Hey Jeramy. I love the writing. I would also love you to go a bit more into detail about what you think a fairer system is? Clearly there has got to be a better balance of wealth than what we have now. At the same time, seeing Bernie Sanders attacking Elon Musk and Bezoes for the ''billions made from the pandemic rings hollow because we understand that wealth and values of shares that you can or can't easily liquidate aren't the same thing. I think we do need a stronger tax system, but the idea of taxing something like shares that you can't realise the value of them without selling them doesn't seem fair either. Any thoughts?
This post feels like its mostly about your disagreements on tax policy. That's not a critique of journalism, its a policy disagreement. You also seem unwilling to take seriously positions that diverge significantly from your own, instead framing them as "very radical" or otherwise unreasonable. This makes any policy engagement pretty hollow since your unwilling or unable to take their position seriously. Finally, if your going to apologize for being "overly fight-y" maybe don't end w/
"I appreciate that ProPublica is trying to recruit tax lawyers to help them. Though maybe the time to do that was before they started writing."
This piece is a bad straw man of a policy position, not media criticism. I'm quite disappointed.
While I think this is thoughtfully written and you are an engaging writer, I think you're wildly missing the main points here. Your conception is that donating all of his money to charity is a perfectly acceptable alternative to paying 40% estate tax, and that these charitable institutions will, in effect, do the same or better than the government "in targeted niches".
The most famous of the billionaires have donated their gains to their own private foundations. Now see where those foundations put their money? How many times has Donald Trump funneled 'charity' money through his own businesses for profit? Did he not pay for a portrait of himself and hang it in his own for-profit golf course? Has anyone ever meaningfully been held accountable for these crimes? How much has their endowments swelled? And why should the ultra wealthy be able to save up all their extra cash all their life and then only direct it into the causes they see fit? Basically every example I can think of involves creating 'think tanks' that poison public discourse, buying wings of universities to teach your libertarian philosophy, or vanity projects like the Sackler's many museums. I would LOVE for that money to go into the national debt, a social safety net, or in eliminating taxes for the bottom 90%. After all, the bottom 99.9% are the workers who TRULY created all the wealth in the world.
Now imagine a more intelligent and more overtly anti-government figure like Thiel. You really think a libertarian wouldn't do everything in their power to avoid taxes, even if they explicitly don't want to be charitable with it? The critical issue here isn't that he legally used an IRA. It's that he flagrantly exploited it from his unique position as a startup founder. .0001cents a share is him spitting in the face of any IRS agents that dare attempt to audit him. The fair market price is what he would have paid for, or sold, a single share of his business for at that moment in time. To even pretend it was $1700 is preposterous. You seem to understand exactly why this ought to be illegal, you just think its grey-area 'avoidance' and not criminally defrauding the rest of us taxpayers.
Obviously the line between tax evasion and tax avoidance is extremely muddied, to the point that most journalists don't seem to bother distinguishing, and why should they? If I can donate my own wealth to my own charity that my own children will then run in perpetuity and use as a piggy bank with no repercussions, what is the ethical difference between avoidance and evasion? If I give 20 billion to my own 'charity' and it ends up being worth 30 billion next year, and people of my choosing get to buy goods, services, portraits, trips around the world, etc. with it then how is it ethical?
Moreover, you seem to be flatly missing the leftist perspective here- that 5 billion accumulated over all these years is not a temporary delaying of taxes, but a theft from the workers who produced that capital. Labor is a priori to and independent of capital, and every dollar squirreled away in a bank account represents a dollar not given to the employees who did the work. Those are circulating, meaningful dollars with a far greater multiplier throughout the economy. As inequality grows, economies slow, and everyone suffers. Dollars collected now and aimed at fixing current problems will reduce inequality, and potentially save us from ecological collapse. This doesn't even touch on the fact that most of these billions are only made possible by wildly anti-competitive practices, which I can't call illegal because we haven't done trust busting in years. You seem to waffle between ethics and legality where it is convenient to apologize for the ultra-rich. It is simply not ethical to avoid taxes on 5 billion, even if you do donate it to your libertarian pet projects as seen fit by your children.
It seems like you understand that at its core the tax system is set up with myriad ways to 'legally' but 'unethically' pass on huge sums to your children, but your solution is tinkering with rates. These people are clearly violating the spirit of the laws, often the letter of the laws as well, and the solution involves prison, not fines. I don't care if someone built facebook, if they clearly self-deal to avoid taxes they should face more prison time than someone stealing food to survive.
Also, note how the Pro Publica story calls investments in his own startup a “sweetheart deal” that’s “not available” to most people. Yes, most people don’t start startups and therefore can’t put their own company in an IRA. Shocker.
A better headline would have been: brilliant man turned $2000 investment into $5 billion in around two decades.
Hey Jeramy. I love the writing. I would also love you to go a bit more into detail about what you think a fairer system is? Clearly there has got to be a better balance of wealth than what we have now. At the same time, seeing Bernie Sanders attacking Elon Musk and Bezoes for the ''billions made from the pandemic rings hollow because we understand that wealth and values of shares that you can or can't easily liquidate aren't the same thing. I think we do need a stronger tax system, but the idea of taxing something like shares that you can't realise the value of them without selling them doesn't seem fair either. Any thoughts?
This post feels like its mostly about your disagreements on tax policy. That's not a critique of journalism, its a policy disagreement. You also seem unwilling to take seriously positions that diverge significantly from your own, instead framing them as "very radical" or otherwise unreasonable. This makes any policy engagement pretty hollow since your unwilling or unable to take their position seriously. Finally, if your going to apologize for being "overly fight-y" maybe don't end w/
"I appreciate that ProPublica is trying to recruit tax lawyers to help them. Though maybe the time to do that was before they started writing."
This piece is a bad straw man of a policy position, not media criticism. I'm quite disappointed.
While I think this is thoughtfully written and you are an engaging writer, I think you're wildly missing the main points here. Your conception is that donating all of his money to charity is a perfectly acceptable alternative to paying 40% estate tax, and that these charitable institutions will, in effect, do the same or better than the government "in targeted niches".
The most famous of the billionaires have donated their gains to their own private foundations. Now see where those foundations put their money? How many times has Donald Trump funneled 'charity' money through his own businesses for profit? Did he not pay for a portrait of himself and hang it in his own for-profit golf course? Has anyone ever meaningfully been held accountable for these crimes? How much has their endowments swelled? And why should the ultra wealthy be able to save up all their extra cash all their life and then only direct it into the causes they see fit? Basically every example I can think of involves creating 'think tanks' that poison public discourse, buying wings of universities to teach your libertarian philosophy, or vanity projects like the Sackler's many museums. I would LOVE for that money to go into the national debt, a social safety net, or in eliminating taxes for the bottom 90%. After all, the bottom 99.9% are the workers who TRULY created all the wealth in the world.
Now imagine a more intelligent and more overtly anti-government figure like Thiel. You really think a libertarian wouldn't do everything in their power to avoid taxes, even if they explicitly don't want to be charitable with it? The critical issue here isn't that he legally used an IRA. It's that he flagrantly exploited it from his unique position as a startup founder. .0001cents a share is him spitting in the face of any IRS agents that dare attempt to audit him. The fair market price is what he would have paid for, or sold, a single share of his business for at that moment in time. To even pretend it was $1700 is preposterous. You seem to understand exactly why this ought to be illegal, you just think its grey-area 'avoidance' and not criminally defrauding the rest of us taxpayers.
Obviously the line between tax evasion and tax avoidance is extremely muddied, to the point that most journalists don't seem to bother distinguishing, and why should they? If I can donate my own wealth to my own charity that my own children will then run in perpetuity and use as a piggy bank with no repercussions, what is the ethical difference between avoidance and evasion? If I give 20 billion to my own 'charity' and it ends up being worth 30 billion next year, and people of my choosing get to buy goods, services, portraits, trips around the world, etc. with it then how is it ethical?
Moreover, you seem to be flatly missing the leftist perspective here- that 5 billion accumulated over all these years is not a temporary delaying of taxes, but a theft from the workers who produced that capital. Labor is a priori to and independent of capital, and every dollar squirreled away in a bank account represents a dollar not given to the employees who did the work. Those are circulating, meaningful dollars with a far greater multiplier throughout the economy. As inequality grows, economies slow, and everyone suffers. Dollars collected now and aimed at fixing current problems will reduce inequality, and potentially save us from ecological collapse. This doesn't even touch on the fact that most of these billions are only made possible by wildly anti-competitive practices, which I can't call illegal because we haven't done trust busting in years. You seem to waffle between ethics and legality where it is convenient to apologize for the ultra-rich. It is simply not ethical to avoid taxes on 5 billion, even if you do donate it to your libertarian pet projects as seen fit by your children.
It seems like you understand that at its core the tax system is set up with myriad ways to 'legally' but 'unethically' pass on huge sums to your children, but your solution is tinkering with rates. These people are clearly violating the spirit of the laws, often the letter of the laws as well, and the solution involves prison, not fines. I don't care if someone built facebook, if they clearly self-deal to avoid taxes they should face more prison time than someone stealing food to survive.
Also, note how the Pro Publica story calls investments in his own startup a “sweetheart deal” that’s “not available” to most people. Yes, most people don’t start startups and therefore can’t put their own company in an IRA. Shocker.
A better headline would have been: brilliant man turned $2000 investment into $5 billion in around two decades.