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Comment by audibahnbacks | Hacker News Reader

“His tax bracket is say 50%”

Even for HN this level of delusion is rare.

What? It’s very easy to be in the 50% range all in. Live in Manhattan and make a million in W2 wages, boom there you go.

Despite all the heeing and hawing, rich people do pay a ton of taxes. It’s mainly the one percent of the one percent you hear about that can structure both their income and lifestyle in a way where they pay less than say someone making 50k in taxes as a percentage.

> Live in Manhattan and make a million in W2 wages, boom there you go.

In what universe is a hedge fund manager making W2 wages?

Sorry, dude, but am an UHNW individual, my income comes from investments, and year in year out I pay about 50% in tax (don't forget state and city income tax, and alternative minimum wipes out long term capital gain favoritism)

You need to get more money, then youll be able to avoid those taxes, seems to be the point.

Paradise Papers leak reveals secrets of the world elite's hidden wealth https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/paradise-papers...

I pursue an investment strategy that would make those tricks highly risky, and or inconvenient. The tradeoff is that I believe I make more money the way I'm doing it, including the taxes I pay.

Yes I'm sure you're too well vested to be caught in the affairs of the world's richest.

It is worth remembering that this doesn't have to be the case. The governments of the world could stop much of this tax avoidance if they had the will.

Surely the most wealthy are not paying 50% income tax on their annual increase in net wealth (see what I did there)? When there are so many ways to avoid it.

income is realized capital gains, not unrealized, and "increase in net wealth" doesn't mean anything. see what I did there? used the words for what they mean.

Exactly my point! Rich people can control how much income their investments pay, and ideally they aim for growth not income which can compound forever without paying any tax. Because they are rich they have no need to sell most of the investments and so can defer paying tax forever. On the other hand poor people have no tax-free compounding subsidy and have to pay tax on every hour of labour they do.

What we can do with these poor drunkers? Can we tax them to death?

Why would they pay a tax on that? You don't.

They can convert it to income via loans, tax-free.

Loans aren't income. When you get a mortgage is that income?

Also anyone with a brokerage account can get one of those loans. It's not remotely exclusive to rich people.

It’s exhausting arguing about this on HN or any other forum. You are in a tiny yet crucial minority, at least from the perspective of taxpayers as the 1% pay the majority of all taxes.

The best part about America, and playing by the rules of America and avoiding sketchy offshore nonsense, is that you can trust the law will treat you fairly. That is the simple secret of success for America’s entire existence, along with a decentralized government that makes power diffuse and a paranoid streak that infuses the populace with distrust of authority.

Live quietly, don’t be a public figure, and you can enjoy your (b/m)illions without serious socialist threat.

>as the 1% pay the majority of all taxes.

I am sorry for jumping in the middle of the discussion (which you seemed to want to quit :-P) but this statement seems to weird to not check out.

After looking into it a bit it SEEMS like it's only true under a very certain reading:

- "The 1%" must refer to the 1% with the highest income, and not the 1% richest, since the actual super rich don't really (often) have registerd income at all. So it's not top 1% richest, but the top 1% of the wage receivers. How much does the richest actually tax? No clue.

- Even when it refers to the top % of wage slaves, it is still wrong for "taxes", but true for "federal income tax" only. According to [1] the top 1% made ca 21% of the money, and payed 24% of the total tax burden. So not the majority.

1: https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2019/

You seem to use wage receiver and wage slave interchangeably. The top 1% of wage receivers include people in literally millions of dollars per year who cannot reasonably be described as wage slaves.

True, most of them have probably accumulated so much wealth that they work because they want to, and can quit at any time.

They still don't contribute the majority of the taxes though;-)

All that money and here is where you waste your most precious resource, time?

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