Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale | Hacker News Reader

Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale

propublica.org

14 pointspaulpauper8 comments

What I really don't understand is the why of all this? Why do they avoid taxes in the first place? I believe it's just a sheer "supposed to do" and you get accountants and lawyers who try to be brilliant and that's their job. I mean what is the difference between having 8 billion dollars and 10 billion dollars at the end of the day? That's what I can never understand. They don't use this wealth for anything which is the real stupidity here.

But of course in a society which is kind of run by the stock exchange if everyone would try to USE their wealth, the stock exchange would collapse because everybody would try to sell. So basically what we are talking about is an illusion of wealth (not that I feel pity for billionaires) a good example of which is Musk trying to buy Twitter having to line up all kinds of investors while being the richest man on Earth. On that note the whole system is stupid as trying to USE your money is punished by high taxes while (theoretically) piling up money is rewarded.

The "why" is "greed". By the billionaires, their accountants and lawyers, the politicians, and basically everyone else that hopes someday it could be them. Call it sin, call it immoral, but it comes down to evil people doing evil things.

Remember, good people cannot do evil, because that would make them genuinely evil. However, evil can and often does do good in order to convince others that such is their true nature. It's not, but their acts are sufficiently convincing that they get away with their shenanigans.

What you say makes sense, but that gives the weird conundrum of whether only evil people would ever get that rich?

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” - Matthew 19:24

This belief seems to go back a ways. Of course I don't believe that Christians actually believe this, but it's interesting nonetheless.

The whole point of borrowing against assets is that you can spend your money without selling stock.

It's worth setting up some tax optimizations once you get to ~$10M when it does make a difference so why turn it off later?

True but that gives the question: what does this type of wealth (on the stock market but factually even in estates) even mean? They do have stocks worth let's say 50 Billion, but this is all on paper. If they wanted to realize this money they would have to sell those stocks but there are just that many rich people on Earth who could buy those stocks. So if ALL wanted (or had) to use that money (existing on paper) there would be nobody to buy the stocks, and they would be worth nothing (or much less) immediately. So part of the whole stay rich scheme surprisingly has to be the fact of being only this rich because you try to preserve your wealth. If all of these guys would have to pay now 5% of their wealth then all of these people would have to sell 5% of their shares. But who would buy those shares then? So their shares would suddenly drop in value and they would have that much less money (on paper). So this whole operation is basically self-supporting and even if it's morally wrong, to be honest this wealth wouldn't even exist if not for these people having to preserve it.

We'll see a test case of this when Warren Buffett dies and he wants his 15% stake in Berkshire Hathaway to be spent over ten years. This will create around $7B per year of selling pressure on the stock.

Yeah but what have they done for the economy in general...

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