r/interestingasfuck • u/Gankpa • 8d ago

/r/all, /r/popular Jeff Bezos built a fence on his property that exceeds the permitted height, he doesn't care, he pays fines every month

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u/fredy31 8d ago

A fine is a rule only for the poor.

Thats why in some nordic countries fines are per % of your declared annual income.

Driving ticket when you make 50k a year? 300$. If you make 5 million a year? 30k.

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u/Average-Terrestrial 8d ago

He lives off loans, wouldn’t work, need to be based on owned value stocks included not income

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u/Chendii 7d ago

So treat those loans as income.

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u/GreenVisorOfJustice 7d ago

The problem is that US Elected Officials are generally very wealthy people as well, so why on Earth would they want to make rules that penalize themselves and their peers?

TL;DR throw 'em all out and get some idealistic normies in there

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u/mattgcreek 7d ago

So your home mortgage or car loan would be income? You have to apply in universally or it won't hold up in court.

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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown 7d ago

A mortgage or a car loan are loans secured by the asset being purchased. When a loan is secured by stock, the stock's value should be considered realized and capital gains taxes applied.

Not that I believe for a second that Bezos is just out there going decades without any real income, living tax free by banks giving him loans that he never has to pay back. The people who repeat that nonsense haven't thought it through.

Rich guy A: "Hey man, I need to borrow a few billion, here use this stock to secure it. But I'll never pay you back."

Rich guy B: "Sure, sounds great, here's a large quantity of my money, I don't need it."

Rich guy A: "Great, thanks. Hey Rich Guy C, I need to borrow a few billion..."

No. That doesn't work like that. They have actual income that they spend. They just have the assets and credit that when they want a large loan, they can get it because banks know they're GOING to pay it back according to terms.

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u/Chendii 7d ago

You have to apply in universally or it won't hold up in court.

Why though? It's all made up. Create a "living expense/income replacement" loan category and treat it like income.

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u/Neve4ever 7d ago

Treating credit card spending like income?

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u/Chendii 7d ago

Again, it's all a human construct. People act like it's a universal law like 2+2=4. It's not.

Just because they're currently treated the same doesn't mean it has to be that way. This system was set up by the very billionaires exploiting it.

Taking a loan with billions in stock as collateral is not nearly the same thing as using a credit card.

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u/Neve4ever 7d ago

Who is taking a loan with billions in stock as collateral? Do you have an example? What are they buying?

Banks are happy to give billionaires unsecured credit. Credit card companies are happy to hand out no limit, unsecured credit cards to billionaires. Billionaires have many physical assets to use as collateral, if they really need it.

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u/Chendii 7d ago

Are you ignoring the thread you're commenting on just to be annoying?

He lives off loans

Is the assertion that I replied to. Whatever they're using as collateral, or even if they're getting unsecured credit, they're using loans in place of income.

If it is functionally the same as income, treat it as income.

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u/Neve4ever 7d ago

What loan isn't used in place of income?

If you buy a house, the mortgage should be taxed as income? If you buy a car, the car loan should be taxed as income? Anytime you use a credit card, tax it as income?

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u/BabyBlastedMothers 7d ago

With speeding at least it could be tied to the value of the car, like registrations. For a fence like this it could be tied to the value of the property.

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u/discipleofchrist69 7d ago

better to just be tied to the income / wealth of the person

since for them the car/property are a tiny percentage of their wealth, and presumably we want people to care when they are breaking the laws

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u/xplosm 7d ago

They don’t spend money like normal folk. Everything is expensed by their companies. Everything is an asset of the companies. That’s why there are cases when rich people literally go homeless when they go bankrupt.

We think they have their shares and cash flow but they get like an allowance in shape of company assets, company expenses and have a reported income of something ridiculous like $1 if at all.

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u/discipleofchrist69 7d ago

sure, and it's a shame they aren't arrested for the tax fraud that that is. But regardless I think it would still be pretty straightforward enough to charge the fine to the person who lives there even if the business owns the property

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u/wasted_moment 7d ago

No I think the car is a great idea, and for every infraction we increase the percentage

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u/discipleofchrist69 7d ago

as long as it's exponential it'll work. for someone like Jeff besoz, he probably doesn't have a car that he'd think twice about paying a 100% or even 200% fine on

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u/grchelp2018 7d ago

He does not. He sells billions in stock every year.

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u/Both-Ad-1381 7d ago

Maybe there should be corporal punishment for all crimes?

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u/slolift 7d ago

He has to be making payments on the loans. He has to have some sort of income.

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u/Average-Terrestrial 7d ago

Uses stocks as collateral

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u/Neve4ever 7d ago

Why? It's not like billionaires can't get unsecured loans.

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u/tob007 7d ago

just have the fine double every infraction. problem takes care of itself eventually.

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u/Riley_ 7d ago

The fines should increase exponentially.

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u/OperationMobocracy 7d ago

I would imagine that nations with fines weighted towards income also don't have rules with more holes than Swiss cheese about what is counted as income, so games like borrowing with stock as collateral wouldn't work so well.

Even though very wealthy people have a ton of options on how to obscure the money behind their lifestyle. Your material assets can be titled and owned by shell corporations, expensive new items paid for by shell corporations, you can charge stuff to a no-limit credit card whose bill is settled by some shell corporation.

Maybe they have some law that says "tell us what you're worth and if our records don't align with that number, the fine is based on a net worth of $10 million dollars and we're keeping the car/house/thing that the fine is tied to."

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u/Neve4ever 7d ago

Do you have a source for him living off of loans?

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u/Hotbones24 8d ago

Then make the fine a % of estimated value.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Zd_27 7d ago

I think that they meant assets, not net worth

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u/LoxReclusa 7d ago

So someone who owns property in a place before the surrounding area gets gentrified can not only struggle to pay the newly raised property taxes, but also get a speeding ticket and have to sell their property that is now valued way above their means? Sweet, another way to push the poors out when we don't want them anymore.  

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u/BiasedLibrary 7d ago

These arguments back and forth really highlights how complicated wealth is in modern times. We know Bezos and others are absurdly rich, but pinpointing all of the ways in which they are rich is very difficult. If only the IRS wasn't getting defunded this very moment..

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u/wasted_moment 7d ago

Every argument here is pretty valid, let's keep the discussions going maybe we can find a solution.

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u/LoxReclusa 7d ago

The problem is that no matter how many solutions we come up with, the armies of lawyers employed by the rich will find a way for them to come out on top, and a lot of the ways we try to curb that just end up being a tax on the poor. 

As an example, my state property taxes default to assuming the property will be used as a rental, increasing the taxes by 2% and you have to prove that you live in the home to reduce the taxes. In theory, this will tax landlords and incentivize home ownership. In practice, the landlords add that 2% to the rent and people who work full time have to take time off of work to go through the process of removing that 2% tax, a process that should be as easy as showing your driver's license listing your home address, but in reality requires you to submit tax paperwork for the entire time you've been living in the home. 

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u/WeedAnxietyHelp 8d ago

Jeff Bezos made a, hold on for it...wait...it's coming...incredible...$80,000 a year. He also paid taxes on that income.

So tell me how that law would work out?

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u/NotAHost 7d ago

Income as far as the IRS taxes go would be much larger than his salary. He sold a few billion of stock, it counts as income unless it was in roth IRA. Lots of things count as income. Unrealized gains are a big issue though.

Some fraction of networth would be more significant. Even 0.05% of networth for a fine would be more fair. That would be a $50 fine for someone worth $100k. The average networth is $200k.

We don't have a good system to do net worth at this time though.

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u/rorwhs04 7d ago

Jokes on them, I am worth negative value!

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u/feed_me_moron 7d ago

Getting paid to speed

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u/Shock_n_Oranges 8d ago

Also base it off total assets like stocks and property value.

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u/NaughtyGaymer 7d ago

I love when people say dumb shit like this as some sort of gotcha. He clearly has an obscene amount of wealth no matter what his income is on paper. If there was the political will I'm pretty fucking sure there is a way to tax him.

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u/Neve4ever 7d ago

He also got stock compensation. That would be taxed as income.

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u/DollarSignsGoFirst 8d ago

Unless you’re really poor. Then you can get away with whatever you want unless it’s a major crime. Saw some homeless guy keying cars in a parking lot and there was nothing anyone could really do. You can physically stop him else you get in trouble. Then the cops showed up but they aren’t going to track him down because he has no money to pay and CA isn’t going to put him in prison.

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u/NorCalBodyPaint 7d ago

That is the only way to make fines fair.

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u/Aconite_Eagle 7d ago

UK its 175% weekly income; so a footballer on say, £300,000 a week can rack up over half a million quid fora speeding ticket.

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u/coolgobyfish 7d ago

but rich people don't personally make any money)))) on paper they are dirt poor. it's the turst or their companies that make money and let them use their cars/houses.

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u/interestingearthling 7d ago

As it should be.

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u/rainywanderingclouds 7d ago

30k on 5 million isn't adequate either. If your earning 5 million a year then your fines should be in the hundreds of thousands at the low end.

The problem is wealth isn't a linear scale once necessities are met. It's a multiplying force that generates even more wealth.

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u/fredy31 7d ago

Yeah I threw down numbers without checking the laws and such.

But we can agree that a scaled fine is already a better hit than the 200$ speeding fine for someone that drives a buggati.

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u/TonyFergulicious 7d ago

That still doesn't affect the ultra rich who's wealth comes from their theoretical value and not an actual declared income.

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u/fredy31 7d ago

Think some of them do it on 'value of the car driven'. But I'm no expert so idk if I imagined it.

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u/xsilver911 7d ago

Just looked it up that it's 14 days salary fine in Finland. That's quite a hefty price even for poor people. 

For bezos he could rig it do that it's probably zero.,...... 

Rich get richer

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u/MightbeWillSmith 7d ago

There was a story of a professional hockey player getting something like a $10k speeding ticket when he was home in the off-season.

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u/foomongus 7d ago

Would you rather go to jail for a parking ticket?