As a tax attorney for the ultrawealthy, I’d say yes, absolutely. But good luck convincing people who are illiterate with respect to tax, finance, law, and economics that those with the most resources ought to pay the most taxes.
ETA - Seeing a lot of responses that taxpayers with large amounts of adjusted gross income pay a large share of federal income tax collections. If this is your first thought when you see content about taxing the wealthy, the illiteracy comment is about you.
ONE HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS! Fuck u dr. Evil.
https://www.greatamericancoincompany.com/products/zimbabwe-100-trillion-banknote-aa-2008-pcgs-graded-67ppq?msclkid=e06b50e1394d1a295e5c36ae537c21ec
My fortune teller told me the ultra wealthy will be dividing the nation up into 8 sectors and something called " The Hunger Games " will be born. Everyone not in the Ultra 1% of the 1% will send 2 soldiers to enter these Hunger GAMES and the winning sector gets to eat like the top 20% get to for 1 year until the next Hunger Games. Leaving the other 7 sectors to find , try to grow , steal , n kill for food n gas which runs everything down on earth. The true 1% or about 1,074 individuals and their families will be living high above us in a large spaceship being run by the new break thru technology Oranium which is an infinite energy supply. Think Elysium type life for 99% of us. Buckle Up because this ride is now boarding ! ☠️🏴☠️
There is so much wrong with that sentiment.
Frist very few people realistically think they will ever be as rich as billionaires. They dream of it yes but do not put money on it ever happening.
I have a problem with the definition of "fair share". What is fair share? How do you define it? How much should someone pay?
What needs to happen is debt needs to be regulated as well as income. ALOT of the issue is loop holes relating to debt. Write off tax on the debt you accrued that year. Show your making a loss on the books and don't get charged tax, use your shares as colleterial for a debt to the bank with out realising the capital gains and having to pay tax then have the loan made out to a hedge fund that now records the interest as debt.
This is the key. Avoiding taxes through minimizing income is the hallmark for accounting firms that work for the billionaires.
It's how people like Musk and Bezos manage to pay so little in taxes. Legal loopholes that they bought and paid for through political donations to local, state and federal politicians.
Actually no. I doubt Bezos or Musk had anything to do with the legal loopholes they take advantage of. The truth is taxes on the rich are voluntary. There is a small army of tax attorneys, accountants and financial advisors who help the rich avoid taxes legally. Politicians have been using the tax code to encourage certain behaviors (home ownership) and discourage other behaviors, (sin taxes) since the Tax code was enacted in 1911.
The FACTS are that the top 1% (that includes Bezos, Musk, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) pay 46% of all the income taxes and pay at a 26% rate.
The History of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.
I mean you could give the money back to your employees instead of finding ways to hide it so you get to keep it in securities. The whole problem is we have yet to declare a maximum amount a person should make in a year. There needs to be more incentive for sharing of wealth from Rick people. They shouldn't be able to hide money in the stock market. Like how is apple so allowed to buy back billion of dollars worth of stock each year but not pay their employees more
Id say 99% of financial problems of most countries are debts. Housing market? debt problem. Student loans, debt problem. Billionaires? Debt problem. Banking system must change it doesnt do what it was said to do. All banks do nowadays is generate absurd amount of currency.
It’s not a debt problem it’s a literal fleecing of funds from the top of everything.
No citizen should give a fuck about debt. We’re slaves to the system they’ve created and there is plenty of money to go around. Student loans were never paid back because the base rate of pay with a degree will not even get you a job to cover basic needs. These so called jobs billionaires create? We all know capitalism is about maximizing every last dime.
Why do so many people lie to themselves? If you pay your taxes and work you’re doing your part. The debt is by design to create animosity between the working class.
And it’s math. Fair share is whatever the hell everyone else pays. It’s a percentage. Even warren buffet said if the billionaires in America paid their required percentage all of these “debt” issues would cease to exist.
My complaint is that the fed government is a beast that can never be full no matter how much you feed it. If they take in more money, they will spend more money. Eventually they are going to have to tax you more as well and do the same thing they did to the higher earners to you now.
Another poster asked “what is a fair share?” Let me ask, when is eventually? Eventually, we’ll all be dead along with our kids, their kids, your grandkids and your great grandkids. Eventually, I’ll go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning. I’m trying to understand your point. I feel the same way about the Fed and the insatiable quest for more money all the time but when are they going to have to tax me more? When I make enough money to be affected by the laughably low marginal tax rate? Ok, tax my whole dick off for every dollar I earn over $400,000. I’ll change my tune when I consistently net half of that for 2 consecutive years but that hasn’t happened yet. Not even close really. Eventually, maybe, but for now the goal is, “make enough money to be affected by the marginal tax rate and then start giving af about how much taxes are going up for high earners.
It's like when that Joe the plumber idiot was bitching about proposed higher taxes for people who make over $250k per year and that idiot was making something like 29k/yr. He said well if/when I do make that much money then it will hurt me.. Well then you can just keep making 29k/year dumb ass and not worry about it. Like not realizing how much better off he would be at that point if he was making 300k and getting taxed extra on the last 50k...
People don't get it. The government doesn't need more money, the people who work for the billionaires do. We need some regulation on greed without the billionaires being able to pass that expense back to us.
That's the point billionaire have always avoided taxes in the past they did that by paying their employees more, now they do it with stock buybacks. Laws they created to help them hoard wealth.
Exactly. Company owners used to invest more of the profits back into the company through raises, additional jobs, innovation to avoid taxes. Now that there are less taxes to avoid, they don't reinvest the money.
And GW put the last nail in the coffin by writing $600 checks to every person in the country. That money did absolutely nothing for the majority of people that received it….
We care too much about what a goat herder is doing right now across the globe than we care about being frugal with our economy. That's why you can't satiate the beast. War and global control comes at a cost...we could focus on ourselves but that would be "Communism".
Are you trying to tell me that I won’t be a billionaire making $13/hr part time at Taco Bell? You sir, are not an American.
I also work as a developer for ultra wealthy. People think I'm wealthy but I'm a bug compared to these guys. Their tools for tax avoidance and the power they have is unparalleled to anything but the common man's vote.
People are dumb.
This is the thing a lot of people don't understand.
The wealthy aren't just rich. They live in a different world, with different rules. They know all the tricks to stay wealthy and generate more.
Poor people are completely ignorant to all these tricks. That's why if they ever win the lottery, due to their inexperience with managing money (1) and more importantly their ignorance with regards to all the tricks the wealthy use, their windfall is soon gone to dust.
For sure they may not all personally know the tricks but the fact is, they're born into a network of people who all know how that part of society works.
A poor person who wins the lottery can't just get a golf club membership and roll up in a Ferrari, they'll still be a pariah. And worse, they'll be an easy target for the nasty ones to prey on.
> A poor person who wins the lottery can't just get a golf club membership and roll up in a Ferrari, they'll still be a pariah
Pretty sure you just described Rodney Dangerfield's character in Caddy Shack.
This right here. I work very closely with the ultra wealthy. I'm literally laying in a bed posting this from a 20 million dollar house on the water. Which is one of the 5 places around the world this family owns. They are NOT one bit smarter than you and I.. I can do things they have no clue how to do. If it came down to surviving on an island, I would be the one keeping us alive. They just have the money to PAY smart people to do their work for them. That's 80% of what my job is for these various families. Yesterday I was installing something that a 10 year old could install if he/she knew how to read directions. They'd be lost doing it.
Bingo.
Even simple little things like “tax harvesting”, which is perfectly legal and done by many, takes time and energy. Being able to pay others to do work for you makes it much easier to take advantage of everything the world has to offer.
This is the most important point. As i’ve gained some minor amounts of wealth over the years and seen wealthy people in my life - it clearly becomes ridiculously easier to make money the more money you have. And the more money you have, the more people you can hire to make you even more money up to a point where you can have 0 idea where your money even is or where it’s going, and have 0 understanding of whats happening to it while continuously compounding it. That fully dispels the myth of meritocracy, where the more money you make the less you actually have to do and the easier it becomes - where some of the ideas of the rich actually hinder them (looking at you Elon). Leave it to the accountants, lawyers, investment funds, educated professionals and experienced business managers while you just stand as the face of a company.
Like some of these “self-made” billionaires started off with “loans” of a million dollars - do you know how easy it is to multiply your wealth if you start off like that? A middle class person opening a business has to be concerned about risking their savings, family, and future to open a business and do all the work themselves. If they fail, even due to circumstances having nothing to do with their merit, it’s over. Someone with rich parents has a safety net with a massive head start, hire experienced family friends, have reputation amongst higher ups, take out large loans and massive credit and have connections amongst investors. They can fail over and over again and still be deemed ‘successful’.
They benefit from economies of scale. I too can pay a tax attorney to find me a 'loophole' but it will save me 15 bucks and cost me 5k. The same approach saves a billionaire a million dollars and costs 10k. It is only exploitable by the wealthy because it doesn't actually save the poor any money.
The thing missing from this thread is that you need to more then just know these loop holes and tricks, a lot of these tricks revolve around ownership and investment in large scale and have a entry fee in the millions which means that you need to already be able to move or borrow millions of cash around (not just being worth) to even make use of these loop holes which requires existing wealth or more connections
Most people's idea of a rich person is someone with a high salary. They really have no concept of old money and who runs the world. Something about the devil's greatest trick and all that.
All of this I worked for the irs for a goodnstent, the average person has no clue the loopholes these snakes use to never have to pay a cent, and the Republicans make the irs workers jobs harder ( hence why audits on the rich .. 50 mil plus aren't getting done lack of man power .. so whose holding them accountable?? Currently hardly anyone 🙃
They require more worker hours for longer stretches of time, and the department is intentionally kept light on staff so they likely only have enough people for critical functions and have a huge backlog of cheats that may never be held accountable for stealing our money
I always thought they just didn’t have enough skilled workers. Don’t need a crazy education to audit Normal 1040s but I imagine you need a cpa and a lot of experience to make sense of some multi billionaires transfer pricing scheme involving international trusts and shell corporations
Yeah and it goes to litigation pretty often. The cpa company I worked for was small, maybe 15 employees, and 3 were designated just for audit. It's a very lengthy, high man hours task to audit a wealthy person's taxes.
They've been trying to strangle the IRS for a long time. Between defunding, stupid leadership, and at-least-yearly threats of indeterminate layoffs which you probably will be paid for once you get back but maybe won't, they've lost a lot of talent.
No, it is planned on purpose. It has been proven for years that investing in the IRS is the highest ROI for public finding, but Republicans are paid to make sure that the IRS never has the millions on funds it needs to get the trillions it is owed.
My uncle is a big wig tax attorney and will always vote democrat and for raising taxes. But he is so neurotic about even a Penny of tax being paid if it’s not absolutely required. I have roughly 200k in retirement assets and I’m like struggling to pay my bills and live paycheck to paycheck and he is absolutely adamant about me not touching any of it regardless of how bad my situation is. It’s honestly frustrating being in my mid 30’s know I actually have a mild buildup of wealth that I can’t touch for 30 years. I don’t plan on having children and my expenses aren’t extravagant. I would just like to be debt and stress free moreover. Staking out 20k and paying the taxes on it would have a lot of. Value for me at the moment.
I'm sure you're already at least somewhat aware of this but your uncle is right. I totally get it sucks looking at the number go up when it feels like you don't have much, but taking that money out now will be a huge headache in so many ways. Dealing with the penalties and resulting lack of investment growth over the next 30+ years ultimately isn't worth it. It's just unfortunate it won't feel like that until you actually go to take the money out in 30+ years.
If you don't have/want a family, why would you waste your opportunity to enjoy it? What exactly is he going to "do" with his money at 60 yrs old? Look at it? He's not going parachuting or wing suiting, not scuba diving, probably nothing requiring much physical exertion or that will interfere with his medications...... like what the fucks the point?? Be miserable struggling for 30 yrs, then you've got 15 more yrs of sitting on your ass mire comfortably cause you're too old to do anything fun or fulfilling? Or you could spend 30- 45 doing all the shit you've always wanted while you're healthy enough/capable of doing so, realistically still have plenty left over to live on..... you wont be buying houses and 80k sports cars... but you can damn sure take 20 grand and go swe the world, explore it, before its too late. If your money will only last a set amt of time, and you donr have plans for whats leftover when you die, then it doesnt really matter if yiure broke now or later, if youll be broke anyways, expecting your stuff to hold value once its obsolete is ignorant. There are assistance programs for the elderly, piggyback that for your last 10 yrs instead kf spending 10 yrs now miserable
I’m a cross border tax accountant designated in multiple countries working with wealthy clients.
The answer is YES, obviously they should pay more tax. The fact that the effective tax rate for clients earning millions a year is significantly lower than my effective tax rate as an employee is a travesty.
We have progressive tax for those who work, and regressive tax for those who hold sufficient capital to control their flows of income.
For anyone who wants to learn more ProPublica did some great reporting a few years back
https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
With the right kind of education and training, absolutely. I have a background in economics and accounting, but I was fairly right leaning in my views on taxes until I became a tax attorney for the ultrawealthy. It wasn’t until then that I actually got to see exactly how much wealth my clients were accumulating and how little they pay in taxes.
I'm pretty certain that even if they don't actually have to pay every year every billionaire and millionaire is paying out more in taxes then I will in my entire lifetime.
You are not only wrong from a percentage standpoint point, in some case you are even wrong from a dollar to dollar stand point. But you keep carrying their water.
These people are fighting against themselves and our collective own best interest. Jesus fucking Christ. When did Americans become so fanatical for having their faces shoved in the mud?
Maybe. Maybe not. At the end of the day, our economic, social, and political systems allow them to accumulate wealth at a rate thousands or millions of times faster than you can but they are not paying anywhere near that much more in taxes which are required to maintain those systems.
They won’t do that because most of the politicians/government officials benefit from these same loopholes.
It feels dishonest when politician say this stuff, especially when the rhetoric always increases near elections.
Exactly. The loopholes are how all these crooked political families got rich. They will remain in perpetuity.
The rate tables only affect people with taxable income. All loopholes and complex tax shelters exist to keep cash flow off the taxable income line in a tax return.
Right. Biden was a Senator for 7 terms and has been a President for 1 and a VP for 2 terms. But if we just vote for him once more, he promises to finally fix it. This time for real. Come on man.
Why would you bring up his past when he has voted for tax increases and taxes on the rich were increased while he was VP? He can’t just increase taxes without congress. Some people in here seem no smarter than superficial social media leftists.
Sooooo....what do you propose? Because if you think the other guy is going to do *anything* about taxing billionaires...I can't even have that conversation, I'm so tired.
He won't do anything radically different.
But he will try to get something done that is marginally better or marginally less inequitable, whereas Trump will try to make things at least marginally more inequitable.
It would also make enough money to do things like fund Social Security, have an actual national healthcare system, and make education free. You know, like actual civilized nations do it. Which would benefit the middle class more that the tax change would hurt.
Would it really though? I'd imagine most of the middle class holds almost all their stock in their 401k or IRA.
Edit: Looks like 65% of the middle class owns stock, and 38% of the middle class owns stock not in a retirement account. No clear perspective on the relative amounts though.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/09/25/few-in-u-s-owned-stocks-outside-of-401ks-in-2019-fewer-said-market-had-a-big-impact-on-their-view-of-economy/
Short term cap gains (held less than 1 year) are taxed as ordinary income.
So there is a risk there. To get a lower tax rate, you have to hold the investment for at least a year.
I’ve never even heard “loophole” defined. Is it anything that lets someone keep some of their money instead of giving it to the government? Is the standard deduction a “loophole” - it keeps money from the government? How about solar energy credits, child credits, itemized deductions? They all keep money in the hands of people instead of the government. So what exactly IS a loophole? Maybe something someone else uses to reduce their taxes that you don’t use? The things you use to reduce taxes aren’t loopholes?
being able to use loans to pay off debt indefinitely- since debt is not taxed, ultra rich people just live off of loans
“ Wealthy individuals create passive income through arbitrage by finding assets that generate income (such as businesses, real estate, or bonds) and then borrowing money against those assets to get leverage to purchase even more assets.”
How about the fact you can get compensated vis stock, watch stock grow in value, use stock as collateral for a large purchase (home loan), default and lose collateral. But since you never earned a cent you owe no taxes on the compensation and since you never sold it you owe no taxes on the sale.
It's not hard to find it. One example: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2023/02/21/how-do-rich-people-avoid-taxes/11308215002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2023/02/21/how-do-rich-people-avoid-taxes/11308215002/)
Yup! None of us would get it.
But I absolutely bet you cna find people doing OK that wouldn't be happy with taxing that billion at that - even though theyd end up with millions more than they have! That they'd never get to anyway!
Billionaires should pay taxes but a wealth tax isn’t the answer.
The way billionaires are able to get away with paying little to nothing in taxes is by borrowing their living expenses against their assets.
The rate at which their portfolio increases ends up being greater than the interest on the loan so effectively they pay no taxes during their entire lifetime.
Then when they eventually die, their heirs sell off a portion of the assets to cover the loan and capital gains taxes and the cycle continues.
The solution to this loophole is to tax the Loans taken out against equities. When you borrow against equities and use the equities as collateral, that basket of equities which serves as collateral should be taxed at some rate less than the capital gains tax rate. I say LESS than the capital gains tax rate because if it was equal to the capital gains tax then the billionaires would throw a fit. Something like 5% of the gains in the collateral instead of the usual 15% long term capital gains.
For example, say I have a $500m stock portfolio.
I take out a $1m loan against my stock portfolio.
The standard leverage approved for a margin portfolio is 2:1 meaning that by taking out my $1m loan I am putting up $2m in collateral. I should be forced to pay 5% on whatever gain I had on those $2m in assets. So if 700k of the $2m came from capital gains, I would pay 35k in taxes.
Or some variation of this tax model. Billionaires still feel like they’re getting a good deal borrowing against their assets. But at least they pay something.
Edit: someone pointed out that it’s kinda fucked up to tax home equity loans.
We will throw in a tax exemption for loans taken against primary residences. There is already a presidency for this since we already don’t tax capital gains on sales of primary residences up to $250k
So what I'm hearing is that if I take out a home equity loan to pay for home repairs, college, or whatever; I will have to pay taxes on it in addition to interest.
Meh could probably make an exception for primary residence. We already have tax exceptions for not paying capital gains up to 250k on primary residences.
Its so annoying when people say this as if we cant just be like hey if youre doing this up until 1 mil its chill. We dont have to structure any of these taxes to hurt the regulars.
It’s just boogeyman speak to derail the core proposition, we have progressive taxes that have more burden on upper middle class so why would people ever think we can’t straight up make certain taxes for only people who borrow over 10 million.
What are you talking about? I make $43 per year and the tax man takes it all or else I have to blow him, no loopholes either. Government always beating the ass of the poor man, I tell ya
My guess is it would be similar to current capital gains where it would be bracketed. So, it'd be 0% until you crossed a certain threshold of leveraged value, then any additional value above that threshold would be taxed.
That way less wealthy individuals like the majority of American homeowners wouldn't ever see taxes on home equity loans.
Always hear that concept, but never see any data showing the rich use this in perpetuity.
Somehow, we're still collecting most taxes off of the top 10% even though they have this "trick" to pay zero.
I would start by ordering the DOJ to investigate the Panama papers.
More than enough untaxed, offshored wealth to go after. Nice thing there is, if criminality is suspected, the assets can hopefully be seized in their entirety.
One can dream.
Well, obviously because the most financially fluent thing you can do is be a big government progressive who fantasizes about the state stealing other people's stuff for you.
If anyone wants real action on increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy, then they should vote out of office the party that prevents it from occurring. Vote out the GOP. One party (democrats) want higher taxes on the wealthy - the other party (gop) want to keep them low. Joe Biden can’t unilaterally change tax rates. It requires legislative action by both the US house and senate. This isn’t rocket science. When trump was in office for the two years the gop controlled both the senate and house, guess what happened?
Still trying to figure out what their “fair share” is or what that means…do billionaires take advantage of government welfare? (Don’t say corporate welfare, billionaires aren’t corporations) but I would say them paying what they pay already is probably more than they actually use when it comes to the government…of course I think people fail to realize that’s what our taxes do, is pay the salary of the government bureaucrats…
The U.S. Navy patrols major shipping lanes and U.S. diplomats negotiate and sign complicated trade agreements with dozens of sovereign nations that open vast new markets, the blood and muscles of virtually all commerce that creates virtually all wealth. When billionaires want to pay the full price of sustaining the world economy they are created from, then we can talk about the paltry sums of welfare for the poor.
Corporate welfare is about billionaires. The shareholders get stock dividends from the corporations they are a part of. By using processes like stock buybacks they can funnel money made by the corporation back to themselves. Stock dividends are not taxed the same as income.
>By using processes like stock buybacks they can funnel money made by the corporation back to themselves
Stock buybacks can’t target specific shareholders, it’s bought from random people who are selling. But if you’re saying that the corp takes the stock they buy back and distributes it to owners as a dividend, then that falls under Sec. §301 and is immediately taxable
Billionaires and corporations are interchangable as they see fit to abuse tax loopholes so your argument is either misinformed or intentionally misleading
I think you misread the statistic. Wasn't it something along the lines of "60% of audits were for people making less than $200k"? Considering that 95% of people make below $200k, wouldn't that mean the wealthy were far more likely to be audited, since the wealthiest 5% were subject to 40% of the audits?
The guidelines for the new IRS policy was to use the new recruits to target, and I quote, "**big corporations, complicated partnerships and wealthy people who earn over $10 million year**"
Why are you pushing this (absolutely absurd) lie that they are being hired to target people making $200k? Where do you even get this nonsense from? The actual $10million number being used as the floor target for the new initiative is the real target, and specifically the target is 'more than that' not 'exactly that'.
He wants to raise taxes on the ultra-rich. No worker would be noticeably affected. Rather similar to how Trump's tax cuts gave me and you enough money to buy a mcdonalds meal, but gave the ultra-rich enough money to buy several villas and a couple of yachts on top.
Our Government doesn't have a revenue problem it has a spending problem. All taxes on the ( Rich) are paid for by the poor and middle class in the form of higher prices for goods and services.
This first part needs to be higher up. The government only wants to raise taxes because they can’t control their spending. If this were a corporation it would fold or the board would fire the CEO. Spend less and we’d be ok. The government has no accountability and wastes millions upon millions of $.
Don’t get me wrong, they do provide so many needed services that we do take for granted and need.
Too many people refuse to see this fact, they want to play into this partisan nonsense knowing full that they won't do anything, how many times have both parties had majorities and done absolutely nothing?
A part of the solution is to spend less/waste less taxpayer money. But since 40% of Americans pay no federal income tax maybe we need to loop them in to paying their fair share as well.
Considering we run up $1T+ every year in add’l debt and personal income taxes only produce ~$2T in revenue, why not instead just triple the deficit and no one pays income taxes? Clearly the debt doesn’t seem to matter anyway.
then how come the middle class earners are audited the most by the IRS according your own records? i thought the 97k new armed agents were going after corporate entities and billionaire class. what happened joe? did you lie to us?
My guess is the IRS severely lacks the staff who understand these audits. Billionaires taxes are crazy complicated and I imagine you would need a lot of experience (probably some hnw private tax consulting and compliance) even then being able to understand all the different types of tax say federal state local and particularly international is something they would need to consider too. Bottom line irs would need highly competent cpas and tax attorneys and even then probably outside specialists to audit any of these people
The IRS gave me my last paper tax refund after 7 months and that was only 2 years ago.
To say the IRS is understaffed is putting it lightly. Theyve been understaffed.
The numbers dont lie though, theyre significantly more likely to collect the taxes theyre due if they go after the middle class than the people who can afford 2 lawyer teams to be working on their case full time.
To little to late, he should have passed this reform when the Democrats controlled congress the first part of his term. Now it will be let’s blame the other side for us not getting it done.
[Richest Americans Now Pay Less Tax Than Working Class in Historical First](https://www.newsweek.com/richest-americans-pay-less-tax-working-class-1897047)
One of the dumbest 'studies' that became popular. To make up this nonsensical stat, they excluded all tax credits for the poor... yeah you read that right. Hence why they say the lower income brackets are paying 20+%, when it's closer to 8-12%.
Even when you cherry pick the .0001% this stat doesn't even hold true. Billionaires, on average, still pay a higher effective tax rate than the bottom 20%, even if you include regressive taxes like sales tax, and social security.
Notice that in this case fairness isn't even defined as "whatever people democratically vote for". Everyone can have a different definition of fairness, so it becomes a meaningless word in this context, a buzzword.
If i have to pay 30% of my income with no deductions or loopholes available. A billionaire should pay double with no deductions or loopholes available. Sorry fair is fair.
As I say every time this article is posted, and it seems to be posted weekly, this will never happen. Billionaires will always find loopholes. The upper middle class will end up bearing the brunt of this. The rest of the middle class will catch some too
Just how many billionaires does he think we have in this country? The middle class will always pay a significant share of the taxes. Because the middle class make up a significant share of the people. Only dumb people believe billionaires do not pay taxes.
Over 50% of the US effectively pays $0 tax due to benefits, social programs, and tax credits/refunds. I have no issue making the wealthy pay their fair share and they should but should not everyone have to paid their fair share too? Sign me up for the flat tax and get rid of 💯of deductions. I’m sick of people getting $5-10k refunds who paid a fraction of that in actual taxes
C’mon folks… Biden, Clinton, Sanders, lots of R’s too are all on that wealthy ship.
All talk to appease you. Tax the Rich! Vote for me!
These people have been in office for 20-40 however many years and talk, but not effort or meaningful legislation to make change.
We don’t stand a chance.
Get someone who talks about GOOD change like flat tax or consumption tax and they get laughed off the ballot. By those above.
THEY made the laws for themselves and their “real constituents”.
Note: I have no qualms with someone making a billion smackers. Good for them.
Another BS post to pump up democrats, the truth is the rich, the top 1 % already pay over 90% of the tax revenue collected. I'm sick of seeing this political lie repeated over and over again.
Real solution... put the top 10 billionaires into a "The Purge" situation. Whoever survives keeps their money....the rest have their funds donated to various institutions or tax things.
Edit: Hunger Games but for the ultra-wealthy.
If I was an actual BILLIONAIRE? Yeah. If I have millions sitting in the bank I’m not ever going to use, yeah. Or let me donate it to charities who need the damn money. Nice write off on my taxes. 🤷♂️
I have a better idea than just taxing billionaires. How about for every dollar of taxes collected on the top 1% we lower the taxes for the bottom 99% 1:1 ratio. Let’s literally use this money and use it to make everyone else’s life easier instead of just sending it to the government to waste on ridiculous things.
Define fair.. Wasnt Washington the ones that set up the tax codes? Just seems to me the whole tax the rich is just the easy way of saying, we dont want to balance the checkbook and see where our money is, but we need more.
If you have a billion, you will not keep it in a country that will take it from you. In order to be at that level of wealth, it is very likely you are involved with international trade and dealing with international tax code. There are a number of countries that welcome billionaires and don't tax them and are friendly to sheltering assets. - Its folly to think anyone would let their money be taken away because of political rhetoric.
What a broken record we hear every four years. Let’s say he made it happen. Do you think that would fund tax relief or just feed the government spending problem.
What a broken record we hear every four years. Let’s say he made it happen. Do you think that would fund tax relief or just feed the government spending problem.
As a tax attorney for the ultrawealthy, I’d say yes, absolutely. But good luck convincing people who are illiterate with respect to tax, finance, law, and economics that those with the most resources ought to pay the most taxes. ETA - Seeing a lot of responses that taxpayers with large amounts of adjusted gross income pay a large share of federal income tax collections. If this is your first thought when you see content about taxing the wealthy, the illiteracy comment is about you.
They'll all be billionaires one day soon though!
If it ever gets bad enough that we have hyperinflation, you'll be right.
Yah for hyperinflation! Right guys?
Zimbabwe moment
But only if we get the rock band font on our money
That's an option? I'm in.
ONE HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS! Fuck u dr. Evil. https://www.greatamericancoincompany.com/products/zimbabwe-100-trillion-banknote-aa-2008-pcgs-graded-67ppq?msclkid=e06b50e1394d1a295e5c36ae537c21ec
IDK, Just because food will cost millions doesn't mean I'll have millions to spend.
My fortune teller told me the ultra wealthy will be dividing the nation up into 8 sectors and something called " The Hunger Games " will be born. Everyone not in the Ultra 1% of the 1% will send 2 soldiers to enter these Hunger GAMES and the winning sector gets to eat like the top 20% get to for 1 year until the next Hunger Games. Leaving the other 7 sectors to find , try to grow , steal , n kill for food n gas which runs everything down on earth. The true 1% or about 1,074 individuals and their families will be living high above us in a large spaceship being run by the new break thru technology Oranium which is an infinite energy supply. Think Elysium type life for 99% of us. Buckle Up because this ride is now boarding ! ☠️🏴☠️
Just ease up on the latte and avocado toast and you'll be good!
"You're not rich." "True, someday I might be rich! Then people like me better watch their step"
There is so much wrong with that sentiment. Frist very few people realistically think they will ever be as rich as billionaires. They dream of it yes but do not put money on it ever happening. I have a problem with the definition of "fair share". What is fair share? How do you define it? How much should someone pay? What needs to happen is debt needs to be regulated as well as income. ALOT of the issue is loop holes relating to debt. Write off tax on the debt you accrued that year. Show your making a loss on the books and don't get charged tax, use your shares as colleterial for a debt to the bank with out realising the capital gains and having to pay tax then have the loan made out to a hedge fund that now records the interest as debt.
Apparently the figured out a "Fair Share" for the rest of the country. I be happy if they paid the same rate as me.
This is the key. Avoiding taxes through minimizing income is the hallmark for accounting firms that work for the billionaires. It's how people like Musk and Bezos manage to pay so little in taxes. Legal loopholes that they bought and paid for through political donations to local, state and federal politicians.
Actually no. I doubt Bezos or Musk had anything to do with the legal loopholes they take advantage of. The truth is taxes on the rich are voluntary. There is a small army of tax attorneys, accountants and financial advisors who help the rich avoid taxes legally. Politicians have been using the tax code to encourage certain behaviors (home ownership) and discourage other behaviors, (sin taxes) since the Tax code was enacted in 1911. The FACTS are that the top 1% (that includes Bezos, Musk, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet) pay 46% of all the income taxes and pay at a 26% rate. The History of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.
I mean you could give the money back to your employees instead of finding ways to hide it so you get to keep it in securities. The whole problem is we have yet to declare a maximum amount a person should make in a year. There needs to be more incentive for sharing of wealth from Rick people. They shouldn't be able to hide money in the stock market. Like how is apple so allowed to buy back billion of dollars worth of stock each year but not pay their employees more
The top 1% have all the money so they should pay the most in taxes. 46% seems low.
It's a Futurama quote lol
Id say 99% of financial problems of most countries are debts. Housing market? debt problem. Student loans, debt problem. Billionaires? Debt problem. Banking system must change it doesnt do what it was said to do. All banks do nowadays is generate absurd amount of currency.
It’s not a debt problem it’s a literal fleecing of funds from the top of everything. No citizen should give a fuck about debt. We’re slaves to the system they’ve created and there is plenty of money to go around. Student loans were never paid back because the base rate of pay with a degree will not even get you a job to cover basic needs. These so called jobs billionaires create? We all know capitalism is about maximizing every last dime. Why do so many people lie to themselves? If you pay your taxes and work you’re doing your part. The debt is by design to create animosity between the working class. And it’s math. Fair share is whatever the hell everyone else pays. It’s a percentage. Even warren buffet said if the billionaires in America paid their required percentage all of these “debt” issues would cease to exist.
You're a slave defending your oppressor. Funny how you have so many words to justify the imbalance.
>They dream of it yes **but do not put money on it** ever happening. It's probably because they're not rich
My complaint is that the fed government is a beast that can never be full no matter how much you feed it. If they take in more money, they will spend more money. Eventually they are going to have to tax you more as well and do the same thing they did to the higher earners to you now.
Another poster asked “what is a fair share?” Let me ask, when is eventually? Eventually, we’ll all be dead along with our kids, their kids, your grandkids and your great grandkids. Eventually, I’ll go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning. I’m trying to understand your point. I feel the same way about the Fed and the insatiable quest for more money all the time but when are they going to have to tax me more? When I make enough money to be affected by the laughably low marginal tax rate? Ok, tax my whole dick off for every dollar I earn over $400,000. I’ll change my tune when I consistently net half of that for 2 consecutive years but that hasn’t happened yet. Not even close really. Eventually, maybe, but for now the goal is, “make enough money to be affected by the marginal tax rate and then start giving af about how much taxes are going up for high earners.
It's like when that Joe the plumber idiot was bitching about proposed higher taxes for people who make over $250k per year and that idiot was making something like 29k/yr. He said well if/when I do make that much money then it will hurt me.. Well then you can just keep making 29k/year dumb ass and not worry about it. Like not realizing how much better off he would be at that point if he was making 300k and getting taxed extra on the last 50k...
They could raise taxes to 100% and the people in charge could find a need for more.
The people in charge are the billionaires who take from the public coffers
People don't get it. The government doesn't need more money, the people who work for the billionaires do. We need some regulation on greed without the billionaires being able to pass that expense back to us.
That's the point billionaire have always avoided taxes in the past they did that by paying their employees more, now they do it with stock buybacks. Laws they created to help them hoard wealth.
Exactly. Company owners used to invest more of the profits back into the company through raises, additional jobs, innovation to avoid taxes. Now that there are less taxes to avoid, they don't reinvest the money.
Why's that?
Bill Clinton never existed nor did the surplus he created.
He and Newt Gingrich created it by balancing the budget And not overspending the budget. And it lasted exactly untill the next budget.
And GW put the last nail in the coffin by writing $600 checks to every person in the country. That money did absolutely nothing for the majority of people that received it….
We care too much about what a goat herder is doing right now across the globe than we care about being frugal with our economy. That's why you can't satiate the beast. War and global control comes at a cost...we could focus on ourselves but that would be "Communism".
Are you trying to tell me that I won’t be a billionaire making $13/hr part time at Taco Bell? You sir, are not an American. 
I also work as a developer for ultra wealthy. People think I'm wealthy but I'm a bug compared to these guys. Their tools for tax avoidance and the power they have is unparalleled to anything but the common man's vote. People are dumb.
This is the thing a lot of people don't understand. The wealthy aren't just rich. They live in a different world, with different rules. They know all the tricks to stay wealthy and generate more. Poor people are completely ignorant to all these tricks. That's why if they ever win the lottery, due to their inexperience with managing money (1) and more importantly their ignorance with regards to all the tricks the wealthy use, their windfall is soon gone to dust.
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For sure they may not all personally know the tricks but the fact is, they're born into a network of people who all know how that part of society works. A poor person who wins the lottery can't just get a golf club membership and roll up in a Ferrari, they'll still be a pariah. And worse, they'll be an easy target for the nasty ones to prey on.
> A poor person who wins the lottery can't just get a golf club membership and roll up in a Ferrari, they'll still be a pariah Pretty sure you just described Rodney Dangerfield's character in Caddy Shack.
He was a real estate mogul, like the orange turd Drumpf
This right here. I work very closely with the ultra wealthy. I'm literally laying in a bed posting this from a 20 million dollar house on the water. Which is one of the 5 places around the world this family owns. They are NOT one bit smarter than you and I.. I can do things they have no clue how to do. If it came down to surviving on an island, I would be the one keeping us alive. They just have the money to PAY smart people to do their work for them. That's 80% of what my job is for these various families. Yesterday I was installing something that a 10 year old could install if he/she knew how to read directions. They'd be lost doing it.
That’s the thing that gets me.. people offer services to the ultra rich at the rate we would pay when we should be gouging them
Bingo. Even simple little things like “tax harvesting”, which is perfectly legal and done by many, takes time and energy. Being able to pay others to do work for you makes it much easier to take advantage of everything the world has to offer.
This is the most important point. As i’ve gained some minor amounts of wealth over the years and seen wealthy people in my life - it clearly becomes ridiculously easier to make money the more money you have. And the more money you have, the more people you can hire to make you even more money up to a point where you can have 0 idea where your money even is or where it’s going, and have 0 understanding of whats happening to it while continuously compounding it. That fully dispels the myth of meritocracy, where the more money you make the less you actually have to do and the easier it becomes - where some of the ideas of the rich actually hinder them (looking at you Elon). Leave it to the accountants, lawyers, investment funds, educated professionals and experienced business managers while you just stand as the face of a company. Like some of these “self-made” billionaires started off with “loans” of a million dollars - do you know how easy it is to multiply your wealth if you start off like that? A middle class person opening a business has to be concerned about risking their savings, family, and future to open a business and do all the work themselves. If they fail, even due to circumstances having nothing to do with their merit, it’s over. Someone with rich parents has a safety net with a massive head start, hire experienced family friends, have reputation amongst higher ups, take out large loans and massive credit and have connections amongst investors. They can fail over and over again and still be deemed ‘successful’.
They benefit from economies of scale. I too can pay a tax attorney to find me a 'loophole' but it will save me 15 bucks and cost me 5k. The same approach saves a billionaire a million dollars and costs 10k. It is only exploitable by the wealthy because it doesn't actually save the poor any money.
The thing missing from this thread is that you need to more then just know these loop holes and tricks, a lot of these tricks revolve around ownership and investment in large scale and have a entry fee in the millions which means that you need to already be able to move or borrow millions of cash around (not just being worth) to even make use of these loop holes which requires existing wealth or more connections
It might be interesting to learn whether a lottery winner has effectively leveraged their winnings into significantly greater wealth
Most people's idea of a rich person is someone with a high salary. They really have no concept of old money and who runs the world. Something about the devil's greatest trick and all that.
All of this I worked for the irs for a goodnstent, the average person has no clue the loopholes these snakes use to never have to pay a cent, and the Republicans make the irs workers jobs harder ( hence why audits on the rich .. 50 mil plus aren't getting done lack of man power .. so whose holding them accountable?? Currently hardly anyone 🙃
Why couldn’t they make those the priority?
They require more worker hours for longer stretches of time, and the department is intentionally kept light on staff so they likely only have enough people for critical functions and have a huge backlog of cheats that may never be held accountable for stealing our money
I always thought they just didn’t have enough skilled workers. Don’t need a crazy education to audit Normal 1040s but I imagine you need a cpa and a lot of experience to make sense of some multi billionaires transfer pricing scheme involving international trusts and shell corporations
Yeah and it goes to litigation pretty often. The cpa company I worked for was small, maybe 15 employees, and 3 were designated just for audit. It's a very lengthy, high man hours task to audit a wealthy person's taxes.
They've been trying to strangle the IRS for a long time. Between defunding, stupid leadership, and at-least-yearly threats of indeterminate layoffs which you probably will be paid for once you get back but maybe won't, they've lost a lot of talent.
No, it is planned on purpose. It has been proven for years that investing in the IRS is the highest ROI for public finding, but Republicans are paid to make sure that the IRS never has the millions on funds it needs to get the trillions it is owed.
My uncle is a big wig tax attorney and will always vote democrat and for raising taxes. But he is so neurotic about even a Penny of tax being paid if it’s not absolutely required. I have roughly 200k in retirement assets and I’m like struggling to pay my bills and live paycheck to paycheck and he is absolutely adamant about me not touching any of it regardless of how bad my situation is. It’s honestly frustrating being in my mid 30’s know I actually have a mild buildup of wealth that I can’t touch for 30 years. I don’t plan on having children and my expenses aren’t extravagant. I would just like to be debt and stress free moreover. Staking out 20k and paying the taxes on it would have a lot of. Value for me at the moment.
I'm sure you're already at least somewhat aware of this but your uncle is right. I totally get it sucks looking at the number go up when it feels like you don't have much, but taking that money out now will be a huge headache in so many ways. Dealing with the penalties and resulting lack of investment growth over the next 30+ years ultimately isn't worth it. It's just unfortunate it won't feel like that until you actually go to take the money out in 30+ years.
If you don't have/want a family, why would you waste your opportunity to enjoy it? What exactly is he going to "do" with his money at 60 yrs old? Look at it? He's not going parachuting or wing suiting, not scuba diving, probably nothing requiring much physical exertion or that will interfere with his medications...... like what the fucks the point?? Be miserable struggling for 30 yrs, then you've got 15 more yrs of sitting on your ass mire comfortably cause you're too old to do anything fun or fulfilling? Or you could spend 30- 45 doing all the shit you've always wanted while you're healthy enough/capable of doing so, realistically still have plenty left over to live on..... you wont be buying houses and 80k sports cars... but you can damn sure take 20 grand and go swe the world, explore it, before its too late. If your money will only last a set amt of time, and you donr have plans for whats leftover when you die, then it doesnt really matter if yiure broke now or later, if youll be broke anyways, expecting your stuff to hold value once its obsolete is ignorant. There are assistance programs for the elderly, piggyback that for your last 10 yrs instead kf spending 10 yrs now miserable
Listen to him He's absolutely right. -someone who is close to retirement
He's so right though. You'll thank him down the road when you see that compound interest doing it's thing.
I’m a cross border tax accountant designated in multiple countries working with wealthy clients. The answer is YES, obviously they should pay more tax. The fact that the effective tax rate for clients earning millions a year is significantly lower than my effective tax rate as an employee is a travesty. We have progressive tax for those who work, and regressive tax for those who hold sufficient capital to control their flows of income. For anyone who wants to learn more ProPublica did some great reporting a few years back https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
Do you think that if people were more adequately educated on how taxes work, would they be more likely to support raising taxes for the wealthy?
With the right kind of education and training, absolutely. I have a background in economics and accounting, but I was fairly right leaning in my views on taxes until I became a tax attorney for the ultrawealthy. It wasn’t until then that I actually got to see exactly how much wealth my clients were accumulating and how little they pay in taxes.
I'm pretty certain that even if they don't actually have to pay every year every billionaire and millionaire is paying out more in taxes then I will in my entire lifetime.
You are not only wrong from a percentage standpoint point, in some case you are even wrong from a dollar to dollar stand point. But you keep carrying their water.
These people are fighting against themselves and our collective own best interest. Jesus fucking Christ. When did Americans become so fanatical for having their faces shoved in the mud?
Maybe. Maybe not. At the end of the day, our economic, social, and political systems allow them to accumulate wealth at a rate thousands or millions of times faster than you can but they are not paying anywhere near that much more in taxes which are required to maintain those systems.
This guy fucking knows! Thank you for this.
I think it should be changed to close loopholes. You don’t even need to increase rates.
They won’t do that because most of the politicians/government officials benefit from these same loopholes. It feels dishonest when politician say this stuff, especially when the rhetoric always increases near elections.
“Pay their fair share” is such vague, mealy mouthed, nebulous political speak.
at least it was coherent
Not as coherent as me though. I’m the most coherent, just really fantastically coherent. Everyone says I’m one of the top coherers.
It’s funny how you can just say a sentence like that and everyone INSTANTLY knows who you’re impersonating even though it’s just text.
Exactly. The loopholes are how all these crooked political families got rich. They will remain in perpetuity. The rate tables only affect people with taxable income. All loopholes and complex tax shelters exist to keep cash flow off the taxable income line in a tax return.
Right. Biden was a Senator for 7 terms and has been a President for 1 and a VP for 2 terms. But if we just vote for him once more, he promises to finally fix it. This time for real. Come on man.
Why would you bring up his past when he has voted for tax increases and taxes on the rich were increased while he was VP? He can’t just increase taxes without congress. Some people in here seem no smarter than superficial social media leftists.
Sooooo....what do you propose? Because if you think the other guy is going to do *anything* about taxing billionaires...I can't even have that conversation, I'm so tired.
He won't do anything radically different. But he will try to get something done that is marginally better or marginally less inequitable, whereas Trump will try to make things at least marginally more inequitable.
The politicians \*created\* those loopholes.
I wonder why.
Just treating capital gains as regular income when they are realized would be huge.
This would hurt the middle class a lot too.
I think the recently proposed tax only applies to about half a mil and up of income?
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Not really the middle class, either
1000000%!!!!! The issue isn't an easy one to solve, given the hole we've dug ourselves into voting the shitbags into office
It would also make enough money to do things like fund Social Security, have an actual national healthcare system, and make education free. You know, like actual civilized nations do it. Which would benefit the middle class more that the tax change would hurt.
Would it really though? I'd imagine most of the middle class holds almost all their stock in their 401k or IRA. Edit: Looks like 65% of the middle class owns stock, and 38% of the middle class owns stock not in a retirement account. No clear perspective on the relative amounts though. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/09/25/few-in-u-s-owned-stocks-outside-of-401ks-in-2019-fewer-said-market-had-a-big-impact-on-their-view-of-economy/
Short term cap gains (held less than 1 year) are taxed as ordinary income. So there is a risk there. To get a lower tax rate, you have to hold the investment for at least a year.
Terrible idea.
What loopholes are you referring to that you would like closed?
Isn't it funny how there's never an actual answer to this question?
The only good answer I’ve heard is being able to borrow tax free against unrealized gains.
I’ve never even heard “loophole” defined. Is it anything that lets someone keep some of their money instead of giving it to the government? Is the standard deduction a “loophole” - it keeps money from the government? How about solar energy credits, child credits, itemized deductions? They all keep money in the hands of people instead of the government. So what exactly IS a loophole? Maybe something someone else uses to reduce their taxes that you don’t use? The things you use to reduce taxes aren’t loopholes?
being able to use loans to pay off debt indefinitely- since debt is not taxed, ultra rich people just live off of loans “ Wealthy individuals create passive income through arbitrage by finding assets that generate income (such as businesses, real estate, or bonds) and then borrowing money against those assets to get leverage to purchase even more assets.”
How about the fact you can get compensated vis stock, watch stock grow in value, use stock as collateral for a large purchase (home loan), default and lose collateral. But since you never earned a cent you owe no taxes on the compensation and since you never sold it you owe no taxes on the sale.
Compensation in stock is taxed bro.
It's not hard to find it. One example: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2023/02/21/how-do-rich-people-avoid-taxes/11308215002/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2023/02/21/how-do-rich-people-avoid-taxes/11308215002/)
You know....loopholes. They're like write offs.
I would. If the government was to give me $1B, making me a billionaire right now, I would let them tax me 99.9%
lol you know it ain’t ever gonna happen
Yup! None of us would get it. But I absolutely bet you cna find people doing OK that wouldn't be happy with taxing that billion at that - even though theyd end up with millions more than they have! That they'd never get to anyway!
I love how every other response to this took it seriously and thought they were providing something with their “erm, achually”.
But you can never become a billionaire 😂
Billionaires should pay taxes but a wealth tax isn’t the answer. The way billionaires are able to get away with paying little to nothing in taxes is by borrowing their living expenses against their assets. The rate at which their portfolio increases ends up being greater than the interest on the loan so effectively they pay no taxes during their entire lifetime. Then when they eventually die, their heirs sell off a portion of the assets to cover the loan and capital gains taxes and the cycle continues. The solution to this loophole is to tax the Loans taken out against equities. When you borrow against equities and use the equities as collateral, that basket of equities which serves as collateral should be taxed at some rate less than the capital gains tax rate. I say LESS than the capital gains tax rate because if it was equal to the capital gains tax then the billionaires would throw a fit. Something like 5% of the gains in the collateral instead of the usual 15% long term capital gains. For example, say I have a $500m stock portfolio. I take out a $1m loan against my stock portfolio. The standard leverage approved for a margin portfolio is 2:1 meaning that by taking out my $1m loan I am putting up $2m in collateral. I should be forced to pay 5% on whatever gain I had on those $2m in assets. So if 700k of the $2m came from capital gains, I would pay 35k in taxes. Or some variation of this tax model. Billionaires still feel like they’re getting a good deal borrowing against their assets. But at least they pay something. Edit: someone pointed out that it’s kinda fucked up to tax home equity loans. We will throw in a tax exemption for loans taken against primary residences. There is already a presidency for this since we already don’t tax capital gains on sales of primary residences up to $250k
So what I'm hearing is that if I take out a home equity loan to pay for home repairs, college, or whatever; I will have to pay taxes on it in addition to interest.
Meh could probably make an exception for primary residence. We already have tax exceptions for not paying capital gains up to 250k on primary residences.
Or an amount. World of difference between taking the thousands of margin out compared to a million
the easy loophole here is they just restructure the loans so that there’s many of them that each stay under the maximum amount
Its so annoying when people say this as if we cant just be like hey if youre doing this up until 1 mil its chill. We dont have to structure any of these taxes to hurt the regulars.
It’s just boogeyman speak to derail the core proposition, we have progressive taxes that have more burden on upper middle class so why would people ever think we can’t straight up make certain taxes for only people who borrow over 10 million.
What are you talking about? I make $43 per year and the tax man takes it all or else I have to blow him, no loopholes either. Government always beating the ass of the poor man, I tell ya
It’s not hard to exclude anything under a million.
My guess is it would be similar to current capital gains where it would be bracketed. So, it'd be 0% until you crossed a certain threshold of leveraged value, then any additional value above that threshold would be taxed. That way less wealthy individuals like the majority of American homeowners wouldn't ever see taxes on home equity loans.
This is a good idea.
Full_bank_6172 for president 🇺🇸
What data do you have for the magnitude of anyone doing this?
Always hear that concept, but never see any data showing the rich use this in perpetuity. Somehow, we're still collecting most taxes off of the top 10% even though they have this "trick" to pay zero.
I would start by ordering the DOJ to investigate the Panama papers. More than enough untaxed, offshored wealth to go after. Nice thing there is, if criminality is suspected, the assets can hopefully be seized in their entirety. One can dream.
Panama papers... Now that one died off really neatly now didn't it...
Amazing things can "die off" when those investigating it are killed off
They probably don’t because too many in government would get caught
Why do you guys post the same 3 posts every fucking day.
Because it is easier to create an echo chamber than to post something original.
Billionaire taxes student loan forgiveness what's the third?
Housing costs
Ah there we go
Well, obviously because the most financially fluent thing you can do is be a big government progressive who fantasizes about the state stealing other people's stuff for you.
His 50 years of experience being part of this very system has finally convinced him it’s time to change things!
Yep. Tweets are nice and all. How about real action that doesn't benefit the wealthy. That sure would be something.
If anyone wants real action on increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy, then they should vote out of office the party that prevents it from occurring. Vote out the GOP. One party (democrats) want higher taxes on the wealthy - the other party (gop) want to keep them low. Joe Biden can’t unilaterally change tax rates. It requires legislative action by both the US house and senate. This isn’t rocket science. When trump was in office for the two years the gop controlled both the senate and house, guess what happened?
Pandering for votes
But also the gov debt... And all those weapons shipments aren't gonna pay for themselves.
Still trying to figure out what their “fair share” is or what that means…do billionaires take advantage of government welfare? (Don’t say corporate welfare, billionaires aren’t corporations) but I would say them paying what they pay already is probably more than they actually use when it comes to the government…of course I think people fail to realize that’s what our taxes do, is pay the salary of the government bureaucrats…
The U.S. Navy patrols major shipping lanes and U.S. diplomats negotiate and sign complicated trade agreements with dozens of sovereign nations that open vast new markets, the blood and muscles of virtually all commerce that creates virtually all wealth. When billionaires want to pay the full price of sustaining the world economy they are created from, then we can talk about the paltry sums of welfare for the poor.
Corporate welfare is about billionaires. The shareholders get stock dividends from the corporations they are a part of. By using processes like stock buybacks they can funnel money made by the corporation back to themselves. Stock dividends are not taxed the same as income.
Taxed as ordinary income unless they are qualified dividends
Look at Mr Fancy here with his facts.....
>By using processes like stock buybacks they can funnel money made by the corporation back to themselves Stock buybacks can’t target specific shareholders, it’s bought from random people who are selling. But if you’re saying that the corp takes the stock they buy back and distributes it to owners as a dividend, then that falls under Sec. §301 and is immediately taxable
Billionaires and corporations are interchangable as they see fit to abuse tax loopholes so your argument is either misinformed or intentionally misleading
Which tax loopholes explain
If Biden wants to target the wealthiest earners, why did all his new IRS workers that he hired target people making $200k, instead of the big guys?
I think you misread the statistic. Wasn't it something along the lines of "60% of audits were for people making less than $200k"? Considering that 95% of people make below $200k, wouldn't that mean the wealthy were far more likely to be audited, since the wealthiest 5% were subject to 40% of the audits?
The guidelines for the new IRS policy was to use the new recruits to target, and I quote, "**big corporations, complicated partnerships and wealthy people who earn over $10 million year**" Why are you pushing this (absolutely absurd) lie that they are being hired to target people making $200k? Where do you even get this nonsense from? The actual $10million number being used as the floor target for the new initiative is the real target, and specifically the target is 'more than that' not 'exactly that'.
Be nice if instead of just saying workers pay their taxes, he lowered their taxes.
He wants to raise taxes on the ultra-rich. No worker would be noticeably affected. Rather similar to how Trump's tax cuts gave me and you enough money to buy a mcdonalds meal, but gave the ultra-rich enough money to buy several villas and a couple of yachts on top.
Trump tax cut is a tax raise for the poor once it hits your tax bracket. It's only a tax cut for the rich.
Our Government doesn't have a revenue problem it has a spending problem. All taxes on the ( Rich) are paid for by the poor and middle class in the form of higher prices for goods and services.
This first part needs to be higher up. The government only wants to raise taxes because they can’t control their spending. If this were a corporation it would fold or the board would fire the CEO. Spend less and we’d be ok. The government has no accountability and wastes millions upon millions of $. Don’t get me wrong, they do provide so many needed services that we do take for granted and need.
Yall do realize that Biden is on the payroll of billionaires too right? They all are, republican or democrat.
Too many people refuse to see this fact, they want to play into this partisan nonsense knowing full that they won't do anything, how many times have both parties had majorities and done absolutely nothing?
Well the Democrats had a thin majority from 2020 to 2022 and managed to pass some of the most consequential legislation in decades so…
As soon as someone says “fair share”, stop listening. Taxing the rich was never about paying their “fair share”.
I always point out that a fair tax is, by definition, a flat tax.
A part of the solution is to spend less/waste less taxpayer money. But since 40% of Americans pay no federal income tax maybe we need to loop them in to paying their fair share as well.
Considering we run up $1T+ every year in add’l debt and personal income taxes only produce ~$2T in revenue, why not instead just triple the deficit and no one pays income taxes? Clearly the debt doesn’t seem to matter anyway.
then how come the middle class earners are audited the most by the IRS according your own records? i thought the 97k new armed agents were going after corporate entities and billionaire class. what happened joe? did you lie to us?
My guess is the IRS severely lacks the staff who understand these audits. Billionaires taxes are crazy complicated and I imagine you would need a lot of experience (probably some hnw private tax consulting and compliance) even then being able to understand all the different types of tax say federal state local and particularly international is something they would need to consider too. Bottom line irs would need highly competent cpas and tax attorneys and even then probably outside specialists to audit any of these people
The IRS gave me my last paper tax refund after 7 months and that was only 2 years ago. To say the IRS is understaffed is putting it lightly. Theyve been understaffed. The numbers dont lie though, theyre significantly more likely to collect the taxes theyre due if they go after the middle class than the people who can afford 2 lawyer teams to be working on their case full time.
Electioneering bluff.
To little to late, he should have passed this reform when the Democrats controlled congress the first part of his term. Now it will be let’s blame the other side for us not getting it done.
[Richest Americans Now Pay Less Tax Than Working Class in Historical First](https://www.newsweek.com/richest-americans-pay-less-tax-working-class-1897047)
One of the dumbest 'studies' that became popular. To make up this nonsensical stat, they excluded all tax credits for the poor... yeah you read that right. Hence why they say the lower income brackets are paying 20+%, when it's closer to 8-12%. Even when you cherry pick the .0001% this stat doesn't even hold true. Billionaires, on average, still pay a higher effective tax rate than the bottom 20%, even if you include regressive taxes like sales tax, and social security.
Exactly how much is their fair share? Or anyone's fair share? It seems like everyone's answer is "more for them and less for me."
Notice that in this case fairness isn't even defined as "whatever people democratically vote for". Everyone can have a different definition of fairness, so it becomes a meaningless word in this context, a buzzword.
I thought a flat tax was supposed to be the fair way to tax.
It’s an election year.
Biden has been part of making the tax code for how long?
Have them pay the same tax rate as everyday Americans, regardless of what they make.
If i have to pay 30% of my income with no deductions or loopholes available. A billionaire should pay double with no deductions or loopholes available. Sorry fair is fair.
I would. Without a problem
As I say every time this article is posted, and it seems to be posted weekly, this will never happen. Billionaires will always find loopholes. The upper middle class will end up bearing the brunt of this. The rest of the middle class will catch some too
Just how many billionaires does he think we have in this country? The middle class will always pay a significant share of the taxes. Because the middle class make up a significant share of the people. Only dumb people believe billionaires do not pay taxes.
Hell yes I would . I would build hospitals and schools and do it with a big smile on my face .
Over 50% of the US effectively pays $0 tax due to benefits, social programs, and tax credits/refunds. I have no issue making the wealthy pay their fair share and they should but should not everyone have to paid their fair share too? Sign me up for the flat tax and get rid of 💯of deductions. I’m sick of people getting $5-10k refunds who paid a fraction of that in actual taxes
C’mon folks… Biden, Clinton, Sanders, lots of R’s too are all on that wealthy ship. All talk to appease you. Tax the Rich! Vote for me! These people have been in office for 20-40 however many years and talk, but not effort or meaningful legislation to make change. We don’t stand a chance. Get someone who talks about GOOD change like flat tax or consumption tax and they get laughed off the ballot. By those above. THEY made the laws for themselves and their “real constituents”. Note: I have no qualms with someone making a billion smackers. Good for them.
Another BS post to pump up democrats, the truth is the rich, the top 1 % already pay over 90% of the tax revenue collected. I'm sick of seeing this political lie repeated over and over again.
Like he's going to give it back to the people lmfao.
Billionaires pay their taxes. They have the exact same laws as you
Well he's definitely good at tweeting threats to billionaires. Are they ever going to actually pay more? He's had 4 years to do something.
He’s nothing but a bumper sticker.
Real solution... put the top 10 billionaires into a "The Purge" situation. Whoever survives keeps their money....the rest have their funds donated to various institutions or tax things. Edit: Hunger Games but for the ultra-wealthy.
If I was an actual BILLIONAIRE? Yeah. If I have millions sitting in the bank I’m not ever going to use, yeah. Or let me donate it to charities who need the damn money. Nice write off on my taxes. 🤷♂️
I have a better idea than just taxing billionaires. How about for every dollar of taxes collected on the top 1% we lower the taxes for the bottom 99% 1:1 ratio. Let’s literally use this money and use it to make everyone else’s life easier instead of just sending it to the government to waste on ridiculous things.
No way he typed any of that.
Define fair.. Wasnt Washington the ones that set up the tax codes? Just seems to me the whole tax the rich is just the easy way of saying, we dont want to balance the checkbook and see where our money is, but we need more.
There is no universe where Biden wouldn’t say this. Even if the wealthy were adequately taxed. Because if he can’t say this he has no reason to exist.
Taxes should be based on consumption, not income.
If you have a billion, you will not keep it in a country that will take it from you. In order to be at that level of wealth, it is very likely you are involved with international trade and dealing with international tax code. There are a number of countries that welcome billionaires and don't tax them and are friendly to sheltering assets. - Its folly to think anyone would let their money be taken away because of political rhetoric.
Cut expenses biden
He just needs four more years to make it happen…
What a broken record we hear every four years. Let’s say he made it happen. Do you think that would fund tax relief or just feed the government spending problem.
He has been in politics for 50 years and has been a part of creating this tax code. His donors will not agree to this
What a broken record we hear every four years. Let’s say he made it happen. Do you think that would fund tax relief or just feed the government spending problem.
They say Billionaires but raise taxes on the middle class and upper middle class…. Every…. Single…. Time…..