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Steve Ballmer Gets Billion-Dollar Tax Write-Off For Being Basketball Baron
McGruber (1417641) writes "According to a report published by The Financial Times (paywalled), ex-Microsoft CEO Billionaire Steve Ballmer will be able to write off about a billion dollars of his basketball team's purchase price from the taxable income he makes over the next 15 years. "Under an exception in US law, buyers of sports franchises can use an accounting treatment known as goodwill against their other taxable income. This feature is commonly used by tax specialists to structure deals for sports teams. Goodwill is the difference between the purchase price of an asset and the actual cash and other fixed assets belonging to the team."
he would pay more in tax in a single year than 99% of the population pay in there entire lives.
Except he won't, he'll exploit exceptions and loopholes until he's paying less tax than a top-level middle manager. You don't seem to understand how taxation works.
he would pay more in tax in a single year than 99% of the population pay in there entire lives.
Except he won't, he'll exploit exceptions and loopholes until he's paying less tax than a top-level middle manager. You don't seem to understand how taxation works.
Actually, this is only sort of true. On a percentage-of-annual-income basis, it's correct. But in terms of dollars and cents paid in taxes annually, it is incorrect.
The fact that Ballmer is involved in this is the only reason it's on Slashdot...let's face it. This situation relates to capital investment, and it happens several times a day with regard to transactions of varying sizes. We could argue about whether or not it's about the taxpayer that gets stuck with this or that, or whether capital will flee if we tax the rich more, but one thing is true: Ballmer is no more to fault for leveraging available, documented, and legal tax write-offs than we are when we all claim a write-off for our mortgages, business expenses, or even just the standard deduction (if we don't even itemize).
None of us seek to maximize the amount of taxes we pay. But we demonize the ultra-wealthy, by name, when they do the same thing as us but on a larger scale. Don't fault them, fault the system...and then change it.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
If it's not that much to Ballmer, I'll gladly take just a month of that. 5 million is plenty to me.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
*sighs*
A billion over FIFTEEN YEARS. Amounts to about $70 million a year.
Considering that Ballmer is worth north of twenty Billion, we're not actually talking about a huge tax break here.
What we are talking about is an article that combines fifteen years of tax deductions in order to put that magic "B" in the title to get people excited....
We shouldn't need a 'B' to get excited. A billion is a billion whether it gets paid in a year or 15. And $70 million in taxes is $70 million no matter how you cut it. Under what type of cynic logic can this be justified?
This is not $70 millions in non-taxable charities, but an investment on a money machine in the sports/entertainment industry.
It's actually a lot more simple than that. As currently written, the tax code preferences capital over labor because capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. All of the complexity is mostly a red herring. Increase the capital gains rate to match ordinary income, and the effective rate on the wealthy will increase substantially.
And as passive income that billion a year is taxed at a 15% rate after all of his other deductions and loopholes. Whether or not you think a $70 mil writeoff is insignificant to a hundred billionaire, it's just this kind of insult to injury loophole (available only to the hyper rich) that makes a travesty of the notion that we're all in this together. But, of course, we're not - and apparently CrimsonAvenger is fine with that...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...