Topic: George Soros and Bezos have paid almost zero taxes - page 2. (Read 1087 times)

It's not a nominal change, it's a legal distinction.  Bill Gates does not own indirectly the shares after he donates them because he does not own the charity.  Controlling a the charity is not the same as ownership, and he cannot do whatever he wants with the shares as a principal of the charity because charities are regulated and have to fulfill a charitable mission to keep their tax-exempt status.  So it is 100% wrong to say that Bill Gates indirectly owns the shares or that he can do whatever he wants with them.  So we're back to Bill Gates never realizing any income from the shares, hence no reason for him ever to pay taxes on them.

Lol, I'm not a democrat, but I could see how you could make that mistake because some of my beliefs are liberal, but then democrats would accuse me of being a republican because some of my beliefs are libertarian.  Truth is I'm neither.

There's a couple things you're conflating though in my posts.  I'll try to simplify them.

1) I would support a much higher income tax on the top 1% of income earners.  The exact percent can be debated, but what you've probably seen from me before is noting that the top marginal rate used to be in the high 70 percent range not terribly long ago.  That's not the same thing as advocating for a top marginal rate of 70%.  Also, top marginal rate doesn't mean all your income is taxed at 70%.  If you don't understand this, you probably need to research how it works.

2) I would support a wealth tax on the top 1% of the wealthy to cut down on their ability to game the system by passing their estates on through tax loopholes or delaying or avoiding income realization for decades into the future.

3) Avoiding taxes by using the existing laws is not tax evasion.  If Bill Gates legally avoids taxes by exploiting the system as it was written, that's legal.  You do the same thing every time you take a tax deduction on your income taxes, so I'm not blaming anyone for using the law as it is written.  But see point two above about cutting down on the ability to do this.

Now see how these very clear points contrast very sharply with the strawman argument you built for me.  I'm all for lowering the tax rate, but not until the budget is balanced and we stop accumulating debt.  Closing the legal loopholes the rich use to avoid paying taxes will go a long way towards this.  (Also, if you do even the slightest bit of research, you'll find that republicans are the ones holding up tax reform and they are the party that created a slew of new tax loopholes for the wealthy just 3 years ago.)

It does not impact those who are in upper middle class, it only impacts the very wealthy, and if you really think that republicans are against it all because it doesn't impact the billionaires then you haven't paid attention to who donates to republicans and how republicans vote. Just to give a very very simple example, when trump gave people 1200 dollars to help with stimulus package all the democrats voted for it and people got it right away, when Biden did it all the republicans said it is bad for the economy.

If the republicans care about poverty so much, the minimum wage offer was 15 bucks, which is not even enough yet it was still declined by republicans. Same republicans went ahead with 2+ trillion dollar tax break to very wealthy companies that declined 15 bucks minimum wage. This WILL impact the billionaires believe it or not, republicans saying it won't is a big lie, let's do it and you will see how much it will impact, but nooo republicans can't do anything that will upset their donations.

I was just pointing out at the irony. An upper middle class individual is supposed to pay as much as 55% of his income as tax, if he is living in a high tax jurisdiction (even higher if he is residing in a city such as Portland). And then we have users who argue that people like billionaires like Gates don't need to pay tax, because he is using his money for charity in Africa and Asia. How charity in Africa is going to help the homeless people in the United States? Bill Gates is essentially playing Robinhood here. But the difference is that he is not stealing from the rich people. He is taking money away from the poorest in the United States and redistributing that money in other countries. If other billionaires also follow his example, then the US treasury will be empty in a matter of few years.

The thing we are all talking about here is not even if they should pay taxes or not at this point, it is if it is normal for them to evade tax or not. I mean there is a group saying everyone would evade taxes when their taxes are in billions, while the other side is saying they wouldn't do that and it is not nice to do that.

However anyone, anyone with a grain of sand size brain would tell you that... of course they "should" pay more taxes, that helps the whole nation and why would you not want something that would help the whole nation? What would be the reason someone could come up and say "I do not want the nation to have 10 billion dollars more money from these rich people"? So the question is, are these tax bills enough? Or should we find another way to charge these companies?

We should probably charge them based on their revenue in order to just force them to calculate tax in there, and for regular people we should just tax based on their total net worth, that way we can charge less, but constantly charge it anyway.

I don't agree 100%. The ownership change is only nominal. Previously Bill Gates was owning these shares in his personal account (i.e direct ownership). Now he owns these shares indirectly. BMGF owns these shares and BMGF is under the control of Bill & Melinda Gates. The revenue from the sale of these shares are still being spent as per the preference of Bill Gates. If he hadn't moved them to BMGF, then these shares would have got taxed at the time of his death (he is 65 years old now).

See Sithara, Poltics aside but I think calling someone tax evader for the tax liability which never accrued on him is quite funny. Emotions and economics can never be mixed together. You might remember bill gates as a tax evader while lessons of this tax planning by bill gates will be taught to accountants all around the world because for them it's an exemplary piece of art.   All I am against are the conspiracy theories, it's an evident fact that Bill gates got away from a hefty tax bill, some would cribble about the fact for the rest of their life while others would do smart tax planning for themselves by learning from these folks. I am neither giving you a democrat approach nor a republican approach I am giving you a pure businessman approach which Bill Gates actually used.

Name just one such person with a concrete proof who never evaded taxes.

That also means that if the shares were transferred without Bill Gates ever selling them, then they were never income and never subject to income tax.  And because they're now owned by a charity, Bill Gates doesn't have that as part of his personal wealth anymore.  So there's literally nothing wrong with the example you used yourself.

The overwhelming statistical evidences only proves the inefficiency of current market policies in bridging the gap between the developed and striving nations. Moreover, we have seen that income inequality is not only domestic but also international at the same time.

For me this situation is clearly an economic imperialism and this is the result of letting the market live on its own with less political interference or  regulations.

Poor people believe that rich people will be the ones that will be the most affected by the rule of "taxation" and all these taxes will be for their benefits, but based on some videos I watched, rich people have ways of controlling how much tax they will be paying by creating corporations which pays lower tax than an individual alone. Besides, some working poor and middle-class people, are also being taxed, because of the rule of law, which initially created to help them.

To address this issue, indeed the rules must be ammended locally and globally and this is the challenge knowing that every country has their own agenda.

The so called "tax raises" for the wealthy doesn't affect these billionaires and it will impact only those in the upper middle class bracket. That is the reason why Republicans oppose these sort of crazy tax increases by the Democrats. If the billionaires need to be taxed properly, then the loopholes need to be eliminated. And the Democrats are in favor of more exemptions, so that billionaires such as Gates and Bezos can evade (avoid) taxes. Under the new tax plan from Biden, people like Bill Gates and Bezos will continue to pay almost nothing in taxes. On the other hand, the tax burden will double or triple, for those in the upper middle class bracket.

How? HOW? HOW is this a democrat reply? I mean it is the progressives like Bernie and AOC and many many alike that is trying to bring the rich to pay the tax while it is the republicans in congress and senate that helped them evade 2+ trillion dollars in taxes just few years ago, HOW is this a democrat thing? It is obvious that we are talking about something that is caused by republicans because they are allowing those corporate friends they have.

I could give you a billion examples how raising taxes for the wealthy and giving it back to poor people was suggested by democrats yet republicans declined, I can give you more examples but you know it. All these zero taxes things coming from republicans in power, if democrats were ahead in senate (and people like manchin didn't side with republicans all the time) we would see those rich people paying a ton more taxes.

Yeah, Amazon is a place that makes people work with minimum wage, give them so much work that people have to pee in bottles and even amazon themselves said people should not "go number two" in their cars, all because they are not given a proper break, and 28% of all amazon warehouse workers are so underpaid that they are getting welfare from government, not the full one (because they have a job) but the one that covers the difference to 40k (which is poverty in many states so I assumed 40k but could be different).

It means Jeff Bezos pays his workers so little that government ergo YOU (because governments money is the tax you paid) pay those workers the rest of the money they need to survive.

Or maybe... hear me out on this, I know it is going to sound crazy to you... rich DO steal money? I mean you do not have to find some "secret Illuminati meeting where politicians and rich get together to murder a virgin" type of deal, it is all out in the open, it is not a secret. I don't know if you want to talk about any particular rich person, but since this topic says Bezos, let's go with him shall we?

I can list 10 other things about just Bezos, or we can talk about other rich people, but that is stealing money from both worker and public all at the same time. Getting rich in a proper way is fine, getting rich in amazon way should be illegal. There is nothing "secret" about this, it is all public info.

What sort of hard work is involved in tax evasion? You can't divert the discussion by mocking those who speak the truth. There is a reason why people are upset with billionaires such as Bill Gates and Bezos, and not that much with people like Elon Musk. The topic here is Bill Gates using the charity loophole, to avoid paying a tax bill of $20 billion. I would call this as tax evasion or tax avoidance. IMO, if Bill Gates want to spend his wealth on charity, then he is free to do so. But first, he need to pay tax as per the prevailing long term capital gains tax rate. Here he has paid $0 in tax, because he moved all his shares to a charity foundation. All sort of excuses are being given by his supporters. But none of them makes sense. There are a lot of billionaires out there, who became rich as a result of hard work. But not all of them do tax evasion like Bill Gates.

Indeed, it often happens, those with poor mentality think that everything in life is supported by a conspiracy.  No one gets rich without stealing and cheating but there are many better things to do than think that way.  However, this condition will continue to occur because even though the rich and the poor start from 0, the mentally rich will rack their brains to get their wealth while the poor will be busy mocking the hard work of others.

Typical Democrat response. Anyone who disagree with them is low IQ. All I am asking is that tax liability should be made equal for everyone. And in case of Bill Gates, you can defend him as much as you want. But in the history he will be recorded as the largest tax evader, after refusing to pay a tax bill of $20 billion.

In your case, in one of your post I saw you supporting income tax of 80%. But you are perfectly fine if Bill Gates pay $0 in tax. The reason - he built a valuable company. I am glad that now people get to know how these Democrat supporters think. The taxes should be paid by the middle class and the billionaires don't have to pay anything and they can evade taxes in the name of charity.

I am in favor of lowering the tax rate, and that can be done only if we remove all the exemptions that are being used by the billionaires to evade taxes. Democrats are not going to like this, because they are the biggest defenders of this group.

I will give you something one better. Maybe you heard or maybe you haven't, Bill and Melinda gates is getting a "divorce". Now this may or may not surprise you, after all divorces are getting more common these days, nearly half of all American marriages end up in a divorce, that is just how it is these days.

However how did two people, who have been a couple for 27 years? Was it only just differences in opinion or they just do not love each other anymore? Maybe, maybe that played a big role, but you do not see a couple getting a divorce and living on the same house do you? That surely should make you wonder what happened.

Simple reason is, because Biden is increasing the tax rate on super wealthy, with two different accounts with two different finances, they are no longer a couple, which means they will save up to 6 freaking billion dollars by divorcing and living together, instead of staying married. Yes you heard it right, Bill and Melinda gates got a fake divorce just to save 6 billion dollars on taxes.

Every billionaire who started from scratch had their struggles and no one cares about those and once they reach their days of riches after their hard work and dedication everyone seems to call them arrogant because they only see the money side of things while they are unaware of the struggles they went through before they became a billionaire, i am not sure about the taxes but how come they are not paying any tax which i think is not factual.

Haha actually I don't Blame those people too, people Never see the story on the other side, it's true for the riches too, they too are arrogant sometime and don't respect the story of the poor, but yes it's true that corruption , politics are part of story of every rich, but just corruption cannot take you anywhere, if it was so easy everyone could get rich by bribing a government official. It's entirely the hard work ,smart work and fortune of a person which can make him rich.

No, of course there is no evidence. People with low IQ just hate the rich because they themselves are not rich and they think the only reason someone could be rich then is because of corruption and not because they built a company that has become dominant in a major part of the economy. So they make up a lot of excuses and crazy conspiracy theories about why someone like Bill Gates could be rich while they are poor.  And the simple answer they don't want to believe is that instead of spending their time believing crazy nonsense, Bill Gates built a valuable company.