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Man its really annoying to see people constantly make up this whole "rich people dont pay taxes" nonsense.. If you review their actual tax records you'll see Elon paid about 1/3 of his income as taxes and Bezos about 1/4, which is actually quite high. But yea lets just make shit up instead and manipulate the numbers to show some "true" tax rate that is really just some fantasy as close to 0 as we can distort, cant just make up fake numbers and think its useful to addressing any problems that might exist.
@freemo but the issue isn't the taxes paid vs the reported income. The issue is that the reported income is so much less then the wealth growth.
Yes Bezos paid about 1/4 of his reported income in taxes, which I guess would be his "actual tax records", but his reported (taxable) income is only about 4% of what he actually made.
That is the issue at hand. That these mechanisms are in place that allow for the taxable income tobe a small fraction of their actual income.
@ejg Can you be more specific. What source of income does he have that is 25x greater than the one he reported and doesnt show as income?
@FailForward @freemo I think this is better explanation of the issue at hand and what I'm trying to express. And some of the articles on the subject do try to go into this, just in a very click-baity way.
I'm also using net worth/wealth growth/income too interchangeably. Perhaps it should be looked at more like:
- Who/what owns any given asset.
- Who benefits from that asset
- How is that asset taxed
- Who/What pays that tax
The very mentality that asset ownership need be taxed is diseasterous to say the least. It relies on the zero sum fallacy of economics for one.
@freemo @FailForward I pay property taxes on my house and car. It's a PITA, but far from "disastrous". I suppose if I had the legal resources, I could create an off shore shell company, and transfer ownership of my house/car to them. Then I wouldn't have to pay those taxes.
I would disagree.. I think the fact that you can never truly "own" your home, that even if you buy it you have to pay for it perpetually is very much disastrous.
A person should have the right to work hard, buy themselves a home, and then be free of that financial obligation, thats the point.
Taxing on assets, like a home, is just a way of saying you can never truly own anything, a government ill forever tax your assets and eventually should you ever fall on hard times financially loose everything you own and get nothing for it as it will all go to just cover the taxes you were unable to pay (and should have never hard to).
Yes taxing ownership of property is particularly heinous IMO.
@freemo @FailForward "A person should have the right to work hard, buy themselves a home, and then be free of that financial obligation, thats the point."
I agree. But there are plenty of people will will work hard all their lives, and never have the resources to buy themselves a home.
Sure, and that should be addressed, you dont address it by taxing assets and make such a dream impossible though, thats for damn sure.
