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In France, the ministry of Economics just announced that 13000 millionaires did not pay income tax in 2025 ... and our social security (health insurance, jobless minimun income, etc) was founded on the principle of taxing the wealthy. So they (liberals) now say that social security is not working as intended and the state should delegate these things to "for profit" organizations ... for "efficiency"
Buy borrow die is a very real economic strategy.
Acquire assets, never sell them, use them as collateral for bank loans, use that capital as collateral for further bank loans. Never sell, no capital gains tax.
Bank loans aren't considered income therefore not subject to being taxed.
Die rich, your kids inherit the money Scott free.
Don’t the unpaid loans get collected from the estate upon death, and the inheritors get whatever is left?
Still a tax dodge, but sounds like the wealth would reduce each generation?
I also still agree capital concentration is still occurring. Probably due to those loans getting used for excessive gains on the stock market. But those buys and sells would trigger capital gains tax.
Again not saying I’m ok with all this wealth concentration, just feels like a lot of nuance is missing here.
I was being concise so as to keep the comment short. But I recommend you look into it. It's a very real thing and it's completely legal.
They set up LLCs in Nevis, a tiny island nation that doesn't disclose who owns what business. The filthy rich use these mailbox businesses to buy real estate, and launder money. None of it can be traced back to them.
They also inexplicably all have grand pianos.
they have tax accountants, legal advisors plus they squirrel away money to foreign banks, like swiss, deustche bank.
Henry Ford said, "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
There are high security warehouses that lease space to store billionaires' art collections. That's one of the "banks" they use.
The percentage of sociopaths involved with creating a society should never be greater than zero.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
this is also pretty good vulnerability, should people start to think at somepoint that maybe billionaires shouldnt have all the wealth in the world. I wonder how the ones who have loaned them money would feel if the asset they have loaned the money for would just.. go away.
Any person should consider billionaires like foreign occupation, though the occupation consists the entire planet. Maybe we shouldn't eat the rich, but eat their art collections.
Yep.
Saw a vid about doing that recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsDsDqIxgfg
And when I searched for that again just now, saw there are dozens of others too, about "borrow until you die" and similar. "Tax is for the poor" they say.
So much for progressive tax system.
The whole system (not just the tax system) is broken by design.
Yup, search for "Buy borrow die" and there are various articles about the technique.
This is basically urban legend at this point; "buy borrow die" is a tiny piece of the ultra-wealthy's financial strategy, at least when it comes to the "borrow" part, which is what everyone's focused on:
In reality, the ultra wealthy do not borrow against a large fraction of their unsold gains. On average from 2004 to 2022, the top 1% of wealth-holders only borrowed 1-2% of their annual economic income.
Borrowing while holding unrealized gains is, in fact, more of a middle-class activity than an ultra-wealthy one: Americans in the 50-90th percentiles borrowed 42% of their unrealized gains in 2022, compared to just 4% for the top 1% of wealth-holders.
The primary tax avoidance strategy for the top 1% is not to borrow, but simply not to sell appreciated assets.
Tax portfolio loans over a certain amount. That’s pretty much it. Sure, there will need to be some moving parts beyond that, but basically if you treat a loan as an income rather than something like a primary residence purchase in the buyer’s own name, it gets taxed.
I think the 'unrealized assets' should be taxed as 'realized' if they are used as collateral. Yes, it would affect the reverse mortgages and such, or home equity loans, but fuck it, I'd take those relatively small pains against the massive societal gains.
Reverse Mortgages are usually predatory anyway, so more scrutiny and regulation isn't a bad thing.
The oligarchs in the US are the utlimate power behind the destruction of our democracy. They have stolen the wealth from us for decades. And yet so many of our citizens defend them because they might be rich one day. Which they won't. Because the ultrarich already there won't let them.
Guillotines are long overdue.
One word: Land value tax.
Every time I see a post like this I am disappointed that NO ONE mentions Henry George.
People, please, go educate yourself. Taxes were solved before ww1.
The devs never patched the infinite money glitch.
Coincidentally, I saw an article entitled "Buy, Borrow, Die". If you don't need to have a salary paying job (so not applicable to almost everyone I know or have ever met), you buy an asset let it grow, refinance it (borrowings grow), spend the money you borrowed (tax free) some for more assets, some for pleasure. Rinse and repeat until you die with a shitload of debt that then gets wiped out.
There actually is an estate tax after death:
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/estate-tax
Right now it only kicks in after 15 million. A decade ago it was still 5 million. But it doubles to 30 million for a couple.
For the really wealthy people, they need to pay to obfuscate the rest of the money thru trusts and offshore banking, which they'd rather not to pay to do.
Which is why they're still pushing to raise the cap every year.