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by groot2581 1205 days ago
I don't get the enthusiasm for raising money from corporate income taxes versus individual income tax. Mr. Rich Moneybags pays the same corporate income taxes per share of Berkshire as Joe Schmoe, whose entire retirement pot might be a single BRK.A.
3 comments

Mr. Rich Moneybas probably pays no personal income tax, and certainly pays a lower effective rate than Joe Schmoe.

Taking the tax money as corporate tax means they end up paying the same percentage, without Moneybags’ CPA leveraging shell companies and loopholes to avoid tax than Schmoe pays.

Rich moneybags never has to sell. He can just take out a margin loan and skip the taxes.
Surely you can't loan into infinity and have to sell at some point to start paying off the debt.
Suppose I have 100 million in my investment portfolio and a 5% interest rate. I want to buy a house for $10 million. So I withdraw 2 million in cash and get a margin loan for 2 million so I don't have to sell any securities. I take the 2 million in cash, get a mortgage for 8 million, and buy the house. On average the market returns 7%. So my $100 million portfolio is earning $7 million per year less the loan interest of 100k which comes to $6.9M. After 2 years I pay off the mortgage and repay the margin loan. I now have a house and I didn't have to pay any taxes on my securities to buy it.

What if the market goes down? Well, I just wait for it to go back up again. I can easily afford to wait, my margin of safety is huge. Since the margin loan is for 2 million, and I need a 50% margin of safety by law, then the portfolio value would need to decline to 2 million (98% decline) before my loan gets called.

"...and don't call me Shirley"
Because of the class difference between working/labor and capital owning classes. One has a hedge against bad decisions based on the backs and labor of the other.