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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

The article lays this out pretty well I thought?

They avoided a ton of tax if they had sold the company or even passed it to their heirs.

Instead, they created a couple non-profits, special ones that can make unlimited political donations, then put their family in charge of the non-profits.

So while they don't retain ownership, they retain control and are able to direct the company's money to their own political causes, all while saving on a $700M tax bill.

I mean, that doesn't seem that "altruistic" to me?

HN seems to be the first to say "paying your taxes is the right thing to do for society".

But these guys get a pass when they avoid a $700M tax bill and get to continue to use their billions in wealth to influence politicians?

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The choice for them was between:

A. Sell the company for multiple billions, pay $700M+ in taxes, and end up with multiple billions

B. Keep the company (don't sell or donate) and have billions in assets

C. Donate the company and lose billions in assets

They were never considering option A, so the choice was between B and C. So their total tax evasion was negligible.

They had no tax obligation to avoid because they were never selling the company.

Right, and with option B there was a massive tax burden, as per the article.

So they chose C, avoid taxes, keep the family in charge of the company.

You either didn't read the article or misread it.

Option B didn't and couldn't have had a massive tax burden. The $700M in the title is referring to option A.

The company only has ~$100M in profits to tax in the first place.

Non-paywall: https://archive.ph/ifEzF

Would it be legal for them to influence political bodies with money from a non profit?

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz....

From what I understood, the reason people are supporting this move is not because he's giving up money but because he is ensuring that the company doesn't have stake holders that will push for profit above all else.. Because that could lead to bad outcomes for the environment.

So he gave the company to a non profit to run. Because itvs a... Non profit.

> their billions in wealth

...they no longer possess billions in wealth. The other response to you got it right... you're not scoring 700M unless you have some tax bill on a 3B income to pay.

My whole point is that people keep saying "tax evasion" when what they really mean is "paying your taxes is the right thing to do for society", which are not the same thing. "Tax evasion" would be contriving some scheme to sell this company for profit and not paying the bill while keeping the profit. What happened here is a whole order of magnitude less offensive than that. (Not I think it should be possible, but then, taxing transfers of wealth doesn't make a lot of sense from first principles anyway...)

I thought the money going to the 501(c)(4) isn't deductible? edit: ah nvm, this is focused more on them not paying cap gains since they didn't sell anything

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