eli5 what do people mean when they say billionaires dont get taxed
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Nobody has an *income* of billions of dollars, and the in the US, we tax *income*, not holdings. Billionaires pay taxes on any salaries they get and any capital gains they “earn” by selling assets (in theory at least, ignoring fancy accounting tricks) but what makes them billionaires is usually stock or other property they own, which can increase in value exponentially thousands of times while they own it, but they don’t pay taxes on that wealth unless they sell that asset and it counts as a capital gain.
Remember that rich old man who sold his company to save climate?
He sold 90% of the shares to the climate defense NGO and 10% to his own family’s foundation. Those 10%? They are the control shares so essentially, he kept power of his company within his family.
Why through a foundation and not directly to his children?
Because it’d be taxed 40% out of the $3B. Instead it was about hundreds millions. A drop in the ocean.
Why retaining power?
Because the foundation turns out to be under a special regime where they can invest $ into political campaign without cap, whilst regular NGOs can’t.
In short: 1. the man dodged taxes you and me would pay, 2. turned his business into a $3BILLION worth political influencing/lobbying machine that can literally change the face of the world, 3 gets painted as a climate change hero.
The city he was born in erected a museum for him actually decades ago.
This is what billionaires do: write themselves in history as self made, altruists by getting in control of media.
I’ll never forget how LinkedIn was flooding with adoration and I could sniff how fishy that all was. The. Adage savage posted his video, and yeah. He confirmed my suspicions.
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