re: Dumb f**ks that scream “tax the rich more!”

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I wish I could forget the number 37.

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I wrote off 65k this year and thought I was going to get a decent refund.

I got $2500

1st time I have not had to write a $7500 to 12k check in a long time.

You’re correct, I never said it did, but thank you for clarifying.

You don’t do much research before posting do you?

The top 1-10% pay little to no taxes. They have access to tax strategies and incentives that aren’t as useful to ordinary wage earners.

Borrowing against their companies often. Buy, borrow and die.

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It's $95,000 vs $95,000

The only difference is how it's made: working vs investing

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The problem (well, one problem among several) with your comparison is that the percentage of people who inherit the kind of money you're talking about is low.

Like, 15%.

The other 85% made it on their own. Which means they worked for it.

I'm in that group myself. Retired at 53. And yeah, it rules to be in a bracket in which my money makes enough money for me that I don't have to trade work hours for it anymore. It's like having lifted off into space and not being subject to gravity anymore.

But using that analogy, think about all the energy that is expended at liftoff and sustained for long enough for the rocket to get off the ground, then get up into the air, then pick up enough speed to break free of Earth's gravity.

For a loooooooong time I was the first one to get to the office and the last one to leave. 60-70 hours a week. Weekends and holidays as needed.

I took 100% of the financial risk.

The factory worker you mentioned takes 0% risk and shows up 3 minutes before punch-in time and 3 minutes after punch-out time is already driving home, and he or she won't think about the business again until the next punch-in time.

Those intangibles matter.

If you want to live on what your money earns, take the risk, raise some capital, go into business, spend over a decade and a half working 60-70 hour workweeks building it up, then sell it.

That's what I did.

If you're not willing to do that or something like it, then frick you. You don't deserve to coast. Coasting is for (85%, anyway) people who pedaled hard out of the gate and got ahead.

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The top 1-10% pay little to no taxes.

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That all depends on what you mean by "top 1-10%." The top 1-10% of income earners pay a LOT of taxes. More than the middle class, proportionally. In fact, the top 1% pays over twice as high an effective rate as the middle 20%.

If you're talking about the top 1-10% in terms of wealth, that could be true.

Or it may not be. I don't know where to find numbers on that. Finding numbers on income is easy. Finding numbers on wealth is much harder.

Since you've done the research, maybe you can share where you got your numbers for wealth.

Also, borrowing against securities doesn't exempt anyone from taxes. It just gives them spending money that doesn't require them to liquidate the securities to get. The taxes will still be due when the securities are liquidated. That strategy just delays it.

And, they still have to pay back the loans, plus interest. It's not the free ride you seem to think it is. If the interest rate on the loan is 4% and the securities are appreciating at 10%, they're basically making the choice to retain 6% of the appreciation on that value—for the moment—instead of forgoing it, and to delay the taxes that would be due if they liquidated now for the cash instead.

It's still an advantage, sure, as long as interest rates stay relatively low. But it doesn't mean that they don't pay taxes.

And, it has risks. If the securities borrowed against decrease in value, it can trigger a variety of unpleasant results, such as being forced to sell the securities anyway (at a relative loss), having to put up even more collateral to satisfy the lender, which means tying up more assets, or creating a shortfall that ends up putting you in a position to owe more money even after the securities are sold to pay the loan.

Bernie Sanders screa

Can smell contraband on a prisoner this guy.

Some very easy to find examples for you. Just a few ppl you may know:

Elon Musk

* Public IRS data obtained by ProPublica showed Musk paid $0 in federal income tax in 2018, despite his enormous increase in wealth that year.
* For 2025, we don’t have Musk’s personal tax return, so we can’t reliably say how much he personally paid.
* Tesla is a different story: Tesla reported $0 in current U.S. federal income tax on $5.7 billion of U.S. income in 2025. It used legal provisions including accelerated depreciation, R&D credits, executive stock-option deductions and prior losses.
* Tesla did report $28 million in U.S. cash income-tax payments in 2025, while most of its $1.2 billion worldwide cash tax went to foreign governments.

Jeff Bezos

Bezos has a particularly well-documented example.

ProPublica’s analysis of IRS data found that Bezos paid $0 in federal income tax in both 2007 and 2011. His wealth nevertheless increased dramatically because most of his wealth was held in Amazon stock.

Donald Trump

Congress released his tax returns covering 2015–2020. They showed years in which his federal income-tax liability was very low, including years in which he paid $0 in federal income tax.

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Public IRS data obtained by ProPublica showed Musk paid $0 in federal income tax in 2018, despite his enormous increase in wealth that year.

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Did he have any normal income that year?

What did he pay in capital gains taxes?

How much did he defer in taxes that year?

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Tesla is a different story: Tesla reported $0 in current U.S. federal income tax on $5.7 billion of U.S. income in 2025. It used legal provisions including accelerated depreciation, R&D credits, executive stock-option deductions and prior losses.

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Tesla deferred $434 million in taxes for 2025. You seem to think that deferring taxes means that you don't have to pay them. Just because they didn't pay them in 2025 doesn't mean Tesla won't pay. They will. They are just deferring until later. Just like the people we discussed above.

I'm not bothering to look up the other two b/c it's doubtless the same story. Deferring taxes in any given year is just delaying them. It's not making them go away.

The fact that it doesn't happen every year should clue you into that.

Not to mention, this thread isn't about the wealthiest people on the planet. The OP example given was a guy with between $2.5 million and $3 million.

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Did or didnt they pay taxes

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Yes, they have income tax liability for 2025 and doubtless paid capital gains taxes in 2025.

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that year?

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Yes, the tax liability is for 2025. It will be paid, maybe already has been, but at least the income tax portion was deferred later than 2025.

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Im not gonna argue.

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Probably a very advisable strategy for you.

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Anyone wealthy can do similar strategies though.

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Anybody at all can do it. You don't have to be wealthy.

You could take out another mortgage on your house if it's appreciating fast enough or borrow against your 401k and do the same thing. Just take out the loan, and as long as the assets you borrowed against are appreciating faster than the interest on the loan, you're golden. Spend that loan all you want, and no taxes will ever be due on that loan money.

Of course, just like everybody else who does this, regardless of how wealthy they are, then you have to pay back the loan. So you'll either have to sell the house or liquidate all or part of your 401k—which will trigger capital gains taxes on it—or you could pay it back out of your salary, which you pay income tax on, or, if they have appreciated enough during the course of the year you could take out an even bigger loan to pay back the original loan.

Some people do that until they die and then their estate pays the taxes. At a much higher rate than they would have if they'd paid them while they were alive.

But the taxes always get paid. You don't avoid them by doing this. You only defer them.

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Did or didnt they pay taxes that year?

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DUKE87? I'm presenting "Duke" is a reference to John Wayne, not the school.

It is evident you didn't really understand what you were talking about. Then you decided to double down?

An ad says "You can buy this appliance with $0 down, and no payments due for the first year." You apparently think that means the appliance is free. I'd bet you get "great deals" by deferring your credit card payments as well.