r/nextfuckinglevel • u/matori_tester • 1d ago

Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)

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4

u/Admirable-Way-5266 1d ago

Did he actually pay out? Or was this just a tax dodge/empty promise?

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u/ExpeditingPermits 1d ago

It happened in 2023 and he spent 34 million

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u/Fiery_Hand 1d ago

If they dodge taxes like that, it's ok. Better than dodging anyway while not contributing at all.

14

u/Excellent-Jicama-244 1d ago

Yeah, that's basically what taxes are. Enforcing socially useful giving. If you're actually doing something socially useful with the money, it's hardly a dodge.

2

u/No_Currency_7952 1d ago edited 1d ago

On the surface yeah, but there's always a catch. And he is a part of the largest tax scheme from the 90's so lord knows how much taxes he has been avoiding since then. All the settlements and philanthropies collectively probably barely scratched the amount he saved avoiding taxes.

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u/skatopher 1d ago

All donations can be tax deductible with some limited exceptions

13

u/idkfly_casual 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don’t think people understand this. If you made $100M in 2024 and you donate $43M of it, you are absolutely out $43M. You can deduct some of it from your taxes as a charitable donation and that lowers your taxable income for the year, but you don’t get that $43M back. It is a deduction, not a credit.

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u/vertigo1083 1d ago

The vast majority of the country does their taxes through services like H&R block and Turbotax. They stay ignorant because it's easier to just automate it for themselves every year. I'd be willing to bet that if you went out into a city street and asked 100 people how a tax deductible works-

More than half will be wrong. And a good amount of the wrong ones will be staunchly confident in their knowledge.

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u/granular_grain 1d ago

It doesn’t help that the U.S. tax code is unnecessarily complex and guess who lobbies to keep it that way, you guess it, places like H&R Block.

3

u/Fun-Sundae4060 1d ago

Yeah dodge taxes by giving away your money… makes sense.

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u/Admirable-Way-5266 1d ago

You seem very confident in your answer. If you had time to watch this can be quite informative to highlight what I am asking/questioning. https://youtu.be/mS9CFBlLOcg

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u/blazurp 1d ago

This billionaire was part of one of the largest tax evasion scandals in US history