저자: ChamathPalihapitiya · 외국인
요약 보기
첫 줄 결론: 프로퍼블리카의 IRS 세금 기록 유출 보도를 계기로 부유층 과세 논쟁이 확산되었으나, 발언자는 소득 과세 원칙과 차입(마진론) 구조를 근거로 이를 단순화된 서사라고 비판한다. 세금 기록 보도: 프로퍼블리카가 상위 3,000명 미국 부유층의 세금 기록을 공개했고, 베이조스 등이 일부 연도에 세금을 거의 내지 않았다는 내용이 보도됨. 해당 기록의 출처(내부자 또는 해킹)는 불명확하다고 언급. 과세 원칙: 미국은 실현된 소득(자산 매각, 임금 등)에 과세하는 원칙을 따르며, 보유 주식의 평가이익에는 과세하지 않는다. 평가이익에 매년 과세하고 하락 시 환급하지 않는다면 일반인도 반발할 것이라고 주장. 차입 구조: 부유층은 주식을 담보로 대출(마진론)을 받아 생활비와 투자를 충당하고, 이자는 세금 공제가 가능하다. 은행 입장에서도 부유 고객은 선호 대상이다. 부채로 파산한 부유층 사례는 담보 주가 하락 때문이며, 이는 높은 리스크를 수반한다고 언급. 소득 발생 시점: 다수의 부자는 주식을 매각하는 시점에 세금을 낸다. 과거에 이미 세금을 낸 경우나 미래에 낼 경우가 있어 단순한 '무세금' 서사는 부정확하다고 주장. 베이조스 사례: 아마존 지분 보유분의 가치는 상승했으나 현금 소득은 늘지 않았으며, 과세 대상 소득과 자산 가치 증가를 구분해야 한다는 논지. 자산 가치와 과세 형평성: 주택 가격이 수십 배 오른 경우(1980년 구매 캘리포니아 주택 등)에도 평가이익 과세를 적용하면 일반인이 부담을 지게 된다는 예시를 듦. 레버리지와 투자 성과: 워런 버핏이 보험사 플로트(GEICO)를 통해 약 20~30%의 합성 레버리지를 사용했다는 AQR 연구를 인용하며, 소량의 마진과 레버리지가 최고 투자자와 평균의 차이를 만든다고 주장. 다만 이 기회는 소수에게만 열려 있다고 지적. 리스크와 불평등: 마진 강제청산은 흔하지만, 소자본에서 자산을 불리는 사례를 보기는 어렵다고 말하며 자본 접근성 격차를 문제 삼음. 규칙 자체가 잘못되었다기보다 이동성을 막는다는 취지. 출연자 전망: 특정 자산에 대한 방향성 발언은 없음.
다듬은 글
what do you guys think about this whole pro publicly speaking of wealth inequality this pro-publica league of tax records somebody inside the irs or it was hacked we don't know yeah this is clearly a whole person got a hold of basically 3 000 uh the tax records many going back many years of 3 000 of the wealthiest americans and propublica has slowly started to digest and and issue um news reports about them and it shows that you know in some years guys like bezos paid no tax um whatsoever were able to take huge deductions you know at one point actually bezos in a year where we made you know kind of like billion dollars was able to essentially didn't uh claim he made nothing and then made so little or made negative dollars that he got a 4 000 tax credit that's typically reserved for people one thing i'll say is i think these stories have highlighted just an incredible um uh ability to shift the narrative and create a different kind of dialogue around taxation because as we all know the principle of taxation in the united states is that you are taxed on income and income is a recognized gain meaning when you sell an asset for cash or for some other asset before you do a job or you do a job and then you get paid you get that cash that you can now go use to go buy something or to uh to do whatever you want to do with that is the transaction moment that you get taxed on and everyone's saying well this guy's a billionaire he has these billions of dollars he paid no taxes he didn't necessarily make billions of dollars of income that year his stock value may have gone up billions of dollars but if we all taxed each other when our stock values went up each year and we didn't get a rebate when our stocks went down people would feel pretty upset the average american the average person would probably feel pretty upset if they got taxed every time their stock portfolio went up and then they didn't get to have a rebate when their stock portfolio went down so the principle of taxation is such that when you sell those shares and you ultimately generate income that's when you get taxed but the narrative is very quickly shifting where people are like oh this guy's a billionaire state stated you know he didn't pay the taxes they don't say anything about how much income he actually made and a lot of these guys don't need income they could have a dollar salary they pay like you know well they effectively have a credit card one way to think about it is wealthy people have a credit card as jamal pointed out because they can buy everything on loan they can buy everything they want on credit because down the road everyone knows you guys have billions of dollars so if you take a loan and then you use that loan to actually invest the united states tax law says that all that interest you pay is deductible as well and so the arbitrage that you find yourself in is if you're happy yeah it's like you have these assets you go to a bank they'll they'll lend it against because they want you know what is the bank's job the bank's job is to generate interest right so you know they want these big fish as customers right and so and then and then uh part of the tax code is that it's tax deductible and so it's one of these things that i think structurally gets people very confused about what's right or wrong but it happens and it happens that when somebody lives on a credit card like one day that credit card comes to you and it's not a problem for bezos because amazon's talk just keeps going up and up and up but you will occasionally hear about some rich person going broke and the reason is always that they took on too much debt and then their stock price went down and all of a sudden they owe more than the value of the collateral and then they're just done and so yeah exactly so you do take it back when you live on margin you are taking a big risk most people don't do that most people who have gains will eventually cash out they'll do that by selling their company or they'll sell a piece of their stock they'll have a stock selling plan and then they pay tax and i fee i feel like it's really unfair how i look i don't want to say it's unfair because people get really riled up when rich people aren't paying taxes but it's interesting to me how the narrative has been kind of very quickly reframed without the specificity of the income that was generated by these individuals and they're just saying look this person has all this wealth they didn't pay any taxes without actually recognizing that this person may have had an income generating event earlier in their life which they did pay taxes on or they will have an income generating event later in their life which they will pay taxes on um and so the the truth is a little bit more nuanced than i think you know the very quick kind of sound by the press stories kind of indicate and it's um it's just really it's been really interesting to watch how many people get so riled up and frothy about this moment and i get that we all you know everyone kind of dislikes wealthy people with bezos take for example and look by the way maybe he should be paying more tax in other ways but with respect to his amazon stock he built this machine called amazon it's this machine that makes all of our lives better um for for the most part in terms of the delivery of goods and services you know you press a button somebody shows up the next day so he builds this incredible machine he owns a piece of it he's merely holding on to his ownership in that machine but the way that the public market is valuing that machine keeps going up and up and up but to freeburg's point he hasn't recognized more income he doesn't have more cash in his bank account um and so should he be paying taxes and here's the thing if you change the hold on if you change the rule chamath correct me if i'm wrong here and you said you have to pay on the gain then somebody who bought a house in 1980 and it appreciated 100x in california by the time they were 70 and they bought it in their 30s they would get caught up in this wealth tax or paying for it as they go the appreciation this mechanism exists now jason you said a key thing this mechanism exists at all parts of the tax code so yes a billionaire can basically go to jpmorgan or goldman sachs or morgan stanley you know get a margin loan on their stock and live their life but individual folks who are not billionaires can do that via a heloc on their home and a lot of people do that as well they take home equity lines of credit and they use that to forward finance things as well the difference is that because the quantums are so much bigger you have this ability for rich people to accelerate their wealth creation in a way that normal folks don't so i'll give you another example so one example that i just spoke about is you basically take a loan instead of selling things right you use that to make investments all of that interest is tax deductible number one number two is even if you don't need to do that you can just take a loan on a small percentage of your capital reinvest that again pay the interest and now you're running implicitly a little bit of leverage and just to give you a sense of it there's a really great study by um aqr i think is the name of the hedge fund and um they reverse engineered uh buffett's returns and what they saw was that buffett ran about 20 to 30 percent levered his entire career and the way he did that was synthetically by the float of geico the point i'm trying to make is even the best investors in the world prove that a small amount of margin and leverage is the key between being average and being the best in the world and if that if he needed that let's be honest we all need that and again we all can't have that it's only available to a few and so i'm not saying that the rules are wrong but the rules do stifle the ability to basically move up and move down that curve it's clear how often people move down people get stopped out they get margined out happens all the time it's very hard to see examples of people moving up it's because it's harder and harder to get that first little bit of capital that then you can go and run with you
Comments 0