this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
1307 points (97.0% liked)
News
23312 readers
3966 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's what they currently do. All of them. That's the whole point in them owning/investing in a business. That's how they sidestep so many taxes. Aside from a few (relatively) toys and houses, do you really think Musk or Bezos keep billions on hand in liquid form or physically owned objects?
I have a friend with parents that owned their own business that wasn't really all that large. It had a net profit of maybe $450,000 per year. They paid themselves enough to do whatever they wanted to that year, and the company "reinvests" the rest. It's all a shell game to avoid taxes. They did it by buying real estate for the company to 'eventually' grow on, but just put five cows on and got themselves agricultural exemptions on taxes, then sold the land later. Repeat x100. That money from the sale could be shuffled into other 'company' assets. That's super small time. They didn't have fancy lawyers or investing agents to help.
Big, rich, asshole business does it by buying back stock, diversifying (do you really think the big contractor company wants to own a grocery store chain, or a bank wants to own restaurants?) into assets that can just be sold later to recoup the money, etc.
Owning a business is all about tax avoidance. An individual doesn't have many ways to pump up deductions on taxes, but businesses have so many different avenues that even the IRS throws up their hands at some point. Requiring an individual to "put the rest into" their business won't change anything, and god knows the economy improving is only going to help a small portion of society. That portion isn't the portion that needs help.
Also, truthfully, I'd lower your number to $10,000,000. It's enough to live on even in the ritziest of areas, in the fanciest of houses that aren't mansions, and is still more per year than the highest of the middle-class will earn in their lives.