Related: Robert Reich posted earlier today that Tesla paid ZERO taxes on $5 billion in sales (earnings?), so that’s just fucking great.
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During the previous administration, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $80 billion for IRS to hire more people to go after the rich. The CBO estimated that it would collect $200 billion in the next decade, but there were other predictions of $560 billion.
Trump reversed all of that. Elon Musk and DOGE fired 1/3 of the IRS work force.
But you know, both sides are the same, right?
Correct. Their donors allowed only a temporary, token gesture they knew could be immediately undone.
Dems get to look like they did something, Rs get to look like they did something, no actual progress is made, and the march of tyranny continues.
Oh for fucks sake you people.
Material facts are never inconvenient for those seeking truth.
Yeah, dont you just hate it when those pesky workers expect a government that represents their interests? Can’t they just accept the two parties that are captured by the same corporate interests and be happy? The nerve of them…
it’s almost like the rich are the ones actually running the country
The issue afaik is that Jeff bezos’s $200B is in assets like stocks, and the buy borrow die strategy of getting loans using assets as collateral lets rich people spend money without actually cashing in said assets which would trigger capital gains taxes. Idk how to stop this prevalent strategy but between that and the corporate tax system ignoring money that goes back into the company letting corporations invest their profits to ignore taxes that’s why so few taxes are collected on those groups. Feel free to correct anything inaccurate.
Seems pretty simple to me. Tax the collateral loans as income. And don’t allow the interest repaid to be tax deductible.
Be better to ban loans on financial assets. These are loans against stocks/bonds etc that they commonly use. In order to get a loan it has to be against a physical asset. Also set firm limits to how much any physical asset can be leveraged.
Tax wealth the same way it’s already taxed with estate and inheritance taxes. If the person doesn’t have enough liquidity, they can sell the assets, like regular people already have to do often to pay the estate taxes.
I think an easy solution could be to start seizing anything over something like 100 million total value, with the value updating once every few years (otherwise people dumping their houses and stock would trigger devaluation enabling them to keep more than they should)
you pass a law to stop it. there are many active variations of how to tax such things that come with various benefits and drawbacks.
Pro tips:
Many jurisdictions don’t require you to have a business license if your revenue is under a certain threshold and the work you do is unregulated. Basically, you can just decide you own a business at any time without filling out any paperwork.
Housecleaning, auto mechanic, and IT consulting businesses aren’t regulated and can be used to justify 90% of common purchases. A YouTube channel is a business and can be used to write off anything you make a video about.
Any major purchases you made throughout the year can be declared as an asset of your business. If you say you only use it for business 50% of the time, it’s practically impossible for anyone to disprove.
Also, 50% of the money you spend on those major purchases can be declared as a business loss, which further reduces your tax obligation.
So, let’s say you bought a PC and a 3D printer this year. You can decalre both as assets belonging 50% to your business, declare half the cost as a business expense, and declare no income from the business. You can also declare half of your gas purchases as being for your business. You’ll get a credit for the asset, and a credit for the “business loss.”
Basically, you can create a company that has your home address as its HQ, say it didn’t earn any money, but you invested in it. Then, declare ordinary purchases as assets and investments into the company by saying you use them for business 50% of the time.
There’s no requirement to have a business license before telling the IRS you have a business. There’s no requirement to run a business “well” and there’s no penalty for running a business badly. Receipts aren’t required to declare assets or losses, but you may need them if you’re audited. You’re unlikely to be audited due to the 50% declaration. If you are audited and you have receipts, you’re covered.
Disclaimer: I’m not a tax professional and this isn’t advice.
I fell like the disclaimer should really be at the top. Specially because it is very geographically dependant and this is the internet.
Maybe. On the other hand, if you choose to act on unreliable or incomplete information, that’s on you.
Part of being a responsible adult is understanding the law and how it applies to you in any situation in which you may find yourself, BEFORE you make up your mind what you’re going to do.
I do programming as a hobby, and it’s not out of the question that some day I’ll make something that will be sold. Can I claim my gaming PC and my homelab as business expenses? As well as my electricity and intenet?
As far as I understand tax law (which isn’t very far), when filling out your Schedule C, you can write off 50% of the cost of the PC and lab equipment without raising too much suspicion. You can also claim them as assets and claim depreciation on them. You can also claim the portion of electricity and internet used, unless you’re a full-time W-2 employee working from home.
You can also film yourself doing these projects and upload it to YouTube, which means you have a video production business.
My understanding is this is how most upper-middle class people and minor millionaires legitimately reduce their tax obligations.
I’m not an expert on tax, but I can tell you from personal experience that for the company that I run, with me being the only employee, I claim anything related to the business. The grey area is what percentage it’s used for the business, I’m not sure on that part. I have a separate laptop I use for the business and when I purchased it I claimed it 100 percent. Like stated though keep your receipts to cover your ass.
The 2025 Big Beautiful Bill lets you write off 100% of the expense on the year you purchase it, instead of depreciating it over several years. Make big purchases, pay less tax dollars to this government.
Disclaimer: I am not an accountant or financial advisor, do your own homework to see what qualifies in your situation.
I feel like this is all well and good until you need insurance. If you damage something and get sued without insurance/LLC, they’re suing you directly instead. Dicey territory depending on what you’re being sued for.
Assuming you’re actually doing work and not just using the business as a loss center, yes.
If you’re actually doing work, it’s well worth your time and money to form an LLC.
However, an LLC can’t deduct the same things as a sole-proprietorship. So, if you simply want a business on paper to serve as a loss center, that’s probably the better choice.
Again, this is just MY understanding of things. I’m in no way trying to give advice or tell you what YOU should be doing, only you can decide what’s best for you.
shit I should have claimed my laptop
If you’ve already filed, you can still do an amended return
Income is the worst way to make money.
Which is why these rich clowns don’t make (relatively) much money. All of it is capital gains and loans. Taxed far less and not at all, especially when it’s routed through all sorts of expenses and shell companies.
Well how else are they going to subsidize the losses of the rich if not with your dollars?
Rules for thee, not for me
Don‘t elect pro capital governments, then.
Which one of the 2 parties is that?
I’m all for corporations and the wealthy paying their fair share of taxes, which they often don’t.
However, revenue is not income and gains on investments are unrealized gains until you sell your shares and withdraw the cash.
If I’m reading Tesla’s income statement correctly, they expect to pay something like $1.4B in taxes on $5.2B in income for 2025. Figures calculated using fuzzy pre-coffee math in my head and may not reflect any reasonable accounting standards
I think people are upset about that loophole. Businesses buy yachts, trips around the world and bribing politicians for their owners and the common person is just trying to not die.
Like, I get it. Tax the billionaires out of existence, but I am pretty certain the bracket at which you’re paying 25% in taxes is income over 100k.
Nope! 36,000 gross and 27%.
$36000 would owe about $6k in federal taxes, or about 17% total across the brackets. That’s including deductions for social security and all. I know some states have income taxes, but those are state taxes, not US taxes. Do any of those push people into the 27% range at that income level?
Completely unnecessary with the lack of high income taxes or wealth taxes nonetheless.
It’s really gross to me how people misrepresent taxes so often.
And especially people who I KNOW aren’t complaining about OASDI and Medicare, other than perhaps they need MORE funding. Yet they include those when they toss out random numbers like “25%”.
The tax rates are defined and published. These aren’t fuzzy numbers we can play with, like survey results or experimental measurements or estimates. It’s literally just math and yet people refuse to do it.
Hell, my in-laws continue to itemize their deductions in amounts less than the standard. They think they’ll get audited of they don’t. I’ll never understand it and I cannot go over it again with them for my own sake.
Offer to do their taxes for them. Pocket the difference. Better it go to you than the IRS.
17% is still 17x more tax burden than Bezos or musk pays.
Well, sort of since they tend to get it down to 0, which is sort of an undefined or infinite amount more any taxpayer pays.
I’m just hoping people aren’t overpaying their taxes by improperly deducting, which someimes seems to be the case with how taxes are referred.
What if I told you it’s possible to tax assets you own, not just money you earn?
Wealthy people make money by simply collecting interest off of owned assets. You and I are the ones who must earn income by selling our labor. By taxing income and not assets, poor people are forced to subsidize the existence of the wealthy.
Is it imperative you’re miserable and barely scraping by. Top 1 priority. Actually, it’s in your best interest, but you just don’t realize it!
I don’t understand the humour in this
So funny!
But but you can’t tax the Holy Job Creators! /s
the jobs they create :
“Pack all this shit into a box so fast that you need to piss in a bottle”
Y’all know earnings on corporations are taxed twice, right? Sole proprietorships - taxed once, partnerships - taxed once.
I mean, I’m all for it, fuck corps, they are a funnel for profits at the expense of everything else in society, but let’s put the hate where deserved, like the fact that the government treats them as a fucking (morally bankrupt) limited liability person, rather than just pointing out some voodoo economics financial accounting trick that probably won’t ever change so long as the rules allow them to exist.
They should be taxed twice, and we could surely say they are, but being taxed and actually paying taxes are two very different things in the U.S. tax setup.
Then tax them four times.
