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Warren Buffett is in a similar boat and has complained vocally about it. The US tax system is absurd when it comes to the upper echelon.

[Edit: I mean, he's complained that it's unjust and that billionaires like him should be paying their fair share.]




Warren Buffett is in an entirely dissimilar boat, because Warren Buffett does not have enormous losses to carry forward, and therefore actually pays significant personal income tax ($1.8 million on personal income of $11.5 million in 2015).

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161010005859/en/Tax...


I meant that he pays well below what you or I pay. He's in a lower tax bracket than his secretary. $1.8M on $11.5M is what? Something in the ballpark of 15%? He should be in the highest tax bracket. That's my point. The tax laws favor the wealthy, and they shouldn't.


That's a completely unrelated and distracting issue.

Trump paid $750 total, which is not 15% of anything. He could have easily paid $0, as he did before becoming POTUS. His team picked a tiny number above zero starting in 2016 when he was elected. This is completely and totally unrelated to the capital gains tax rate.


It's not unrelated. My point is that the wealthy have a whole lot of loopholes when it comes to taxes, and we ought to address that.

Almost certainly, Trump used these loopholes to minimize his taxes. I assume in his case, he had a lot of losses that he was able to use to bring his over all income down well below what you or I report in a given year.

Unless Trump did something illegal (entirely possible), my point is related and not distracting.




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