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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 @ejg
In France we used to have a tax on absolute wealth, it has been transformed and now has become a tax on real estate wealth only and starts when you own above 1 Million € of real estate
> Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are on the record that they actually SHALL and WANT to pay more taxes
They can donate more taxes then they owe if they want, nothing stopping them. No reason they have any right to speak for all rich people.
Moreover it is telling that the 2 people who are rich and ok with more taxes are the ones who are very old and on the verge of dying, and care a lot about their legacy and how they will be seen on their way out. But it will be the younger generation of rich who will bear this burden, not them.
> even if they wanted to, they cannot just send an invented gift bill to the state.
Of course they can, they can donate whatever they want to the state.. why not?
> Seriously, if somebody owns most of their wealth only on paper, how shall we tax them?
The same way we always have, by taxing a percentage of that wealth when it "moves"... rich eople are already taxed for the money they gained when it was income.
> Personally I think it’s the fault of the mid-level wealthy people (your usual backyard millionaires, which is maybe you, or your neighbour) who are blocking the right laws to be passed because they are afraid that their small nest egg will diminish.
More like we care about fairness and justice. Being taxed the extraordinary rate anyone in the upperclass already is, isnt fair and it isnt solving anything.. what problem is it your even trying to solvE? Most of the answer to this question make it clear that the problems being imagined are in some cases non existent and in others arent a problem where the solution is "we need to make rich people less rich"
In the end people are trying to solve a problem that doesnt exist and in doing so would make things worse IMO
