Facebook’s Zuckerberg's Perfectly Legal Scheme to Avoid Taxes

[WriConsult]

The thread title is incorrect, and needs to be fixed. If it was Zuckerberg renouncing his citizenship, I'd be calling him a traitor and joining the calls for him to GTFO.

Originally Posted by 08EscapeHybrid

Not to take this too political, but I feel that the Gov't should not be making budgets with money they don't have. Expanding the Nat'l debt should only be done to take care of sudden, unexpected emergencies.

I disagree. Done right (and I believe it was done inadequately, if anything, to counteract the drastic contraction of the money supply when lending imploded in 2007-2009), printing money is a legitimate macroeconomic strategy. IMO there is NO way we could have avoided large deficits: we were already teetering on the precipice of a deflationary spiral, and radical cuts to spending would have shoved us off the cliff, wiping out so much revenue that the deficit would be just as bad as it is today ... but with a whole lot more misery to go around.

[herm]

Originally Posted by Blackbelt

The only way to fix the current tax code is to use 2 things.
A gallon of gas
A match
Then, start over, and limit it to 10 pages.

a Forbes Flat Tax, but then every one will complain the rich are not suffering enough.

[wick1ert]

Originally Posted by herm

a Forbes Flat Tax, but then every one will complain the rich are not suffering enough.

People will complain no matter what. Some people look for things to complain about.

I'd be pretty content with a flat tax, no ongoing deductions, no ongoing corporate subsidies. I'd be willing to accept some one-off items, but I'd like some strict guidelines around them. No more of this willy-nilly throw money at anything with little regard to anything other than your "buddy" on the other side.

[ksstathead]

If we want to tax income, we must define income. That blows the 10 page limit by a few orders of magnitude.

If we want to scrap the income tax in favor of a VAT, then we might get fairly simple.

[WriConsult]

Taxing interest, dividends, capital gains and multimillion dollar inheritances at the same rate as income made by those who work for a living would be a good start.

[Kurz]

There has been some estimates a Universal Sales Tax (One that everyone pays including Businesses) can be taxed at 1%.

Only problem is that there will be a economic advantage to consolidate corporations.
Other than that its simple and will make us much more competitive in the world market.

[ALS]

I read today that this Facebook IPO will generate an increase of 20% in California's budget revenue over the next 13 months.

Money.cnn.facebook-california/

I'm a huge fan of the Forbes plan. The most fair tax system I've seen yet.

Family of four $36,000 credit.

No write offs other than the above.

A Family making making $36,000 or less, zero Federal taxes including SSI.

"All" income above $36,000 is taxed at 21%.

Best of all that personal deduction is indexed for inflation also.

$36,000 or less, $0 owed.
$50,000, $2,940 owed.
$75,000, $8190 owed
$100,000, $13,440 owed
$125,000, $18,690 owed
$500,000, $97,440 owed
$1,000,000, $202,440 owed

[tkeller]

Does this mean Facebook gets good gas mileage?

[Indigo]

Facebook could always register as a religion. Then it could rake in as much profit as it can and be utterly exempt from ever paying a dime in tax.

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Originally Posted by Kurz

Thats why income Tax is a dumb system.

It's not that income tax is a dumb system. It's that the system of taxation of income is dumb. Until income is treated the same irrespective of source people will play silly buggers with their money. Salary, share options, benefits, dividends. All income, all treated differently.

People advocate taxation systems based on sales tax instead, but sales tax is just income tax with time travel.