• RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I have read that that’s one of the wealthy’s “big secret” ways to avoid taxes. They allegedly live off of those loans as their spending money, while the value of the investments they use as collateral increases over time, but they don’t pay taxes on the Unrealized gains. And they can keep borrowing more as needed with those same investments as collateral.

      I don’t have the whole scam figured out though. I’m not sure how they pay back the loans without having to cash out something that would generate a tax burden.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 months ago

        I’m assuming s long s they spread out payments over time and roll lots of the debt into the next loan.

        That’s how they become too big to fail at their banks. At least that’s the Donald Trump method. His problem is that he has fuck all for collateral at this point.

      • cole@lemdro.id
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        9 months ago

        I wonder if you can pay off loans by transferring the stock. Idk, just a thought

      • dan@upvote.au
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        9 months ago

        Another thing to avoid taxes is donating stock to charities, as you can deduct the market value of the stock rather than just the cost basis.

        Say you buy some stock for $100 and it goes up in value to $400. If you sell it, you have to pay capital gains tax on the $300 gain.

        However, if you donate it, you don’t have to pay any tax and can deduct the whole $400, meaning your taxable income is reduced by $400 (which would be a ~$120 reduction in income tax for someone with a 30% effective tax rate).

        Of course, you still end up with less money than you would have if you didn’t donate. But if you’re going to donate anyways, donating stock with gains is better than donating cash because you’ve already paid income tax on the cash but haven’t paid any tax on the stock gains.