Isn’t that the usual loophole though? He definitely continues to donate large amounts but I always question setting up a trust that the kids run.

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traviswingo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s not really a “loophole,” it’s a standard way to give away absurd sums of money.

Have you ever tried to donate billions of dollars? It’s actually extremely difficult.

You have to find causes you’re passionate about/things that society needs, find the correct charities to give the money to, make sure your money actually goes towards the thing they say it will (this is difficult), and then figure out how much you can actually donate (you can’t just give N dollars to company Y. They’ve got zero experience managing that much money, and no way to scale into doing it efficiently.)

What happens then is you have $100b to donate, and mostly only do it $10m at a time or less.

Warren’s kids are old now. They’ve all been donating money for YEARS (it’s a mandatory part of their trust).

So yeah, you receive tax benefits by transferring shares to a foundation you also control, but that money is now earmarked for charity. It doesn’t flow both ways, and the laws on this are very tight (bad actors will find a way, but what’s new?).

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infecto 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure that is the typical way to donate your wealth but there are many other ways than giving it with control to your children. I have no judgement but doing it this way is a nice way to move money within your family.

Everyone does it different and I have no judgement but you could just as easily pick a quorum of folks to do the job with a very explicit timeline. Charitable donations are quite broad in the US. So sure lots of wealthy folk don’t this way but not everyone!

	▲	ndriscoll 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Can you just as easily pick a quorum of folks? It seems to me that no matter what, you're going to have to choose people you know and be accused of nepotism because those are the people you can actually assess, and in the case of children, hopefully raise/influence to be on the same page as you. You could always donate it to the US government, but then it'll be used to go start some wars, so that won't work. You could put it in some weird trust where random people can democratically decide what to do with it, but all you have to do is look at the government to see how good of decisions that leads to. So truly what's the alternative?

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mvc 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If it's so difficult, maybe they could take the easy option and, you know, properly fund the government to build the shared infrastructure on which we all rely by paying tax proportional to their wealth.

	▲	macintux 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		https://www.investopedia.com/warren-buffett-paid-billions-to...
	▲	dsl an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Warren Buffet made the largest single tax payment in US history last year. He doesn't play any games.

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Grombobulous 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Right, donating your present wealth because you expect to continue receiving an astronomical amount of wealth in perpetuity through your company ownership is not all that grand of a gesture.

Certainly better than many alternatives, but it’s not a gesture that should make the median income person feel like existing as an excessively wealthy person should be okay/legal.

In my opinion, personal wealth/asset control above a certain level deemed excessive (perhaps $100 million then adjusted for inflation moving forward) should be taxed at 100% and put into a special fund intended to help pay for social services, healthcare, housing the homeless, etc. In the case of asset control perhaps a good method would be to distribute excessively valued ownership stakes to employees or random members of the public (e.g., many of Elon Musk’s shares in his companies forfeited and distributed to others).

	▲	idiotsecant an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This makes sense as long as public control makes the outcome of that money better than letting the bazillionare control it. I'm not sure which way the actual truth tilts, but I suspect it's sometimes one and sometimes the other.