| You concentrated on Jeff Bezos' taxes. I should have been more specific. What each individual billionaire pays (or not) in taxes, depends on his nationality, current residence and the specifics of his income. But avoinding taxes happens at every level: avoid company profit taxes, avoid company VAT (or even do VAT returns fraud), avoid import taxes, avoid individual income taxes, avoid VAT on goods that the billionaire buys, avoid property taxes (both individual and company property), avoid luxury taxes, get income from non-taxed sources, etc. There are probably hundreds more ways to avoid taxes than an ordinary person like me can imagine. > If you want Jeff Bezos to pay taxes on the value of Amazon (which is the measure by which he is a billionaire) you basically force him to sell Amazon. How else can he pay the taxes? So? Don't we all sell our work to pay taxes? I live in east-Eurpean country. Currently, aprox. half of my work value (as eval'd by my employer) goes to taxes and mandatory services provided by the state (health, pension fund, etc.). How much did he pay? Taxes vs declared income don't make much sense for a billionaire. I wish we could know the value of the goods and services he got (paid or free, as in "this is the company's car, not mine") in a year, vs. his taxes. > pay taxes on the value of Amazon AFAIK, there are no taxes on the value of a company, except maybe property taxes in some places. > This has to be solved from the bottom up, not from the top down. Mostly true, but not enough. Creating extremely wealthy individuals should be avoided, because money brings power and power influences politics/policy, including (or especially) bottom-up reforms. To take Amazon as an example: I suspect the management would do anything to avoid a minimum wage increase or improving working conditions. |