Bezos pays 40% too.

His assets are not income. Just like your assets are not taxed.

Ok, but he does that loan-against-assets hack!

Well the fact is that those loans eventually need to be paid, so at some point he will pay that 40% (unless he does the step-up basis hack when he dies)

Ok, but he should be paying annually like everyone else!

Well, technically he is, his assets, the company Amazon, pays a lot of taxes annually. The government views Amazon as a money printer, states get their sales taxes, and the federal government gets their income taxes. All of which originate with Amazon.

All of which is to say, that the uppe-middle/upper-class, the successful surgeon, is the one that needs to be paying more taxes to equilibriate society.

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Computer0 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I want to see Bezos have all of his assets seized, and distributed to human beings instead of held onto like the goblin he is. I don't care about your defense of him. He should not be on the same planet as me.

	▲	WarmWash 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If you can convince people that Amazon is a bad value proposition (i.e. stop giving amazon money for stuff), then you will effectively accomplish that. But you probably couldn't even count the number of people with Prime subscriptions that show up to an "Eat the 1%!" march... "It's just so convenient!"

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bryanlarsen 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> unless he does the step-up basis hack when he dies

I'm sure we can count that as a given.

> The government views Amazon as a money printer, states get their sales taxes, and the federal government gets their income taxes.

Except when states fall all over themselves to give Amazon a massive tax break to build their second HQ.

	▲	WarmWash 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>I'm sure we can count that as a given. It's very unlikely, he has pledged to give away most of his wealth in his lifetime, but there are a variety of factors that will always add space for detractors to make fair points. Bill Gates is still worth billions despite being an endless waterfall of charity money for decades. Either way, the step-up thing is way way way more common in the upper class, where people with ~$24M want their kids to get $6M each. These people are nobodies with no public image, and light years away from "Billionaire Class" status. > The government views Amazon as a money printer, states get their sales taxes, and the federal government gets their income taxes. All the employees will pay income tax, and they will mostly spend their money in the state, generating sales tax. Then there is the second order effect of businesses that pop-up to feed off the money that the employees make.