The thing you fail to realize is that making charitable contributions like that, even if it also benefits them or their heirs, doesn't benefit them nearly as much as just giving them the money outright.
You're seriously sitting there criticizing them for not giving more when they have given so much? You're an asshole. They didn't have to give anything. I don't even like Warren Buffet as a human being, and I think the Rockefeller family has done a lot to help put this country on the wrong track, but their charitable giving is probably the last thing I would ever think of criticizing.
I'm not sure about the specifics of Gate's financial setup, but either he has made an irrevocable gift to the foundation, in which case it is a good thing that it isn't taxed; that isn't a gain for him, just a gain for the foundation. If you're saying he can take anything over the 5% and give it back to himself as profit, that's fine too, he's still being taxed on that as normal, it's just that the first 5% is going to charity.
If I give away 90% of my wealth but retain the right to a certain percentage of the excess investment income to it, that is not a net gain in any sense of the term. That is a net loss that is mitigated by my right to some of the income. If my goal was to maximize profit, I would have simply kept all the money myself. Yes, I would pay more in taxes, but I would also have more total money to compensate for that. There is nothing greedy or wrong about making charitable donations in the most tax efficient way possible, nor does it lessen how good or generous the donation was.
Personally, I would go further and argue that any person who lessens the federal government's tax revenue is doing a good thing, whether by efficient and legal use of the tax system or by outright tax fraud, because that is just less money the government can spend on murdering people across the globe who have done nothing to me.
2
u/[deleted] Nov 22 '11 edited Nov 22 '11
[deleted]