[mullingitover]

> Politically, it sounds great to say, "Make the corporations pay their share!", but who exactly are we targeting with these taxes? Is it the rich executives? Why not just raise taxes on the rich directly?

Pretty basic megarich person accounting: You realize zero income, you just hold a lot of valuable assets, and you pay no taxes.

"But surely they must have some income to live on!" you argue.

Nope, you get a $10 million loan backed by your assets. You spend that loan, which is not income, tax free. When the time comes to pay back that loan, obviously the next move is to get a $20 million loan. You can keep rolling these loans tax-free until you die. "Aha, now the estate pays the taxes!" except there are a multitude of other loopholes for evading inheritance taxes.

On paper and at first glance it seems like everything is fair (which is the goal, to seem fair), but only the most incompetent ultra-wealthy person is pulling anything close to their own weight when it comes to taxes.

[dantheman]

Except that doesn't happen?

Bezos paid 973 Million in taxes [1], note that article conflates income and wealth in a truly economic illiterate way.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/irs-records-show-wealt...

[mullingitover]

Bezos is playing it pretty straight, but then again 973 million is basically pocket change for him, also let's not forget about the year he paid zero taxes and got a refund:

> Bezos filed a tax return in 2011 reporting he lost money because of bad investments, allowing him to claim and receive a $4,000 tax credit for his children, according to ProPublica.

Anway Bezos is far from the only mega-rich person, for example from that article you cite:

> Another wealthy person whose tax data ProPublica obtained was Carl Icahn, the activist investor who built his wealth through corporate takeovers. He paid zero income taxes in 2016 and 2017, partly because he was able to deduct interest expenses on loans from his “adjusted gross income,” ProPublica said.

[dantheman]

When looking at a single year for people who have losses and expenses it can paint quite a misleading picture. Over 10 years how much did they pay, is a much better question.

[mullingitover]

How about not paying taxes 10 out of 15 years[1]?

Honestly I get it, and I can argue both sides of this debate. However, for the regular working person who pays taxes year in and year out to hear that people who live in stratospheric luxury aren't paying taxes: it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and by duck I mean rigged system.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/27/politics/trump-income-taxes-n...

[dantheman]

Trump is a notoriously bad business man who loses money. If you're living if savings which is what happens when you lose money, then there is no tax bill. I'm not discounting fraud, but there is active disinformation on this - propublica mixing wealth totals and income tax just one of many intentional misleading arguments.

[mullingitover]

Again, I understand the argument you're making, but it still on its face looks like a rigged system. Trump isn't living in poverty and his generational tax fraud scheme was pretty well documented a few years ago[1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...