Tax details of US super-rich allegedly leaked

Recent related threads:<p><i>We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27434307" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27434307</a> - June 2021 (463 comments)<p><i>ProPublica&#x27;s Tax Story is Misleading</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27441277" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27441277</a> - June 2021 (ongoing)

The referred ProPublica article has a lot more details:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;the-secret-irs-files-trov...</a>

&gt; The website alleges<p>That&#x27;s an unfortunately dismissive way to refer to ProPublica. They&#x27;re more accomplished than most news rooms: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ProPublica#Awards" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ProPublica#Awards</a>

But what is the solution? Most wealth of people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is tied to ownership shares in their companies. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s fair to force them to sell shares so they can cover higher taxes. I also fear efforts to extract more tax money from them will ultimately just raise the bill for the middle class. The ultra wealthy can afford to hire a team of accountants to find the loopholes while small businesses are stuck with higher corporate tax rates.

I wonder what people think of Norwegian system where everyone’s tax information is public. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;davidnikel&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;04&#x2F;in-norway-tax-returns-are-a-matter-of-public-record&#x2F;amp&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;davidnikel&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;04&#x2F;in-norway...</a>

If anyone understands the reasoning behind the US capping your deductible net capital loss in any tax year at $3,000 vs allowing your full capital losses to be offset I&#x27;d be interested.

I am not rich by any means, nor do I own a house&#x2F;car&#x2F;stocks etc. And I have a severe dislike for Bezos, Buffet, Bill Gates and other CEOs (I do like Elon though as he seems to be one of the few ceos who’s actually heavily involved with his products). I also hate the massive influence big tech and massive corporations have over politicians.<p>But I really don’t see the fascination of people with “we need to tax the rich more”. For what? To give even more money to the already bloated and corrupt government? The government has plenty of money and yet it’s not used to achieve anything positive. Places like Chicago, Baltimore get crazy amounts of money for decades but the lives of Americans living there hasn’t improved and kids are worse off today education wise. San Fran and LA have crazy taxes and yet have the worst homelessness crisis and defecation on the streets. What we should be talking about is taxing people less and getting rid of the massive bloat and corruption in the government. Getting rid of the lobbying power corporations have over Washington. Getting rid of insider trading being legal for congress and senate. Making any big tech with over a million users in the US into public utilities. Looking into how to make the military spending more efficient, stopping forever wars and cutting down on private contractors. Forcing universities to co-sign the student loans and use a percentage of the salary of the said student after graduation to pay back.<p>Taxing the rich just for the sake of it while the government gets to eat it all without any improvement in lives is silly.<p>I would recommend watching the first 4 minutes of this Walmart vs Morons podcast:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;oKFdAOKq4Lk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;oKFdAOKq4Lk</a>

I&#x27;ve seen people complaining that the article is disingenuous because it conflates income taxes with capital gains taxes. My response is &#x27;so what&#x27;. When you make above a certain income level, you don&#x27;t need anymore income and can play around with reinvesting capital gains to push taxes into the future while amassing wealth. Sure, you&#x27;re not realizing the income, but what you&#x27;re doing, I think, is gaining power and influence. To me, it makes some sense to tax capital gains the same as income, at least above a certain amount.

&quot;Don&#x27;t hate the player hate the game,&quot; is what comes to my mind.<p>I would guess it&#x27;s all legal. It is still good to have transparency, which might potentially change things. I am not so sure though. After all, politicans are usually rich as well.<p>But: All of these super-rich have probably created many, many jobs. I guess all-in-all it is a positive game for society.

It isn&#x27;t the fault of the driver that drives 100 mph nearly as much as it is the society that sets the speed limit to 110.<p>No fan of the billionaires, but they&#x27;re just following the code. None of these things are &quot;loopholes&quot; or bugs, they&#x27;re features. Stop voting in people that do the bidding of these ghouls and you might get somewhere.

&quot;Large IRS leak of personal income tax data&quot; should be the real story here.

How does tax treatment on loans taken out using unrealized capital gains as collateral work? In particular, has anybody here taken loans out on unvested RSUs?

It&#x27;s bizarre to see the federal outcry here since in Norway, everyone&#x27;s tax return is &quot;public&quot;. (You can request to see anybody&#x27;s but they do get a notification that you viewed it. It was anonymous until recently)<p>It&#x27;s hard to argue against sunlight being the best disinfectant.

As others have stated, the article conflates income taxes with capital gains taxes. It also conflates asset ownership with income. Saying someone is &quot;worth&quot; a certain amount simply because they have a large stake in a corporation is an oversimplification. What they really own are illiquid assets, intellectual property, etc. Put to use, they produce income for the corporation as well as it&#x27;s shareholders and employees, all of which are taxed in various ways and various levels.

Politicians are just business people who haven&#x27;t learned how to provide value in a free market. They still want money and power, but without providing things that people are willing to pay for. It is for this reason, I will never trust a politician to be benevolent when they want to increase taxes to prevent people from making &quot;too much money.&quot; It&#x27;s all an elaborate game, based on greed and envy, promising fairness, but actually stealing more from your pockets. Beware.

Thomas Piketty proposes a progressive annual global wealth tax of up to 2%. I think it&#x27;s a good idea.

Wealth tax is one possible solution and one that is used by at least some European countries.

For people aggrieved by these abuses, I highly suggest the book &quot;The Myth of Ownership&quot; by Prof. Liam Murphy.<p>tldr: there is no such thing as &quot;before tax income&quot; as all income is only able to be earned because services paid for by taxes are satisfied necessary preconditions. Tying tax owed to services rendered calls for a change in the code to properly get to Elon&#x27;s fair share.<p>Edit: Calm down, downvoters - its not a defense of billionaires. Quite the opposite.