- MystikIncarnate ( @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ) English84•3 months ago
I consider Gates to be “better” than most billionaires, but, I recognize that he’s still a billionaire, and as such, his philanthropic endeavors are as much about him having wealth and maintaining his wealth as they are about him being a “good person”.
Let me explain: it’s a tax write off. Basically, billionaires often donate to charity, not because they’re particularly giving, but because it reduces their taxes. They basically take the money they would otherwise pay in tax, and instead pay it to a charity that then does whatever they do with it.
By establishing a charity for himself, he can personally pay his charity the money that would otherwise go to tax, then as the charity, dictate where those funds are spent. Instead of giving the money to someone else to do with as they will, he basically pays himself, so he can dictate what happens with his money.
In turn, he pays little to no taxes, and only has to ensure the money circles around his charity somehow. That may be in the form of paying himself (or others) as a function of running the charity, or sending the money to places and people who he believes can benefit from it (or indirectly, benefit him).
It becomes a large circle jerk of money that otherwise would have gone to the government for taxes.
EDIT: before this gets any worse: he’s not making money with tax write-offs. That’s literally impossible. The point is to control where your money goes. Here’s an example. In situation A, bill, the individual, wants a thing to happen… Say, it’s research into a new form of energy. So Bill takes $1000 from his gross income and pays someone to research that thing to make it a reality. At the end of the year, bill gets a knock on the door, it’s the tax man, looking for his cut off the $1000 bill earned. His cut is 30% or $300. Now let’s move to situation B. Bill wants the thing to happen, but Bill owns a charity. So Bill donates the money to his charity and gets a tax write off for it in the form of a receipt that he can submit later. As a representative of the charity, bill then pays that $1000 to people to make the thing. At the end of the year, the tax man comes calling for his $300 of bills income. Instead, bill hands the tax collector the receipt for the charitable donation he made with the $1000 of income. The tax man accepts it and leaves with nothing.
The charity is a tax shelter so that bill has more money available to spend on the things he wants to have happen. So more of his money can go towards those things without being taxed.
I hope that clears it up a bit. Jesus, there’s a lot of people here that don’t understand tax write-offs. There’s more that simply don’t understand me, or have literacy issues, and assume far too much about what I’m saying here. Yikes.
- Kiosade ( @Kiosade@lemmy.ca ) English31•4 months ago
I’m convinced no one on Lemmy or Reddit knows what a tax break actually is or that YOU DON’T MAKE MONEY FROM THEM!
- Blackmist ( @Blackmist@feddit.uk ) English9•4 months ago
I’ve come to the same conclusion. Every time there’s a corporation or billionaire either scrapping something or giving something away, then it’s “for the tax breaks”.
- Simon ( @Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English14•4 months ago
Let you explain? That’s literally not how taxes work. Who falls for this shit?
- roscoe ( @roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English9•4 months ago
The number of people who don’t understand the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit is too damn high.
- MystikIncarnate ( @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ) English2•4 months ago
I’m not sure what you mean, since money you donate to charity is exempt from income tax. The taxes you would otherwise pay on income that you donate is refunded to you.
- cobra89 ( @cobra89@beehaw.org ) English7•4 months ago
So imagine there exists a charitable billionaire that wants to do good. How in your eyes would a billionaire go about donating their money without drawing this same criticism?
Hasn’t Gates already pledged pretty much his entire fortune to charity after he dies?
I guess the Devil’s advocate argument here is would you rather trust Bill Gate’s charity to spend the money or the US Government? Because from what I’ve seen, any time there is excess money in the US government it is not spent on social programs but on enriching government contractors and tax breaks for the wealthy.
- axim ( @axim@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English7•4 months ago
They could use their money and influence to lobby the government in a positive direction, such as making sure taxes go toward social programs instead of killing brown people, and then simultaneously help fund that by filing their taxes fairly and paying their intended share rather than do this arcane skullfuckery to pay as little as possible. A great next step would be to lobby for tax code reform to close the arcane loopholes (and ofc massively raise taxes on anyone with an income north if $1M/yr) so that other, less charitably minded billionaires can start paying their fair share too, whether they want to or not.
- Ephera ( @Ephera@lemmy.ml ) English3•4 months ago
So imagine there exists a charitable billionaire that wants to do good. How in your eyes would a billionaire go about donating their money without drawing this same criticism?
I’d say the answer to that, is that they should simply give significantly more than what they’re currently giving. We’re talking of people who could easily give away 99% of their wealth with 0 personal sacrifices. If they’re giving less than 0.1%¹ instead, I just want to know why?
I found this webpage extremely helpful for putting into perspective just how much good they could be doing: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
¹) That number probably needs to be a lot smaller, but I don’t want to make any claims.
- xor ( @xor@infosec.pub ) English1•4 months ago
nah, he took LSD, quit microsoft and started philanthropy…
- kebabslob ( @kebabslob@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English27•4 months ago
He also held on to that COVID vaccine
- kralk ( @kralk@lemm.ee ) English21•4 months ago
He fucking did! Why the downvotes? He personally lobbied governments to make sure nobody released the patents to allow cheap vaccinations in developing countries
- SnipingNinja ( @SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net ) English12•4 months ago
Gates got a bunch of defenders for some reason
- bort ( @bort@sopuli.xyz ) English2•4 months ago
some people like to join the winning team. It makes them feel like winnners themselves.
- kebabslob ( @kebabslob@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English2•4 months ago
I guess it doesn’t fit the good billionaire narrative
- cobra89 ( @cobra89@beehaw.org ) English15•4 months ago
Anyone doubting this claim should read this article: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/global-covid-pandemic-response-bill-gates-partners-00053969
Gives a really good breakdown of the role of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had in the global pandemic response and how they donated more money to the WHO during that time than any member country. How they have close ties to the WHO and how they hoarded the IP rights to the COVID vaccine resulting in lower income countries not having access to the vaccine.
- KevonLooney ( @KevonLooney@lemm.ee ) English7•4 months ago
It wasn’t “lower income countries not having access to the vaccine”. It was just preventing them from making it. They can have subsidized access to high quality vaccines.
India wanted to manufacturer the vaccine in less than ideal factories. That would have hurt or killed some of the people who took it, and the vaccine would have been blamed. This is the literal reason why they said “no”. They fucking invented the vaccine. They would know.
- lowleveldata ( @lowleveldata@programming.dev ) English27•4 months ago
I hate mosquitos. All my homies hate mosquitos.
- cumskin_genocide ( @cumskin_genocide@lemm.ee ) English3•4 months ago
The poor also experience gun violence in Minecraft