Buy, Borrow, Die.. So, look I should not be writing about… | by George Salapa | thatMeaning | Medium

So, look I should not be writing about this because, boy, I sure like wealth for its general propensity to promote aesthetics in the world, but:

When a report came out this summer on how ultra wealthy don’t pay taxes because they don’t earn money like you and me, but instead take out loans against the enormous and constantly growing value of shares in their companies, people were shocked across the United States. And, really, I think that the most shocking thing was how easy and logical the mechanism looked when put on paper like that, and also just by how incredibly large the amounts of money were.

[..]these methods and practices — things such as offsetting income with losses in unrelated businesses; structuring assets to grow rather than generate income, then borrowing against those growing assets for cash needs; and deducting interest payments and state taxes from taxable income — are so downright mundane and commonly applied that most rich people don’t see them as unethical.

[..] I came into a significant amount of money at the tender age of 21. I became an asset manager before a lot of people get their first apartment. I’m 61 now, meaning I’ve been the recipient of four decades’ worth of tax advice from the decent, good, kind men (yes, they were all men) who were put in place by my grandparents, and then my parents, to ensure that I wouldn’t do anything stupid with what I had been given.

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