> Myth No. 1: The rich don’t pay their fair share

> The top 1% of earners take in 22% of total income and pay 40% of all federal income taxes.

How misleading. Income here means AGI, i.e. taxable income as defined by the IRS. That excludes unrealized capital gains, loans against said unrealized capital gains, etc. For example, Elon Musk’s AGI was $0 in 2018 despite a massive increase in net worth. Wouldn’t call that his fair share.

> Myth No. 2: We’ll fix the budget deficit by taxing the rich

> We simply cannot. The collective net worth of every American billionaire is estimated at somewhere around $8 trillion. The projected federal deficit over the next decade alone approaches $25 trillion. Even a one-time total confiscation of every billionaire’s wealth wouldn’t come close, and you only get to do it once.

Hilarious argument. Suddenly it’s billionaires instead of the previously mentioned top 1%. Their estimated net worth is more like 40 to 50 trillion. Not to mention how much that wealth is expected grow in the next 10 years.

The entire article is similarly underhanded and clearly meant to mislead. Or perhaps to reinforce the views of readers who already agreed and weren’t going to think critically anyways. Doesn’t take a genius to guess who paid for it.

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chriogenix 20 hours ago | parent [-]

unrealized capital gains ≠ income.

	▲	jfengel 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But they are part of your net worth. If somebody who becomes richer every year, passively, has "no income", then the definition of income does not match people's intuition about what constitutes fair targets for taxation. There is a good case to be made to tax wealth rather than income, which comes closer to people's intuition about what's fair.
	▲	foltik 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Excellent observation, and this is the entire problem. They pledge their unrealized capital gains as collateral for billions in loans, spend the cash, and pay single-digit interest instead of income tax. Repeat until they die, then their heirs inherit the shares at a stepped-up cost basis, so the gains are in fact never taxed. Again, I’d ask you to engage with this: > I wouldn’t call that their fair share.