its ALL about your freaking income. And what little you do to reap it.

like we do a tax financed government that does the job its supposed to do.

Thinking otherwise makes us the recipients of Bill and Malinda's trickle down, which may be "generous" in some naive sense, is also singular when compared to other gazillionaires "generosity", they aren't doing it. He doesn't donate here in the US to a level of where his taxes ought to and even if they did equal out, when do US citizens get to chose where we each send our taxes - WTF should Bill and Melinda get to do it?????????

Last edited Wed Feb 13, 2019, 09:47 PM - Edit history (1)

need to be taxed. Not just income. Did you read the article?

Oh I see some dividends are included as income and others not. At least in canada I think.

but they are both taxed. Essentially, stocks held longer have dividends taxed at a lower rate.

You can have both.

Based on headline I expected to see that he was bashing on AOC, but that’s just slanted CNBC editing. Look at this quote:

GENERATION, he is saying, instead of discouraging it, and that taxes on existing wealth aren’t as vulnerable to tax dodges As income taxes.

And he is absolutely on the side of wealth redistribution, just points out that it is another job to be done in addition to getting rid of the new ultra wealthy classes.

As for Reference to extremism, I’m not sure he has been misunderstood, Only restated more explicitly.
After all, Brand New Congress’s main goal all by itself identifies them as unmistakably and proudly extremist. They want to purge the choices of The vast majority ofDemocratic voters. Ambitious little nest of disrespectful creeps.

The man who funded a charitable foundation with much of his fortune is advocating for a plan more like Elizabeth Warren's -- not just taxing annual income but ASSETS as well.

Amazing isn't it? So many people are quick to post insults and they didn't even read the full article and see that Bill Gates, who together with Warren Buffett have combined their fortune in a foundation to do good and even limit how much their children inherit, is actually supporting the Green Deal from Ocasio, but are advocating that it in fact needs to go a step further similar to what Warren is proposing and tax actual wealth and the way the weathy make their money.

I have a friend for example whose husband gets over $50 million annually - essentially tax free in distributions. He doesn't get an income from his "units" (aka shares) yet he takes distributions and even loans against the value of the units and he has many offshore accounts. He pays taxes through the 10-K filings, but its a joke in terms of a percentage of the income and what his net worth is. It should be criminal, but it isn't or its in a "grey" area.....

Bill Gates is spot on....sad that people just want to post attacks and don't understand what he is advocating is correct....

wealthy people have an ability to control their income stream to avoid taxes that the working poor do not.

Liz Warren is on to something when she wants to tax wealth.

Oh, and the captital gains tax rates are stupid.

Were you another one who didn't read beyond the headline?

the status quo would have to be extreme or radical."

He asserted that AOC's plan wouldn't address the fact that most of the wealth rich people have doesn't come in the form of reportable income. So AOC's suggested high tax rate wouldn't solve the problem.

Instead, Gates was talking about putting into place some taxes on ASSETS -- which is a plan much more like Elizabeth Warren's

He said that higher rates of taxation on income will lead to tax dodging. Well, taxing wealth will also lead to tax dodging as well. Nobody really wants to pay all the taxes they owe, the problem, as always, is that the wealthy can truly avoid paying their share of the societal tax burden whereas the rest of us cannot.

If the wealthy want to move assets or hide income outside of the US, then there should be a penalty. If they refuse to pay what it costs to have a functioning society, then they can go live somewhere else.

He’s actually focused on more effective ways to tax the wealthy and more effective ways to reduce inequality. Because the wealthy can grow wealth in ways that aren’t taxed as ordinary income.

and Bezos paid himself less than $100,000/yr at Amazon.

(His base salary is actually quite modest: $81,840 a year.)

that millions over $1.

$1 dollar salary my ass.

If he sells some. Then he pays a capital gains tax, just like you do when you sell a house for more than you paid for it. In fact, with Musk if most of his net worth is in shares of Tesla, that’s the only way he gets income from those shares, as Tesla stock does not currently pay a dividend

Gates is making a valid point.

All of them get paid in stock. In face THE VAST MAJORITY of their annual salary is in stock. Let's say Bezos makes $90,000 salary but gets deferred compensation of $65 million. The $90,000 would be taxed immediately at the taxrate for $90,000, maybe 22-25%. The $65 million does not get taxed because it was not realized as income. Then Bezos holds the stock for 2 years and one month, then sells $25 million worth and pays a capital gains tax that is much lower than 22%. All he has to do is go through that two or three times and he has most of $50-75 million in clear money, while he still has $120 million in stock that can't be touched by taxes.

Senator Warren's plan gets after that $120 million, AOC's plan does nothing to touch it.

retirement.

You could put a limit on the amount of capital gains income that can be taxed at the capital gains rate; say $250K for a single person and double that for a couple. Anything beyond that would be taxed like wages. It still wouldn't affect many people, but it would keep a hedge funder from having millions in income and only paying 20%. Capital gains beyond that maximum should be subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes as well, if you ask me. Why should a hedge funder or a trust fund kid never contribute a dime to SS and Medicare?

I think there should be wealth and estate taxes too. I also think profitable companies should reimburse the federal government for any food stamps, EIC, and other taxpayer funded assistance; every damn penny.

For instance, if you had $500,000 in stock that was outside a retirement plan and I had the same $500,000 in a retirement. Say both sets of stock got sold. You could chose to take $200,000 as pocket money, I would not have that choice at all. You should get taxed at a rate higher than the current Capital Gains rate while I should not have to pay a dime until I retire and start drawing on the money.

Far less mobility.

Elizabeth Warren’s idea about a 2% tax on wealth over $50 M, and 3% on wealth over $1 Billion. I hated the idea at first but I’m warming up to it. It really is a sensible way to fund government and begin to reverse the slide toward an impoverished, ugly dystopia.

A housing asset has always been in a different class because of it's basic purpose. Commercial real estate assets are somewhat more sketchy, a lot of tax abuse occurs on that area.

Gates seemed to have supported Senator Warren's plan. The Senator's plan actually comes closer to touching on the problem.

For the privilege of using my $400,000 to pay the prior owners of an asset called a house which will not yield a cash stream of dividends, I get to pay $8,000 in property taxes.

Warren Buffett or Charles Koch or the opioids heirs (Stadlers?) pay the prior owners of part of a capital asset called a company $400,000 which will yield a cash stream of dividends, and they pay nothing in taxes.

We're not just coming for your declarable income boys...
we're gonna get your capital gains as well. How does forty-five percent sound?

The bigger the amount, the larger the tax.

I’d hate to see a elderly couple sell their home for a profit and get taxed at 45 pct.

Anything held longer than 1 year, or the "carried interest" of hedge fund managers, is taxed at a maximum rate of 20%.

Alternately, they could change the Alternate Minimum Tax laws and quit letting corporations tax so much foreign tax credits. Netflix had $845 Million on profits in 2017 but actually got a tax rebate of $20 Million because of foreign tax credits. That's bullshit.

Much of what she's talking about used to be standard policies in democracies.

Gates point is most wealthy get more wealth from ways that would not fall under income tax. That you need to tax in other ways like estate taxes and hedge funds.

Look more closely. “An apparent reference to...”
CNBC is stirring up false narratives.

Gates’s comments are supportive of wealth taxes, and he is clarifying why “tax brackets” are not the main issue.

He is right.

especially unearned wealth.

Read it in it's entirety.

it's a valid point that a lot depends on what *counts* as "income".

our present system is fubar in no small part because we tax different income differently.

income from actual wages and salary, which for most people comes from actual work, is taxed at the potentially highest rates.

income derived from wealth, such as dividends and realized capital gains, are taxed at a much smaller rate.

income derived from wealth on paper, such as unrealized capital gain (your stock went up, but you haven't sold it yet) isn't taxed at all.


stupid right-wing arguments notwithstanding, there's no good reason to tax different types of income differently. all it does is encourage those who can (i.e., the wealthy) shift their earnings to be in the form that gets better tax treatment and screw the people who can't shift things around like that (i.e., the rest of us who work for a living).

dividends and capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. stock and other investments with a liquid trading market should be market-to-market at the end of the year so people pay income tax as they go. no good reason to encourage people to refuse to sell a particular investment just because it's gone up in value.


the only problem is how to handle investments for which there isn't a liquid market. it has to be done in a way that doesn't encourage the wealthy to just hoard something like art and hide it.

non-qualified dividends are taxed as ordinary income, yes.


oversimplifying a lot, but to be a qualified dividend, mostly it has to be a dividend from a u.s. company and you have to have held the stock for at least 60 days around the ex-dividend date.

though they very likely have qualified dividend income from other holdings.

as for their main holdings and earnings, they're mainly treated as capital gains, or will be treated as capital gains when they eventually sell. in the meanwhile, they're not taxed at all on the booming value of their stock as long as they don't sell.

people like that can also structure their compensation to get paid with things like stock options and deferred salary and so on in order to avoid or defer taxes or reduce their effective rate.

they should be taxed more and Gates has got a point about taxing the estate not income over a certain amount.

His point was income versus carried interest type income and stock or Trusts transfers as income. The tax rate on those is very low if they are held for a certain time period. The tax rate on income is immediate.

What it all means is that super rich people skate free while the business person that is building a business and gets to $10 million+ per year in gross income gets hit hard by AOC's plan, that makes growing the business more impossible because the resources to grow the business and pay bonuses to employees come from the gross margin above 50%. If most of the residuals over 50% goes to taxes, the business ceases to grow and bonuses to all employees stop.

I really, really wish that people that are doing backflips over 70% taxation of income over $10 million would try running a business where they were responsible for paying all the bills and sustaining the business, that really changes a person's perspective.

I would prefer seeing stock transfers taxed and passthru income to Trusts taxed at a higher rate than current. A lot of tax revenue would be shaken out from that. As far as operating enterprises are concerned, I believe raising the higher tax threshold to kick in in the $50-$100 gross income range then have it gradually increase for more gross income would provide a lot of new tax revenue, but would not retard desirable business growth.

A business owner wouldn’t be subjected to that. Unless they weren’t smart in how they were paying themselves

The reason why Republican's do so well with most business owners is that most of the small ones and even some big ones are sole proprietors that would suffer at very high tax rates, they would not be able to grow the business.

Senator Warren has a much smarter plan, as Gates alluded to, even though he did not call out her name.

There are tricks that people can play with Trusts to shield income from taxation. That is a problem that AOC does not address, but Senator Warren does. I don't expect much of the Trust stuff to get hit much, there are some legitimate reasons for passing income through to a Trust, say a business owner wanted to set up future Trust income for relatives but have the trust pay out only a small amount of that in distributions to those relatives so that most of the Trust money carry forward into the future.

at least for c-corps, you only pay taxes on the net profit, after expenses like labor costs.

a high tax rate gives a disincentive to take profits out of a business and gives an incentive to reinvest that money in things like new equipment or bonuses because business deductions become more valuable at a higher tax rate.

business *owners* prefer low tax rates because they can take home more of the profits.

businesses themselves do better with higher tax rates because owners keep more of the profits in the business and build a bigger and better business. eventually that benefits the owner as well, of course, but it steers the owner into a course they might not personally have preferred.

If a business is doubling in growth, the money it saves from depreciating existing income is not enough to cover growth. Also structures that hold that equipment contribute nothing to reserve funds. Say a machine costs $1 million installed and operational. Standard depreciation tables allow a piece of that $1 million to be depreciated, say $250,000. But if the business doubled, the owner would need to come up with $1 million and find space for the new machine + the owner would need to buy raw materials that allow that new machine to help double output. Where is he or she going to get the $750,000+ and pay taxes on the gross margin above 50%, selling pencils on a street corner? The gross margin above 50% allows the owner some room to grow the business, fast growing businesses need a gross margin that is as high as possible, and they can get away with that because the growth means high demand for their output. A more mature business that is not investing in new equipment and materials can get a gross margin just above 50% and survive, a young fast growing business can't.

What should happen is that if businesses claim new equipment and resources investments, they should face a physical audit that confirm that they actually reinvested income after taxes and did not pocket it.

to cover most income, so I suspect not.

By the way, this reminds me that President Obama was able to increase the personal income tax rates on the wealthy back to pre- Reagon levels. And he was able to do this In spite of a Republican Congress.

The wealthy “earn” off capital, not income.

Has anyone read Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century?

nt

I’m not sure I understand the extreme comment in context with the rest of what he says. Historically Gates does not use hyperbole but he seems to have with that. Simple. Shallow. Lacking a full understanding. Those would have fit better than extreme. Either way it’s nice to have someone like Gates and AOC openly talking about increasing taxes in a progressive manner.

He is advocating for reform, in that wealthy will have a larger burden. He is pointing out loopholes that would be used if a plan focused on income.

That being said, all proposals are high level, so calling out an idea as extreme is a tad dickish.

so i left it in.

First thing I did was to search "Extreme," It wasn't just the title, is seems that he said it, so for that we can call out his dickishness.

in Gates idea to tax the wealthy where their actual accumulation of wealth is.

See the same thing with candidate announcements and AOC, everyone is quick to jump on the negatives. I have got to the point that I don't read about 10 to 20% of posts due to the circular firing squad tendencies of too many dems.

Her 70% marginal tax rate idea was more of a publicity stunt than a serious tax reform policy. Real tax reform must address all of the ways that income is earned.

She is clearly the smarter of the two.

her extreme?

of this article. Maybe he meant extreme because of AOC's Green New Deal or something.

a wealth tax is a good idea it is a property tax but a high income tax bracket is very important to keep wealth in the businesses. A tax on stock market transactions could slow this computer driven buying and selling craziness. If we raise the SS limit SS would expand and help more people for a long time. We must do these things.

by mainstream Democrats, both now and long before. Outside groups who seek power have to differentiate themselves with simple answers that inspire anxious people to turn to them for solutions.

You can find a link to the podcast in here.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/12/18220756/bill-gates-tax-rate-70-percent-marginal-modern-monetary-theory

The tax rate and monetary theory is just a small part of an interesting interview about his annual philanthropic letter.

He talked about empowering girls and women, and a little bit about the need for understanding anger in boys and young men.

My net worth is pretty substantial, by American averages. But I've managed to get Obamacare since its inception virtually free. Why? Because politicians don't know wtf they're doing, that's why. Just as Bill Gates says, these government programs should be asset-based rather than income-based.

They expressed the same position on how best to tax the wealthy. Regular income is not enough.
Need to tax their investment and also bring back the estate tax.

Nickel and diming poor people is a waste of time and money - besides being heartless. Gazillionaires should be happy to contribute to the country that allowed them to become filthy rich. I guess I don't understand the megawealthy. How many billions do they have to amass before they have enough? What can you do with your 40th billion that you can't do with your first billion?

for poor people 4 times a year. But send your tween to the mall with $100 bucks and $7 of that goes to pay for things like healthcare or other government programs.