i would rather be able to pay $13 000/day in income tax and still be able to afford a house like that than not. $13 000/day sounds like a lot because most people can't fathom making a year's salary in a day.

Perhaps a little perspective next time John. Give his net earnings per day as a comparison to his taxes. Online I find that the New York state income tax on millionaires is 7.7%. So approximately, his gross earnings are 13000/0.077 = $168,000 per day, or a net of $156,000 per day. Oh boo hoo Mr. Moneybags. Your life is so hard.

"... THEN he CREATED thirteen THOUSAND JOBS!!!"

Great, but how many jobs were lost as a result of outsourcing HR duties to Paychex?

Excellent point, DuoJet.

Not to mention the fact that 'creating jobs' isn't some selfless act of altruism, it's a normal part of running a business, and it's certainly no cause for being excused from civic responsibilities. >> ^DuoJet:

"... THEN he CREATED thirteen THOUSAND JOBS!!!"
Great, but how many jobs were lost as a result of outsourcing HR duties to Paychex?

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Not to mention the fact that 'creating jobs' isn't some selfless act of altruism, it's a normal part of running a business, and it's certainly no cause for being excused from civic responsibilities.

If running a business means you must create jobs out of necessity, then why isn't that a good thing?

Did I say it was a bad thing somewhere??

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Did I say it was a bad thing somewhere??


Sorry, I thought you were making allusions. So we're on the same page then? Business has a very positive side effect: it creates jobs and betters people's lives. Cool. Then let's not punish those who create jobs.

Business has many positive side effects. There should be no punishments or rewards for having employees.

I agree. No punishment or rewards for running a business. You should keep what you earn, pay your employees what is rightfully negotiated as theirs, the community receives needed services and goods, and everyone is better for it.

The dude is a fucking liar. I will call him out right now.

If you make that much money in a year, then you live wherever the hell you want. Because you can afford to.

If he wanted to live on the north poll like santa claus, he would. And he would bitch about the cost of importing all his supplies, but he would live there.

If he moves to a different state, it's because he feels like a change, and can afford to move wherever he wants. There are probably a lot of other reasons he moved to Florida besides the tax situation. The weather for instance. Maybe he has an ailing parent who needs the climate. Or maybe even for the politicians that will suck up to him like he's the second coming. Whatever it was, there was some other reason.

Well, unless he's a certifiable plutomaniac. I suppose that's possible. But then he would be wearing second-hand clothes and things like that.

If you tax rate for your town/ county went too high for you, you would move also. He just has the luxury to move to any state.

He probably takes home a lot more than $150K/day, since most billionaires use our very generous deduction system to declare much less taxable income than they actually make.

If you raise taxes, some people are of course going to vote with their feet. As long as enough people choose to stay, revenues will increase, and you can use the money to deliver better services. I live in a town with very high property taxes, but I don't see real estate prices dropping. On the contrary, people are clamoring to move here and take advantage of our clean streets, excellent schools, and well staffed public safety departments. I'm not saying everyone wants to pay the price for such services, but some do, and that's their right.

>> ^mtadd:

Perhaps a little perspective next time John. Give his net earnings per day as a comparison to his taxes. Online I find that the New York state income tax on millionaires is 7.7%. So approximately, his gross earnings are 13000/0.077 = $168,000 per day, or a net of $156,000 per day. Oh boo hoo Mr. Moneybags. Your life is so hard.

The incredulity he expresses with the amount of tax he pays should be vastly outweighed by the amount of income he earns which by my calculations based on above comments is $64,057,500 a year, of which he pays $4,927,500.

He should be saying "Can you imagine earning 64 million a year and only paying 5 million in tax?!"

BTW Libertarians, he could not "earn" any of this money without a tax-payer funded society upon which to safely establish such a complex business.

Let's be fair: he's not complaining: he stated the simple fact that if any of us -- at any income level -- had the choice to pay personal income tax or not, we would choose not to. He has that choice, and he made it. It's a smart financial decision, and he has every right to make it.

messenger,
He has every right to make it. But I don't make the same decision he's making at my income level. I make six figures, and live in Virginia. I'm not moving to Florida. You know what I think when I pay my state income taxes? I see it as absolutely necessary to have things like an educated population, those who somewhat know how to use a computer, which as an IT guy, allows me to have a job since I service said IT infrastructure. His problem is he apparently views the money he pays into income taxes like it's this financial black hole that doesn't do anything for him. It doesn't apparently go towards educating people who helped him grow his business as an example. It's an incredibly short-sighted and ignorant point of view. If everyone tried to flee paying taxes, eventually the piper will be paid so to speak. Workers you desperately need won't have the skills necessary to provide the labor you need, and in this day and age, that's increasingly skills that require more education and creativity like IT people, not manual labor. You won't have transportation necessary for your business logistics. I could go on and on.

Those who oppose income taxes like to point to Florida as proof of how taxes should be. There's one tiny problem with that. Florida gets a lot of tax revenues from sales taxes related to tourism because they get a ton of tourism into the state. So they effectively shift the burden of their tax revenues onto people outside of the state. Every state can't do that. My state of Virginia gets some tourism, but if we eliminated income tax and increased sales tax especially on industries that are related to state tourism, we'd be screwed, and we'd kill the tourism industry in our state at the same time.