This is ridiculous - first of all you don’t have to be rich to afford a CPA, second of all high earners almost always pay the highest rates (both effective and marginal). And even in the cases where they don’t pay huge marginal rates (dividends and LTCG), they don’t need a CPA to take advantage of that because it’s dead simple.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

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jedberg 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not talking about a high earner who makes a few hundred thousand a year. I'm talking about the high earner who is making a few million a year and taking advantage of the vague tax laws by paying a CPA tens of thousands of dollars to do their returns for them and then save them a few hundred thousand in taxes.

And yes I'm aware that the wealthy pay most of the taxes. I'm fine with that. I'm just pointing out that these laws are made so they still pay less than they would otherwise.

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emtel an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It depends on how you are making these millions. A W-2 employee at meta making $1M or more per year is almost certainly paying over 50% marginal tax rates (combined state and federal). And there is virtually nothing you can do to lower that burden by any significant amount.

The tax code benefits certain types of income, but it does not uniformly benefit high earners, as you say.

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twoodfin 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How does that scheme work? Which provisions are you talking about?

	▲	jedberg an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t know I’m not a CPA. That’s why I hire one. Because the tax code is too complex and vague to do it myself.