pure, distilled, refined, 100.0%, 200-proof trickle down economics!
Just one teeny tiny itty bitty problem: r>g
Oops.
If the company had a magical exemption from all taxes, the owner would have a substantially high net worth. The gap between that hypothetical value, and the real value, is the tax being paid.
Also, you didn't address the r>g elephant in the room.
Thankfully we are not corn, and every one of us is free to break off and make our own farm (or go to another one). However for the last few hundred years, people have flocked away from having their own farms into just safely dividing cells all day on someone else's farm. It's not surprising that capital concentrates when everyone would rather work for someone else than work for themselves. But at least we have a lifeline, where pretty much anyone can sign up with a broker and buy capital assets in a day.
It's not self-evident, or the person wouldn't have asked for a source.
And you have numbers that you're pulling from "somewhere" without sharing a source for them, which means it's even further not self-evident.
Monetary velocity is notoriously high among the poor and low among the wealthy. If you have a dollar and want to generate maximum economic activity or maximum taxes, the answer is unambiguous that you should give it to the poor person.
The real hack is being able to save money rather than "treat yourself" every single time you get more money.
You really don't want loans to be taxed as income, that would cause a lot worse problems than rich people existing...
The loophole is that they never pay taxes on the unrealized gains bc they lived on the borrowed money their whole life. They will never sell their stocks, so there will be no taxable event. When they die they will leave their wealth to the children which effectively erases the unrealized gains. So no one pays taxes on that huge chunk of money. Google "buy,borrow,die".
Here's how investment isn't taxed: take out a loan collateralized against the assets with unrealized gains. If the investment works, it can service its own interest, which is deductible. If it doesn't, the capital loss offsets the capital gain made by selling the collateral. Both cases result in approximately zero tax.
This is nuts.
If we're bringing receipts, how about you start? Do you have the data for this initial statement of yours?
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
- The top 1% of income earners pay 40.4% of the total U.S. Federal Income Tax receipts
- Top 5% pays 61.0%
- Top 10% pays 72.0%
- Top 25% pays 87.2%
- Top 50% pays 97.0%
If you look at all taxes, the share paid is remarkably close to the share earned. According to https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2024/, in 2024, the top 1% earned 20.1% of income while paying 23.9% of taxes. The bottom 20% paid 1.5% of taxes while earning 2.6% of income.
Within that group, the share is not evenly distributed, though.
Most who are in the 1% club are people who are earning wage income, like doctors, and are getting absolutely reamed with taxes. The vast majority of the 1% are not rich enough to be doing elaborate schemes to avoid taxes.
Billionaires, who are in the top 0.0002%, are an entirely whole different story. There are many figures that show they generally do not pay their fair share in taxes.
Top 50%: $53k/year
Top 25%: $93k/year
Top 10%: $155k/year
Top 5%: $210k/year
Top 1%: $450k/year
His assets are not income. Just like your assets are not taxed.
Ok, but he does that loan-against-assets hack!
Well the fact is that those loans eventually need to be paid, so at some point he will pay that 40% (unless he does the step-up basis hack when he dies)
Ok, but he should be paying annually like everyone else!
Well, technically he is, his assets, the company Amazon, pays a lot of taxes annually. The government views Amazon as a money printer, states get their sales taxes, and the federal government gets their income taxes. All of which originate with Amazon.
All of which is to say, that the uppe-middle/upper-class, the successful surgeon, is the one that needs to be paying more taxes to equilibriate society.
I'm sure we can count that as a given.
> The government views Amazon as a money printer, states get their sales taxes, and the federal government gets their income taxes.
Except when states fall all over themselves to give Amazon a massive tax break to build their second HQ.
It's very unlikely, he has pledged to give away most of his wealth in his lifetime, but there are a variety of factors that will always add space for detractors to make fair points. Bill Gates is still worth billions despite being an endless waterfall of charity money for decades.
Either way, the step-up thing is way way way more common in the upper class, where people with ~$24M want their kids to get $6M each. These people are nobodies with no public image, and light years away from "Billionaire Class" status.
>Except when states fall all over themselves to give Amazon a massive tax break to build their second HQ.
All the employees will pay income tax, and they will mostly spend their money in the state, generating sales tax. Then there is the second order effect of businesses that pop-up to feed off the money that the employees make.
What's often missed, and never explained, is that the government loves businesses, because businesses convert people into tax revenue, on almost all levels. Don't miss that.
The businesses that are laying off employees because of competition from Amazon were less efficient and this employed far more people than Amazon does, thus paying more in taxes.
> It's very unlikely, he has pledged to give away most of his wealth in his lifetime,
The ultra rich give away donations in the form of stock, so they never sell it, just transfer it. So no tax to them and they get a tax deduction for the donation fair market value.
$155k is a top 10% income.