Daniel

“A frequent refrain of those defending the status quo is that the income tax system already heavily burdens the rich because the top 1 percent of earners pay 40 percent of all income taxes while 40 percent of Americans pay no income taxes at all. This is partially true: Individuals with the most taxable income do pay the most income tax. However, this statistic is about people who have high incomes, typically from work; it tells us nothing about the tax liability of those with the most wealth. Studies have shown that there is only about a 50 percent overlap between America’s wealthiest people and those who earn the most income. Moreover, as the leaked tax returns of several of the wealthiest Americans reveal, the ability of wealth owners to avoid taxable income means that they are just as likely to be among the 40 percent of nonpayers as they are the top 1 percent of earners.”
― Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy

“The personality elements of the funnel of misbelief

Personality—broadly understood as individual differences—plays a role in explaining why some of us are more susceptible to misbelief than others.

It is extremely difficult to do personality research on misbelievers, since they instinctively mistrust the motives of the researchers. However, some common traits have been observed.

Being more prone to misremembering, falling into the trap of false recall and false recognition, feeds misbelief.

Seeing patterns where none exist is linked to misbelief.

Overtrusting our intuitions is linked to misbelief.

Decision-making biases such as the conjunction fallacy, illusory correlations, and the hindsight bias are more pronounced in misbelievers.

Narcissism plays a role in misbelief.

Personality cannot be easily changed, but knowing which traits correlate with misbelief can help us to identify risky points.”
― Dan Ariely, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things

“Third, DAFs (donor-advised funds) allow private foundations to avoid the public scrutiny that Congress wanted them to have. If a private foundation makes a direct donation to a hate group or other questionable charity, that information is available to the public through public disclosure of tax returns. But if the private foundation wants to avoid this disclosure, it can simply make a distribution to a DAF, then make the donation to the hate group from the DAF, and no one is the wiser.45 While DAFs do publish their distributions, they list them over thousands of pages, and the information is disconnected from any particular donor.

45. Charitable gifts to hate groups can have devastating effects both within and outside the United States. Proposed legislation in Uganda imposing the death penalty for homosexuals was supported by significant charitable donations from United States taxpayers, many of which came from donor-advised funds. — Lydia Namubiro, “Charity Loophole Lets US Donors Give Far-Right Groups $272m in Secret,” Open Democracy (July 5, 2023).”
― Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy

“The tax system benefits these wealthy heirs in another way as well: by hiding these tax benefits from the public. Gifts and inheritances are not only received free of income tax; but their receipt is also free of reporting requirements. This lack of reporting helps perpetuate the myth that the tax liability of the wealthy is more burdensome than it is.
To illustrate: a person with a $1 million salary (subject to about $325,000 in income taxes) also receives a $10 million inheritance. Under current reporting rules, only the $1 million salary is reported on the taxpayer’s return, giving the impression—to the taxpayer, the IRS, and the public—that the taxpayer is paying income taxes at a rate of 32.5 percent. On the other hand, if the taxpayer were required to report the $10 million inheritance (even if it weren’t subject to tax!), it would be easier to see that the actual tax burden is less than 4 percent of the income acquired in that year. If we add more zeros to the inheritance, the tax liability shrinks even more.”
― Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy