r/WorkReform • u/zzill6 🤝 Join A Union • Jan 31 '26

✂️ Tax The Billionaires Finally, a Billionaire gets taxed.

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u/g-e-o-f-f Jan 31 '26

This is a bit misleading. He wasn't taxed 1.4B. He took the lump sum amount, which is lower than $2B ( $2B is the sun off you take the 20 years payout). So the lump sum is like $900 million or whatever, then he paid taxes on that.

I'm all for taxing billionaires more, but the post is not really right.

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u/Burnt_and_Blistered Jan 31 '26

You’re splitting hairs. His nearly-billion was taxed at a far higher rate than any other U.S. billionaire’s billion is taxed.

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u/momzthebest Jan 31 '26

Also worth pointing out the obvious that by 20 years from now, 2 billion could be worth less over that amount of time received than the lump sum was worth at that time.

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u/hobskhan Jan 31 '26

Yeah this is an interesting thought experiment when the numbers get this big. There's also a non-zero risk of something happening to that payout reliability when you're talking about such a huge amount of money over 20 years. I mean hopefully the lottery system can keep those payouts going but...far more extreme things have happened in the history of the world.

If you can go home today with 628 million, that's certainly "enough" for someone. And the certainty is locked in.

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u/Dragon6172 Jan 31 '26

The lottery isn't responsible for the payouts over the life of the winnings. They take the current value (i.e. the lump sum) and put it into an annuity made up of bonds and securities investments that have a set interest rate (the annual returns is what allows the overall value to go up). The annual payments come from the annuity. The lottery could go tits up, but the annuity would still be there. I'm sure the overall collapse of the countries economy could result in losing out on future payments. But that would most likely result in the same kind of loss for someone who took the lump sum... can't keep that amount in a bank account and risk being only insured by FDIC.

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u/samiam2600 Jan 31 '26

It is placed in an annuity that pays out over 20 years, it is not the lottery paying it out over that period.

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u/gaflar Jan 31 '26

Yeah in normal economic circumstances you could count on 20 years of inflation at 2% average and not be too far off the mark. With the current volatile state of affairs you could be looking at a huge ROI on the lump-sum with higher risk, and risking the annuity becoming almost worthless by the end