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.
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!
The above post seemed to be saying that:
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Bill Gates pays less taxes as he donates to a charity
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Bill Gates runs that charity
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Bill Gates then gets to decide how that charity spends his donated money
This then means that he can use what should have been tax to:
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Pay himself with the charities money, as he is an employee of the charity
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Lobby politicians using the charity’s money
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Otherwise direct the charity to work in his best interests
Which part are you disagreeing with? I guess he doesn’t “make money” in the strictest sense, but it sure seems like he’s exploiting the system to keep more of it
Pay himself with the charities money, as he is an employee of the charity
Why does Bill Gates earn nothing through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
Lobby politicians using the charity’s money
A 501©(3) organization is subject to heightened restrictions on lobbying activities, A 501©(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status. Lobbying may not constitute a “substantial part” of the activities of the 501©(3) organization. [1]
Otherwise direct the charity to work in his best interests
I guess you can argue that eliminating malaria is in his best interests, but it’s pretty reaching. I guess nobody should do anything good if it might indirectly benefit themselves.
Fair, in this example Bill Gates isn’t exactly the best one to pick. And the clarification on the lobbying rules is definitely a valuable bit of information, so thank you for adding that.
I was more trying to point out that the original comment wasn’t saying that the tax break “made money”. It’s all about shuffling it around to avoid taxes.
At the end of the day, it allows Bill Gates (or other billionaires) to spend otherwise taxable income on whatever they deem important. Whether or not you agree with how they’re spending their money is irrelevant
to spend otherwise taxable income on whatever they deem important
Yes, that’s absolutely true, but the language hides the truth a bit. People don’t get the nuance of what “taxable income” is.
If Bill donates a thousand dollars to charity, he saves ~$370 in taxes. That means he’s still losing $630 on the deal. The government gets to effectively triple their money by allowing you to decide where it goes.
There may also be a limit of 60% of your AGI? I’m not sure how this works with billionaires.
Issue is if he’s paying himself with the charity’s money he’d have to pay tax on that, and if he wrote that off with a donation and paid himself again then it’d reset the loop - there’s no loophole there, literally, as it’d be an endless closed loop of transferring money.
Given the best interests of the US government are destabilising other countries and supporting unfair healthcare companies, and given what is known about Bill Gates’ charity spending I think a higher proportion actually goes to the betterment of society than would if it went to the US government
The part where he “gets to keep more of it.”
$1 in charitable contributions does not lower your tax burden by $1, and certainly not more than $1.
If that dollar would have been taxed as capital gains, assuming 20% capital gains and 3.8% NII tax, it saves 23.8 cents meaning the $1 donation costs 76.2 cents.
If that dollar would have been taxed as normal income, assuming a marginal tax rate of 37%, it saves 37 cents meaning the $1 donation costs 63 cents.
(These two examples are not intended to be an exhaustive list.)
Charitable contributions cost money, just not as much money as they would if there wasn’t a tax deduction.
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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”.
None of that makes sense with how taxes actually work. For every $1 donated to charity, the maximum you’re getting back is 0.37 from the tax deduction. That’s assuming you’re in the max tax bracket. The higher your tax bracket, the cheaper it is to give to charity, but it’s never better than keeping the money yourself.
There are games that can be played with charitable donations, but cash to a foundation is not really the way. The real games are played around with hard to value assets like art/jewelry where massively inflated values and weird lease terms can lead to some really questionable outcomes. For example “loaning” art to a museum and writing off the “rent” after having it appraised for some insane value.
The 0.37 you get back is the tax you paid on the income. The exercise is more about controlling where your money goes and what it goes to.
Instead of giving the money to the government, who you may not agree with, you’re giving it to a cause that either directly or indirectly can benefit you, whether that cause is a direct benefit in the form of helping with a problem that is causing you trouble, or simply as a good PR move.
You spend money to get there, but now often than not you’re getting a benefit from the transaction.
Billionaires and their mentality and interests are fairly well known, for the most part. Bill is a co-chair of the foundation and likely recieves many benefits from holding that position, including a salary. He can also, as chair, influence who is hired, providing stable employment for people who are in his favor, while also getting a massive boost to his public image, all while paying himself a salary. He can also direct the funds that would normally go to the government as tax, who may spend it on things he doesn’t want to happen, and redirect those funds to something he would like to see happen, such as R&D into technologies (which is a nontrivial part of what the foundation funds).
For Bill, the charitable foundation is a win all the way around, except to his billion dollar bank account, which I’m certain is providing plenty of income on its own.
Quite literally he’s taking money out of the hands of the government and making sure money is being funneled into things that he thinks should happen. It looks very selfless on the surface but gates is a business man, this is just his most recent endeavor.
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Bill’s income is near zero, his personal tax burden is probably less than yours. This charitable giving isn’t offsetting his tax liability; it’s a hobby.
I suppose if you mean traditional income, but he gets tens of billions of dollars per year in capital gains. I remember a few years ago he said “sure, I paid three billion dollars in taxes last year, but I should have paid more”. I read about ten years ago that he donated $10 billion dollars to charity and his net worth still went up $9 billion. His financial holdings are so enormous that his net worth still increases regardless of giving away ridiculous sums of money. I remember Chris Rock talking about Gates a couple decades ago and he said “you can’t get rid of that much money. You can’t give it away fast enough to lose it”, and that’s a pretty accurate statement.
Let you explain? That’s literally not how taxes work. Who falls for this shit?
The number of people who don’t understand the difference between a tax deduction and a tax credit is too damn high.
It’s also an index of the health of society, if you think about it, and as you’ve noticed, society is pretty near dead.
Sharpen your pitchforks.
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.
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People who look at a billionaire and think “I need to kill him”. Anything anyone with that kind of money does, is treated as the greatest evil in the entire world.
I would like to kill a billionaire. Just once, as a treat.
Honestly if it was me and Donald I’d do it.
You’re not wrong.
Check out the Behind the Bastards episodes on him to see how his charitable efforts often end up more destructive than not.
Isn’t he the sole reason that the covid vaccine (that was funded by 97% publlic funding) was sold for a profit?
Just listened to Behind the Bastards on Gates… Gates Foundation is all about drumming up capitalism in other countries. Worth a listen I assure you.
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.
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.
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.
He’s not doing it for tax write-offs, he’s donating billions of dollars per year because he genuinely wants to help. He crushed a lot of people to get to the top, that’s indisputable, but he’s genuinely trying to offset that destruction now, and he’s possibly at a net positive effect on the world now. Actually, I’d say he’s probably at a net positive impact on the world.
See also early-1900s philanthropists who felt there was no point having a lot of money if you did not intend to spend every last cent. Liquor was illegal and the blowjob hadn’t been invented yet, so hell, why not build a bunch of pools and libraries?
Human beings can be complex enough to acquire money through evil means and still want to do good things with it. Sometimes even for good reasons! They’re not robots and they’re not monsters. They’re just assholes.
I don’t think it took tens of thousands of years of human evolution to learn that mouth on penis feels good. My dogs figured that one out entirely on their own.
Now, it may have seen renewed popularity with modern hygiene practices, but that’s a different topic.
“Charity is the drowning of justice in the craphole of mercy.”
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nah, he took LSD, quit microsoft and started philanthropy…
You should see what he released on Epstein’s island
We joke, but Epstein masqueraded as a wealthy investor/entrepreneur for like two or three decades before he was caught, so him merely having some one’s contact written down doesn’t mean much. In fact, Bill Gates has never been shown to have visited the island at any point, and Epstein was very invested in the Gates Foundation charity work such as loaning his plane for high profile individuals to fly to charity sites across Africa.
The fact that Melinda immediately filed for divorce after the news came out is pretty damning to me.
While I thought the same at the time, since then I’ve adopted a more nuanced view. My guess is that she was planning to divorce him for a while and just used an opportune moment to actually do it. Some rumors that can be explained away are not something that would end a healthy marriage.
Some rumors that can be explained away are not something that would end a healthy marriage.
I agree. My theory is he came clean with her, because he assumed it was going to come out anyway, and that what he told her was really bad.
I always thought it was more to do with the fact that their youngest son had just turned 18. So he was probably moving out of the house to college. There is a big culture here in the US to “stick it out for the kids until they move out” mentality. So I just thought that is what they were doing.
Thought it was because his office behavior was sus.
Oh no, not sus, dude was big on scorin with his employees.
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There’s evidence that Gates knew what was going on at Epstein’s parties, didn’t participate, but still choose to stay silent. Gates had enough power and wealth that he didn’t need to worry about retaliation either.
Does any of this “evidence” exist in a tangible way, or is it all hearsay?
It’s listed in Wikipedia and they have three sources listed for it.
Link?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Marriage_and_divorce
Edit: sorry, these are sources for that she chose to divorce him because of his association. I think I saw other sources before, I’ll look more later.
Gates met with him after 2006, where Epstein was inidicted for prostitution of a minor. It was known he was a POS.
“There’s no reason only consenting adults should have the experience.”
He also held on to that COVID vaccine
He fucking did! Why the downvotes? He personally lobbied governments to make sure nobody released the patents to allow cheap vaccinations in developing countries
Gates got a bunch of defenders for some reason
some people like to join the winning team. It makes them feel like winnners themselves.
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It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with his work in the eradication of polio and malaria, his efforts to provide clean drinking water to impoverished areas, and his program to create renewable cheap electricity for impoverished rural areas? Seems like that probably has a lot more to do with people’s perspective of him than the fact that trumpy bois don’t like him.
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It just wasn’t in your circle of influence before. He has been working in humanitarian aid for decades. His contributions are well known, and well documented. You can check for yourself, he has accomplished a great deal towards the things I mentioned.
I guess it doesn’t fit the good billionaire narrative
Citation needed.
Civil society organizations active in poorer nations, including Doctors Without Borders, expressed discomfort with the notion that Western-dominated groups, staffed by elite teams of experts, would be helping guide life-and-death decisions affecting people in poorer nations. Those tensions only increased when the Gates Foundation opposed efforts to waive intellectual property rights, a move that critics saw as protecting the interests of pharmaceutical giants over people living poorer nations
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/global-covid-pandemic-response-bill-gates-partners-00053969
Yikes. Do you know what justification was given?
i remember hearing, that their argument was, that a strong profit-incentive would motive the manufacturer to increase production as well as quality. I also remember that the debate around that topic was drowned out by some weirder theories. E.g. during that time q-anon was on the rise, and some people argued, that the gates foundation was using covid to implant microchips into people or something like that
source: my memory from a couple years back
Thanks. Sounds like the same ol “free market” argument then.
A not insignificant line of reasoning (though probably less important to people in power than the profit incentive) was also to keep the secrets of making the vaccine from bring revealed to other countries, which would apparently erode the USA’s pharmaceutical research advantage. An interesting article about this from the former director of NIST is here but I don’t necessarily agree with the reasoning.
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.
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.
Good bit.
The poor also experience gun violence in Minecraft
