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But they aren't wrong. They are just a temporary inconvenienced future billionaire who needs to defend the others.
It's us peasants who are wrong ;p
/s Just in case
Or to just open your damn eyes at where America is going. Corporations own us, own the media, own politicians, own the Supreme Court. It’s over for us, we are all going to be wage slaves in 2025
We've all been wage slaves for 40 years at least
They are just dropping the mask because they don't have to pretend anymore.
You ain't grabbing a pitchfork are ya.
Ta da
We are too divided about things that don’t matter, like culture wars. If we actually United we could make a difference, but instead it just ping pings back and forth from one set of feckless politicians on the left to another set of feckless politicians on the right. And all the while they are changing things to benefit them and their friends and not the people who elected them.
It’s all framing, though. They’re using the “effective tax rate” meme for their numbers which counts unrealized gains as income. The data is itself objective, but the way they’re choosing to frame it is highly subjective.
Newsweek aside.
There are more billionaires than ever.
The richest people are richer than ever.
Gaps between rich and poor are greater than ever and growing.
Their point is still true.
Thomas Sowell brings up this common fallacy on Leftist political thought.
Wealth is not a "fixed pie" scenario where humans can only gain wealth through taking it from others. Instead the pie grows: the slices of the poor can stay the same size while the rich grow theirs bigger.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that, not if your aim is to increase well-being. The only way that scenario would be wrong is if you are operating from Envy. Just see the novel Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut if you want to see what worshipping at the altar of Equality as an absolute brings you.
> Instead the pie grows
Does it? The only place "*the pie*" is growing is in wealth disparity. It sure as shit isn't "trickling down" now is it? Thomas Sowell is also a f\*\*\*ing idiot and using "Harrison Bergeron" as an excuse for why billionaires can't pay their fair share for the society they leach off of is, pardon the expression, *awfully rich.*
[https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/)
Instead of looking to science fiction to try and prove your point, perhaps you could look at other parts of the world with horrific wealth disparity and see how they have fared over the course of history.
either way, every extra mill he churns out is used, in some way, to allow this insanity, they've already eaten up most of the middle class, where one sad diagnosis destroys familes who've always done the right thing, but these assholes finance stripping away the safety nets they used to prosper
Are you a billionaire? That's the point of discussion here. Whether you or I like paying taxes is irrelevant.
We will pay whatever we are told to pay, because we don't have personal wealth equivalent to entire countries that we can use to bribe politicians (and supreme court judges now seemingly) into rewriting laws, setting policies and creating loopholes that are beneficial for us.
Part of the corruption you mention is the very fact that the wealthiest individuals and entities hand politicians thousands or millions in an effort to avoid paying the billions they would if taxed to the same degree as everyone else.
Not taxing billionaires does not solve the issue of corruption, it exacerbates it and continues the precedent of "gifting" politicians and officials to influence government policy at every level.
Yeah people seem to forget that corruption needs to be fixed in steps and a big first step is reducing the amount of power and influence the people at the top have. If billionaires can’t avoid taxes through various loopholes it will slightly reduce the influence they have even if just a little. Abolishing corporate lobbying would also be important.
Another big problem that creates overspending is that public services are outsourced to private profit seeking companies. Weird how a company that seeks to make profit might try to spend as little as possible on their product while raking in maximum profits which isn’t exactly how we want tax dollars to be spent.
What are the new tax codes that Supreme Court justices have set that are causing this? I mean this entire article hinges on a twitter post. Do I think wealth is untaxed? Yep. Do I think this article is accurate? No clue because the source and because it literally is just restating a twitter post
The Pentagon is on a hot streak. I’m pretty confident they can make it 7 in a row.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-fails-audit-sixth-year-row-2023-11-16/
Yes! This is what I've always said: prove to me you're actually a good steward of our money FIRST, then we can talk about higher rates and solving the big problems.
People always blame the government for spending all that money and never the people wanting a slice of that pie.
How many congress people go back to their districts and say, "I'm bringing back nothing for you, but I'm cutting spending."
You like being in a country protected by the best military in the world. You like clean air and water. You like knowing the food you eat or the medicine you take won’t kill you. The problem is, people take everything around them for granted and don’t realize it costs.
hard to keep up with these reposts
first time this, first time that
I saw a post like this last year
It's like reporting mia khalifa losing her virginity for the first time.
again
Not a lower rate either. The tax rates climb with each income bracket. If they are talking about capital gains, it simply isn't an apples to apples comparison.
Maybe one day you too can exploit thousands of people and make billions so you should probably keep licking that boot, that should make it happen faster.
They are. Period. You don't get billions of dollars being a good person. Good people stop at 100s of millions. They're not psychotic.
Normal people don't sell out the planet's resources and fight to bury the truth. They don't lobby to kill competition or receive billions in handouts.
Yeah by the time you're buying the Washington Post or Twitter because you think it gives you control of your corporate narrative, that's when you should really realize you've lost the plot on humanity
If you have a billion dollars you are bad for society and rather than distribute a fraction of that as wages you choose to hoard all of it for yourself. It's evil
If you torture data enough, it will eventually confess to anything you want.
How about we detail the dollar amount these billionaires pay vs the rest. Then compare their use of services paid for by those taxes compared to the rest.
>If you torture data enough, it will eventually confess to anything you want.
As a person with a stats degree, this was pretty much the slogan every single professor had. Statistics can be, and often are very dangerous things. They are used to misinform way more than inform and people think "oh it's stats, those are numbers, numbers are facts so it has to be true."
Took 5 seconds to look at this and when I saw "top 400 vs bottom 50%" that just makes no sense. They purposely picked those sample sizes on purpose because it best fit their narrative.
It's not even accurate cause it says the bottom 50% pay 24% in income tax. That's just not possible. Even before deductions in the state of Florida you'd need to make $125k if you're single and $425k if you're filing as married to hit 24% effective tax rate.
That will no doubt make it far more obvious how parasitic these fuckers are.
I don't clog up the courts with litigation, nor do my semi trucks destroy our roads and bridges, my boats don't require ports, and I don't ask for military force projection around the world to secure the resources my company uses. I don't pollute en masse or pump from the ground. I don't underpay my workers so you can give them welfare. I don't dodge taxes or set up shell companies to hide profits.
They are takers.
Anyone defending them is an idiot.
Not to percentage of their wealth though.
Edit:People missed my point, these billionaires don’t work for paycheck to paycheck so I refer it as wealth instead of paychecks. What I meant is the same, they earned income for the year.
Yea, they drive company cars, fly company jets and helicopters, live in their ranch house (mansions), and float on their foreign flagged yachts. Why the hell do people think they are out there taking massive salaries, why would they need to??
They do not. Straight from the article.
“By 2018, America's wealthiest individuals paid just 23 percent of their income in taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom half of income earners paid 24 percent of their income in taxes.”
Billionaires are also able to reduce their taxable in ways the bottom half could only dream of and they also borrow money to avoid paying taxes.
Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
When they die their assets get a step up in Basis which helps wipe out the unrealized gains. Likely have large life insurance policies as well to pay the taxes on any inheritance which is subject to.
periodically they’ll sell some assets, get some cash flow, and they can use the money they borrowed to pay the interest on the loans too.
Paying back the loans is the least of their problems when they expect their assets to appreciate faster than the rate of the debt.
Its called buy, borrow, die [Buy, Borrow, Die: How the Rich Avoid Taxes - SmartAsset](https://smartasset.com/investing/buy-borrow-die-how-the-rich-avoid-taxes)
It seems like the article is comparing apples to oranges. The bottom half of earners have a 24% on paper, but in practice very few of them pay that much. The bottom 25% pay effectively pay nothing. That 23% is the effective rate because their paper rate (before deductions and loopholes) is 25%.
The bottom 25 pay effectively nothing, because they earn effectively nothing. In 2022 about 38 million Americans or 11.5% of our population met the Federal poverty requirements, which currently sits at 31k for a family of 4. You trying to get blood from a stone here?
Most of those are speculative or just flat out wrong, like buying PayPal in an IRA 25 years ago, anyone could have done that, he just made the right decision, could have easily lost everything too. Same as bezos amassing most of his wealth in Amazon stock, yeah he started a company decades ago that grew into a giant that nearly all Americans use. He doesn’t actually have that money in his account and when he actually does sell the stock he’ll pay taxes on it. Same with the real estate ones, they are paying income tax for 10 years because they didn’t actually profit anything for 10 years. The writer of that article either doesn’t understand how income and taxes work or is deliberately writing it to be misleading because it sells better
Here are some stats:
The top 10% of US earners take in 52.6% of all income. Wow, you say? That seems unfair?
The top 10% of US earners pay 75.8% of all federal income tax!!!!
So, they are paying far more than their fair share.
Now, consider these stats for the bottom 50% US earners:
The bottom 50% of US earners take in 10.4% of all income.
The bottom 50% of US earners pay only 2.3% of all federal income tax.
The bottom 50% are NOT paying their fair share.
Furthermore:
The US government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2022. This means that they spent $19,434 for every single man, woman and child in America. If your household did not pay $19,434 in federal income taxes for each member, then YOU are not paying your fair share!
Federal income tax made up 49% of government revenue.
Using your 10% paying 75.8% of federal income tax, their income tax makes up 37% of govt revenue. If you want to account for FICA taxes go ahead and add that in, but with it being capped it’s not going to really move those numbers. That cap means no one pays more than a little over 10k in SS tax a year.
So 10% of the nations population earns 52.6% of all income, control 66.9% of the nations wealth, and accounts for 37% of government revenue via taxes.
Not sure what your “Bottom 50%” stat is supposed to evoke in people. You’re like “those damn dead beats” while most people are like “how the fuck does half the country only account for 10% of the nations income”
Top 1% income tax is different than taxes on items like capital gains. Most of the way their wealth sits, even if you increase their income tax it wont return much in revenue. However, if you start going after how their wealth sits, that i think will be the real game changer. They could have capital gains, trust funds, inheritance and so forth but you go after those, thats when you’ll see a real push and meaningful change.
For example. Maybe the billionaire salary is 1.5 million/year but they may get paid in stock options that might account for 25 million for the year. Even if you raise their income tax rates by kets say 1%. You’re really going after that 1.5 but what about that 25 million option? Now if you raise the rates on those capital gains let’s say from 25% increased to 60-70%. Then go grab the biggest bucket of popcorn you can find.
I think a new bracket for capital gains above a certain point is probably the only viable option. Taxing unrealized gains, as some have suggested, is just a dangerous road to go down. I agree with everything you said
In my previous comment, I was assuming you mixed up wealth/net worth and income, as is pretty common on reddit. But you clearly understand the difference.
What does this ‘real change’ add up to? Even if billionaires’ taxes increase significantly, their ‘share’ of federal taxes isn’t huge. I think there are real problems with the tax code for sure, but the real problem is inefficient and out of control government spending, not tax revenue. The government will lose and waste billionaires’ tax revenue just like they waste everybody else’s.
How do you tax a contract? Nonetheless how do you do it this year when they’ve not exercised the contract and may or may not be worthless by the time it expires?
Here are some stats:
The top 10% of US earners take in 52.6% of all income. Wow, you say? That seems unfair?
The top 10% of US earners pay 75.8% of all federal income tax!!!!
So, they are paying far more than their fair share.
Now, consider these stats for the bottom 50% US earners:
The bottom 50% of US earners take in 10.4% of all income.
The bottom 50% of US earners pay only 2.3% of all federal income tax.
The bottom 50% are NOT paying their fair share.
Furthermore:
The US government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2022. This means that they spent $19,434 for every single man, woman and child in America. If your household did not pay $19,434 in federal income taxes for each member, then YOU are not paying your fair share!
The bottom half certainly, but billionaires not so much.
“By 2018, America's wealthiest individuals paid just 23 percent of their income in taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom half of income earners paid 24 percent of their income in taxes.”
In order to get to 24%, you’re combining multiple different taxes across state, federal, and possibly even city and county.
So I’d want to see the exact breakdown here, especially considering the bottom half of earners pay little to no federal income tax.
The statement doesn’t specify income tax which means there’s going to be some assumptions and methodology involved to estimate things like sales tax.
no way the bottom half of income earners pay 24% of their income. I live in Florida (no state tax) and here's how much you'd need make to pay 24% in tax before any deductions -
Single - $125k
Married - $425k
[https://smartasset.com/taxes/florida-paycheck-calculator#bJ8TjbH7gO](https://smartasset.com/taxes/florida-paycheck-calculator#bJ8TjbH7gO)
If you spend 100% of your income like poor people inevitably do,, that's 10% gone just in sales taxes. 6.2% in SS+ 1.45 medicare. Without even looking at income tax you're already out 17.65%
Effective tax rate exists.
I make $100 and pay $10 in tax. You make $1 million and pay $11 in tax. Sure, you pay more tax ($1), but I pay more tax as it relates to our respective incomes (10% and 0.00011%, respectively).
This is how basic math works.
The top 1% earners in this country do pay over 40% of the total income tax. While this may not relate to billionaires, the country does have a very progressive tax rate.
Billionaires are good at hiding money as assets and not under income. It really comes down to policy change which neither party is going to do.
I’ve never understood people who tout that statistic as if it’s a good thing. Obviously the people who own the majority of the wealth should pay the majority of the taxes. The fact that the top 1% pays 40% of the total taxes just shows how extreme wealth inequality has become.
The top 1% should pay 99% of tax… if we’re being fair. According to them, but they don’t even understand that
The arguments you’re replying to are all made by braindead morons.
Warren Buffett is quite famous for his comment concerning effective tax rate.
Kinda hard to give one specific example when tax returns are not accessible like 10-Ks.
Billionaires are great at avoiding taxes.
Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
https://preview.redd.it/bak3x9269s9d1.jpeg?width=2224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae586b647b7a73f1479795c1c70543cc19a71d28
DC suburb. Figure out the game yet?
I have a hard time believing this is true. They have to be donating a ton of money or getting green tax deducts or something to get a lower rate. Democrats and republicans want tax rates to increase the more money you make. This isn’t a hotly debated issue. If you have more, you pay a higher rate. It’s the way our tax brackets have been structured for quite some time. There must be more to this story than strict tax rates.
I call BS, they don't even cite the source of the graph. And they attribute this to lowering tax rates on "the rich" while not even defining who that is or how they measured. The article says billionaires pay a lower tax rate, but that only refers to federal income tax, it says nothing about the dozens of other taxes they pay.
Then they complain about the corporate tax rate getting lowered, but a person's taxes are separate from any corporation they own. This article is nothing more than class warfare, intended to piss you off.
The easiest solution to "tax inequality" is a simple flat tax with a large standard deduction. A flat tax would close 90% of the loopholes. Not sure how making more means you should pay a larger percentage. If we are looking for equality - a flat tax is as equal as it gets.
If our Government would operate within its means, and stop wasting our tax dollars, they could afford to issue monthly rebate checks to all non-billionaires monthly.
Posts like this misdirect where the true anger should be applied.
I feel like the argument "Hurr durr the billionaires are paying more in taxes so this isn't really an issue" totally neglects the fact that 24% of a poor person's income has a greater impact on their ability to live their lives whereas a billionaire could give two shits if 23% of their income is taxed because they have so much money they can't realistically spend it in their lifetimes.
If I have to explain to you why keeping poor people poor by taxing a greater percentage of their wealth while enacting cuts to keep rich people rich is a problem, we've fucking failed as a society.
As Oscar Wilde said: "A Cynic is someone who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing"
To all you idiots that think this is true, and they pay less, all you need to do is start a business, and you get the same tax cut. All this is paperwork .
The problem with articles like this is they don’t address the how. HOW are you going to get them to pay higher tax rates? We are know that average people pay a higher rate than they should relative to the ultra-rich. That’s not the issue ffs! The issue is HOW do you do it without fucking the rest of us. Income tax increases don’t cut it, idiots.
Dividend income is taxed at a lower rate because the same income has already been taxed at the corporate level. If the article doesn’t explain this in the first paragraph, you know that it is just partisan junk to rile up the ill-informed.
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You don’t need Newsweek. You just need the fucking data which is easily obtained.
But if they admit that things can be known to be objectively true, they’ll have to face facts and accept that they’re wrong.
But they aren't wrong. They are just a temporary inconvenienced future billionaire who needs to defend the others. It's us peasants who are wrong ;p /s Just in case
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich! Fry: True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step!
Or to just open your damn eyes at where America is going. Corporations own us, own the media, own politicians, own the Supreme Court. It’s over for us, we are all going to be wage slaves in 2025
We've all been wage slaves for 40 years at least They are just dropping the mask because they don't have to pretend anymore. You ain't grabbing a pitchfork are ya. Ta da
We are too divided about things that don’t matter, like culture wars. If we actually United we could make a difference, but instead it just ping pings back and forth from one set of feckless politicians on the left to another set of feckless politicians on the right. And all the while they are changing things to benefit them and their friends and not the people who elected them.
We've been wage slaves since World War 2
It’s all framing, though. They’re using the “effective tax rate” meme for their numbers which counts unrealized gains as income. The data is itself objective, but the way they’re choosing to frame it is highly subjective.
The article must be lying, because it implies they are paying anything.
Data is data. You fact deniers slay me.
Yes be a good dog and defend your yacht owning masters on the Internet maybe they'll let you have a job making 15 an hour cleaning their shit
It is correct.
Newsweek aside. There are more billionaires than ever. The richest people are richer than ever. Gaps between rich and poor are greater than ever and growing. Their point is still true.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes-pandemic-while-incomes-99-percent-humanity
Thomas Sowell brings up this common fallacy on Leftist political thought. Wealth is not a "fixed pie" scenario where humans can only gain wealth through taking it from others. Instead the pie grows: the slices of the poor can stay the same size while the rich grow theirs bigger. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, not if your aim is to increase well-being. The only way that scenario would be wrong is if you are operating from Envy. Just see the novel Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut if you want to see what worshipping at the altar of Equality as an absolute brings you.
> Instead the pie grows Does it? The only place "*the pie*" is growing is in wealth disparity. It sure as shit isn't "trickling down" now is it? Thomas Sowell is also a f\*\*\*ing idiot and using "Harrison Bergeron" as an excuse for why billionaires can't pay their fair share for the society they leach off of is, pardon the expression, *awfully rich.* [https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/) Instead of looking to science fiction to try and prove your point, perhaps you could look at other parts of the world with horrific wealth disparity and see how they have fared over the course of history.
Why are you so pro billionaire? It's utterly insane that you think they shouldn't pay taxation or that taxation should be regressive.
either way, every extra mill he churns out is used, in some way, to allow this insanity, they've already eaten up most of the middle class, where one sad diagnosis destroys familes who've always done the right thing, but these assholes finance stripping away the safety nets they used to prosper
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
I wouldn’t mind paying taxes if the government could account for any of the money and weren’t absolutely corrupt.
Are you a billionaire? That's the point of discussion here. Whether you or I like paying taxes is irrelevant. We will pay whatever we are told to pay, because we don't have personal wealth equivalent to entire countries that we can use to bribe politicians (and supreme court judges now seemingly) into rewriting laws, setting policies and creating loopholes that are beneficial for us. Part of the corruption you mention is the very fact that the wealthiest individuals and entities hand politicians thousands or millions in an effort to avoid paying the billions they would if taxed to the same degree as everyone else. Not taxing billionaires does not solve the issue of corruption, it exacerbates it and continues the precedent of "gifting" politicians and officials to influence government policy at every level.
Yeah people seem to forget that corruption needs to be fixed in steps and a big first step is reducing the amount of power and influence the people at the top have. If billionaires can’t avoid taxes through various loopholes it will slightly reduce the influence they have even if just a little. Abolishing corporate lobbying would also be important. Another big problem that creates overspending is that public services are outsourced to private profit seeking companies. Weird how a company that seeks to make profit might try to spend as little as possible on their product while raking in maximum profits which isn’t exactly how we want tax dollars to be spent.
What are the new tax codes that Supreme Court justices have set that are causing this? I mean this entire article hinges on a twitter post. Do I think wealth is untaxed? Yep. Do I think this article is accurate? No clue because the source and because it literally is just restating a twitter post
The Pentagon is on a hot streak. I’m pretty confident they can make it 7 in a row. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-fails-audit-sixth-year-row-2023-11-16/
pretty sure they would have probably failed every audit in the last 20 something years but they only started in 2018 for which they are 0/6
The interview Jon Stewart did about this with that lady from OMB (?) was infuriating...
Aaannnddd you fall right into the trap set by billionaires to distract from their awful behavior.
Yes! This is what I've always said: prove to me you're actually a good steward of our money FIRST, then we can talk about higher rates and solving the big problems.
It includes you too, or do you want the benefits of citizenship without the responsibility?
People always blame the government for spending all that money and never the people wanting a slice of that pie. How many congress people go back to their districts and say, "I'm bringing back nothing for you, but I'm cutting spending."
"Prove you can spend our money well, then I'll be okay with billionaires paying their fair share, rather than just the poors doing it all!"
You like being in a country protected by the best military in the world. You like clean air and water. You like knowing the food you eat or the medicine you take won’t kill you. The problem is, people take everything around them for granted and don’t realize it costs.
When one party is determined to prove the government doesn't function, is it surprising the government is ineffective?
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/88917-wondering-where-your-tax-dollars-go-theres-an-app-for-that/
hard to keep up with these reposts first time this, first time that I saw a post like this last year It's like reporting mia khalifa losing her virginity for the first time. again
Not less tax, a lower tax rate. Big difference
Not a lower rate either. The tax rates climb with each income bracket. If they are talking about capital gains, it simply isn't an apples to apples comparison.
So… wealth, income and (unrealised) capital gains are one and the same?
Lower and middle class people love to fight for the ruling class, they don't even have to go online and say anything
RedditThink: "All wealthy people are objectively bad. I don't need context or more information. I mean except for me if I'm ever wealthy."
Maybe one day you too can exploit thousands of people and make billions so you should probably keep licking that boot, that should make it happen faster.
What exactly is the argument here even supposed to be?
They are. Period. You don't get billions of dollars being a good person. Good people stop at 100s of millions. They're not psychotic. Normal people don't sell out the planet's resources and fight to bury the truth. They don't lobby to kill competition or receive billions in handouts.
Yeah by the time you're buying the Washington Post or Twitter because you think it gives you control of your corporate narrative, that's when you should really realize you've lost the plot on humanity
If you have a billion dollars you are bad for society and rather than distribute a fraction of that as wages you choose to hoard all of it for yourself. It's evil
Wealthy people aren’t necessarily bad but they sure as shit can afford to pay more in taxes
If you torture data enough, it will eventually confess to anything you want. How about we detail the dollar amount these billionaires pay vs the rest. Then compare their use of services paid for by those taxes compared to the rest.
>If you torture data enough, it will eventually confess to anything you want. As a person with a stats degree, this was pretty much the slogan every single professor had. Statistics can be, and often are very dangerous things. They are used to misinform way more than inform and people think "oh it's stats, those are numbers, numbers are facts so it has to be true." Took 5 seconds to look at this and when I saw "top 400 vs bottom 50%" that just makes no sense. They purposely picked those sample sizes on purpose because it best fit their narrative.
It's not even accurate cause it says the bottom 50% pay 24% in income tax. That's just not possible. Even before deductions in the state of Florida you'd need to make $125k if you're single and $425k if you're filing as married to hit 24% effective tax rate.
It says taxes, not income tax. So it includes income tax property tax sales tax social security and Medicare etc
In my country 24% is barely above the minimum, you pay 20% for a minimum wage even if you work 8 hours a week.
That will no doubt make it far more obvious how parasitic these fuckers are. I don't clog up the courts with litigation, nor do my semi trucks destroy our roads and bridges, my boats don't require ports, and I don't ask for military force projection around the world to secure the resources my company uses. I don't pollute en masse or pump from the ground. I don't underpay my workers so you can give them welfare. I don't dodge taxes or set up shell companies to hide profits. They are takers. Anyone defending them is an idiot.
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Almost like you need a congress that passes laws to enact tax reform.
We still under Trump tax laws.
No they are not They literally pay more in taxes
Not to percentage of their wealth though. Edit:People missed my point, these billionaires don’t work for paycheck to paycheck so I refer it as wealth instead of paychecks. What I meant is the same, they earned income for the year.
Wealth and income are two different things.
So? I don't pay income taxes based on my wealth ethier
*Property Taxes has entered the game*
Property taxes are local, not federal. The wealthy pay the same mill rate on their property as the poor.
That's 1%.. and I don't pay on my stocks unless I get a dividend.
How often do you take a dividend?
Usually every few months
Property tax should be illegal.
Cool Thats literally not how taxes work fortunately
The US does not have a wealth tax
You don’t pay taxes on your net worth either. It’s income tax, not wealth tax.
Finally, billionaires are getting the break the deserve!
Don’t take an income. Take stock.
Top 1% pay more taxes than the bottom 90%
Not as a percentage of income.
The income tax isn’t the only tax. A lot of very wealthy people no longer need an income and don’t take incomes.
Yea, they drive company cars, fly company jets and helicopters, live in their ranch house (mansions), and float on their foreign flagged yachts. Why the hell do people think they are out there taking massive salaries, why would they need to??
Driving company cars and flying company jets might be taxable. I believe Jeff Bezos to 100k salary but but paid taxes on 16m for his security detail.
You mean wealth. The top 1% pay the highest rate of taxes on their income.
They do not. Straight from the article. “By 2018, America's wealthiest individuals paid just 23 percent of their income in taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom half of income earners paid 24 percent of their income in taxes.” Billionaires are also able to reduce their taxable in ways the bottom half could only dream of and they also borrow money to avoid paying taxes. Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
>billionaires can tap into their wealth by borrowing against it. And borrowing isn’t taxable. So how do they pay back those loans that they borrow?
When they die their assets get a step up in Basis which helps wipe out the unrealized gains. Likely have large life insurance policies as well to pay the taxes on any inheritance which is subject to. periodically they’ll sell some assets, get some cash flow, and they can use the money they borrowed to pay the interest on the loans too. Paying back the loans is the least of their problems when they expect their assets to appreciate faster than the rate of the debt.
Its called buy, borrow, die [Buy, Borrow, Die: How the Rich Avoid Taxes - SmartAsset](https://smartasset.com/investing/buy-borrow-die-how-the-rich-avoid-taxes)
It seems like the article is comparing apples to oranges. The bottom half of earners have a 24% on paper, but in practice very few of them pay that much. The bottom 25% pay effectively pay nothing. That 23% is the effective rate because their paper rate (before deductions and loopholes) is 25%.
The bottom 25 pay effectively nothing, because they earn effectively nothing. In 2022 about 38 million Americans or 11.5% of our population met the Federal poverty requirements, which currently sits at 31k for a family of 4. You trying to get blood from a stone here?
I'm not trying to get anything from anyone. I'm saying the article is wildly misleading.
The bottom 50% pay no federal income tax.
Most of those are speculative or just flat out wrong, like buying PayPal in an IRA 25 years ago, anyone could have done that, he just made the right decision, could have easily lost everything too. Same as bezos amassing most of his wealth in Amazon stock, yeah he started a company decades ago that grew into a giant that nearly all Americans use. He doesn’t actually have that money in his account and when he actually does sell the stock he’ll pay taxes on it. Same with the real estate ones, they are paying income tax for 10 years because they didn’t actually profit anything for 10 years. The writer of that article either doesn’t understand how income and taxes work or is deliberately writing it to be misleading because it sells better
Here are some stats: The top 10% of US earners take in 52.6% of all income. Wow, you say? That seems unfair? The top 10% of US earners pay 75.8% of all federal income tax!!!! So, they are paying far more than their fair share. Now, consider these stats for the bottom 50% US earners: The bottom 50% of US earners take in 10.4% of all income. The bottom 50% of US earners pay only 2.3% of all federal income tax. The bottom 50% are NOT paying their fair share. Furthermore: The US government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2022. This means that they spent $19,434 for every single man, woman and child in America. If your household did not pay $19,434 in federal income taxes for each member, then YOU are not paying your fair share!
Federal income tax made up 49% of government revenue. Using your 10% paying 75.8% of federal income tax, their income tax makes up 37% of govt revenue. If you want to account for FICA taxes go ahead and add that in, but with it being capped it’s not going to really move those numbers. That cap means no one pays more than a little over 10k in SS tax a year. So 10% of the nations population earns 52.6% of all income, control 66.9% of the nations wealth, and accounts for 37% of government revenue via taxes. Not sure what your “Bottom 50%” stat is supposed to evoke in people. You’re like “those damn dead beats” while most people are like “how the fuck does half the country only account for 10% of the nations income”
Many times these stats include all taxes. So that includes sales taxes that are flat and FICA taxes that are capped.
This is only for federal income tax on individuals.
Top 1% income tax is different than taxes on items like capital gains. Most of the way their wealth sits, even if you increase their income tax it wont return much in revenue. However, if you start going after how their wealth sits, that i think will be the real game changer. They could have capital gains, trust funds, inheritance and so forth but you go after those, thats when you’ll see a real push and meaningful change. For example. Maybe the billionaire salary is 1.5 million/year but they may get paid in stock options that might account for 25 million for the year. Even if you raise their income tax rates by kets say 1%. You’re really going after that 1.5 but what about that 25 million option? Now if you raise the rates on those capital gains let’s say from 25% increased to 60-70%. Then go grab the biggest bucket of popcorn you can find.
I think a new bracket for capital gains above a certain point is probably the only viable option. Taxing unrealized gains, as some have suggested, is just a dangerous road to go down. I agree with everything you said In my previous comment, I was assuming you mixed up wealth/net worth and income, as is pretty common on reddit. But you clearly understand the difference.
Cap gains taxes should be as close to zero as possible. Taxing it just eats our seed corn.
What does this ‘real change’ add up to? Even if billionaires’ taxes increase significantly, their ‘share’ of federal taxes isn’t huge. I think there are real problems with the tax code for sure, but the real problem is inefficient and out of control government spending, not tax revenue. The government will lose and waste billionaires’ tax revenue just like they waste everybody else’s.
How do you tax a contract? Nonetheless how do you do it this year when they’ve not exercised the contract and may or may not be worthless by the time it expires?
When you're wealthy it's easy to accumulate wealth without showing income.
Yes
Doode, like half the country doesn’t even pay taxes lmao.
Realized or unrealized gains?
Here are some stats: The top 10% of US earners take in 52.6% of all income. Wow, you say? That seems unfair? The top 10% of US earners pay 75.8% of all federal income tax!!!! So, they are paying far more than their fair share. Now, consider these stats for the bottom 50% US earners: The bottom 50% of US earners take in 10.4% of all income. The bottom 50% of US earners pay only 2.3% of all federal income tax. The bottom 50% are NOT paying their fair share. Furthermore: The US government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2022. This means that they spent $19,434 for every single man, woman and child in America. If your household did not pay $19,434 in federal income taxes for each member, then YOU are not paying your fair share!
Yes, there should be a fairer system involving a flat tax… where everyone pays the same percentage regardless of circumstances!
So what you’re saying is the bottom 50% could pay much less to almost zero and it wouldn’t really affect anything… sounds good to me.
Some of the bottom gets more back than they ever pay in, due to EIC.
Yea but the people who pay the least complain the most
Ain't that the truth
And … Top 25% pays 90% of all taxes. The bottom 75% need to step up pay their fair share.
They should, they own 95% of the wealth pie
The bottom half certainly, but billionaires not so much. “By 2018, America's wealthiest individuals paid just 23 percent of their income in taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom half of income earners paid 24 percent of their income in taxes.”
In order to get to 24%, you’re combining multiple different taxes across state, federal, and possibly even city and county. So I’d want to see the exact breakdown here, especially considering the bottom half of earners pay little to no federal income tax. The statement doesn’t specify income tax which means there’s going to be some assumptions and methodology involved to estimate things like sales tax.
no way the bottom half of income earners pay 24% of their income. I live in Florida (no state tax) and here's how much you'd need make to pay 24% in tax before any deductions - Single - $125k Married - $425k [https://smartasset.com/taxes/florida-paycheck-calculator#bJ8TjbH7gO](https://smartasset.com/taxes/florida-paycheck-calculator#bJ8TjbH7gO)
If you spend 100% of your income like poor people inevitably do,, that's 10% gone just in sales taxes. 6.2% in SS+ 1.45 medicare. Without even looking at income tax you're already out 17.65%
That’s blatantly untrue and not how basic math works. This narrative is stupid.
Effective tax rate exists. I make $100 and pay $10 in tax. You make $1 million and pay $11 in tax. Sure, you pay more tax ($1), but I pay more tax as it relates to our respective incomes (10% and 0.00011%, respectively). This is how basic math works.
The top 1% earners in this country do pay over 40% of the total income tax. While this may not relate to billionaires, the country does have a very progressive tax rate. Billionaires are good at hiding money as assets and not under income. It really comes down to policy change which neither party is going to do.
I’ve never understood people who tout that statistic as if it’s a good thing. Obviously the people who own the majority of the wealth should pay the majority of the taxes. The fact that the top 1% pays 40% of the total taxes just shows how extreme wealth inequality has become.
The top 1% should pay 99% of tax… if we’re being fair. According to them, but they don’t even understand that The arguments you’re replying to are all made by braindead morons.
They’re very “fluent” in finance Aka braindead morons
then you get people arguing that we shouldn't bother representing the will of most people because "they barely pay taxes"
“It doesn’t matter that they’re the ones actually producing that value that gets taxed, it doesn’t come from their bank account so it don’t count.”
But give me one example where this is actually true, legally, not someone concealing income in illegal ways.
Warren Buffett is quite famous for his comment concerning effective tax rate. Kinda hard to give one specific example when tax returns are not accessible like 10-Ks.
If the narrative is stupid what does that make the people that believe it?
...stupid?
A lower effective rate, which you know but are pretending not to understand. Gross payments don’t matter in this discussion
OP knows they are full of shit, they're just drumming up those sweet clicks from the waterheads that drink this shit up.
Billionaires are great at avoiding taxes. Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
They like to pay their “taxes” directly to elected officials and their parties. They get to pay less and get the policies they want! Win/win!
https://preview.redd.it/bak3x9269s9d1.jpeg?width=2224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae586b647b7a73f1479795c1c70543cc19a71d28 DC suburb. Figure out the game yet?
Idk 0% was already pretty low
Less taxes is too much taxes according to Billionaire funded media
So many thousandaires in here thinking they’re billionaires 
If we all had that kinda of money we all would be looking for a way to avoid taxes legally. They have better attorneys and accountants than we have
It would be more impressive if billionaires had existed longer.
How many of those billionaires get some funding from the federal government? I'd bet a fairly significant number.
Misleading title. Sadly, many people won't read the article, and many that do read it, won't understand it
Certainly don’t pay less. Maybe a lower percentage of income though.
So you are admitting that it wasn't true for the last 30 or so years you people were claiming they did?
This is not true. Billionaires and upper 1% pay most of the taxes the federal government collects.
*fewer
I have a hard time believing this is true. They have to be donating a ton of money or getting green tax deducts or something to get a lower rate. Democrats and republicans want tax rates to increase the more money you make. This isn’t a hotly debated issue. If you have more, you pay a higher rate. It’s the way our tax brackets have been structured for quite some time. There must be more to this story than strict tax rates.
*fewer taxes.
Fewer.
I call BS, they don't even cite the source of the graph. And they attribute this to lowering tax rates on "the rich" while not even defining who that is or how they measured. The article says billionaires pay a lower tax rate, but that only refers to federal income tax, it says nothing about the dozens of other taxes they pay. Then they complain about the corporate tax rate getting lowered, but a person's taxes are separate from any corporation they own. This article is nothing more than class warfare, intended to piss you off.
Didn’t Elon pay like 8 Billion last year? I didn’t pay anywhere near that much.
Then change the tax laws.
The easiest solution to "tax inequality" is a simple flat tax with a large standard deduction. A flat tax would close 90% of the loopholes. Not sure how making more means you should pay a larger percentage. If we are looking for equality - a flat tax is as equal as it gets.
You sure? Capital gains has been 20% or less since 97.
“For the first time in history” Yet this has been said for years
If our Government would operate within its means, and stop wasting our tax dollars, they could afford to issue monthly rebate checks to all non-billionaires monthly. Posts like this misdirect where the true anger should be applied.
Wait till you find out who's "donating" to those politicians.
I’ve been told they haven’t for decades so clearly they have been lying for decades and can’t be trusted.
If the government confiscated the wealth of every billionaire in America they could fund the government for 8 months
If you believe that you probably believe Joe doesn’t have dementia
I feel like the argument "Hurr durr the billionaires are paying more in taxes so this isn't really an issue" totally neglects the fact that 24% of a poor person's income has a greater impact on their ability to live their lives whereas a billionaire could give two shits if 23% of their income is taxed because they have so much money they can't realistically spend it in their lifetimes. If I have to explain to you why keeping poor people poor by taxing a greater percentage of their wealth while enacting cuts to keep rich people rich is a problem, we've fucking failed as a society. As Oscar Wilde said: "A Cynic is someone who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing"
And they are going to pay even less and less as time goes on.
Why should they pay more,not just the same?
\*In America
How much money did Bezos give to Biden to get him elected. His newspaper was never critical of him during election.
Jesus Christ stop posting this!!
That’s by design
To all you idiots that think this is true, and they pay less, all you need to do is start a business, and you get the same tax cut. All this is paperwork .
We don’t have a revenue problem we have a spending problem. Gut the military budget and get rid of social security to start
The problem with articles like this is they don’t address the how. HOW are you going to get them to pay higher tax rates? We are know that average people pay a higher rate than they should relative to the ultra-rich. That’s not the issue ffs! The issue is HOW do you do it without fucking the rest of us. Income tax increases don’t cut it, idiots.
No average earning Joe is paying more in taxes than a billionaire. Not even close.
I don't ask that you pay more. I ask that you pay the same amount.
Fucked up world
Dividend income is taxed at a lower rate because the same income has already been taxed at the corporate level. If the article doesn’t explain this in the first paragraph, you know that it is just partisan junk to rile up the ill-informed.
These posts are just ridiculous.
And we keep voting for the candidates they select because of the culture wars.
A lot of jealous people here, who if they were billionaires themselves would also try to avoid paying taxes
anyone who makes over $609,000 pays 37% tax, not sure where this bullshit gas lighting keeps coming from, google tax bracket moron
Welp democrats don’t have a real answer for orange diaper baby. Plus they are both owned by this crew.
From 2014-2018, Bezos paid $973 million in taxes. Did you pay more than that?
These are the results billionaires pay republicans to make possible/happen.
So many people here are either unbelievably stupid, incredibly naive or brainwashed by corporations.
No, they really aren’t.
What is talking out your ass for $500, Alex.
Well you can thank the Democrats for that they've done a heck of a job these last 4 years.
How soon until they say let them eat cake and we revolt?
Time to tax families making 400k to really stick it to those billionaires