If you own "billions," you presumably own equity or debt (maybe some commodities, but it's not likely). If you own debt, you're paying taxes on the interest. If you own equity, the value of that equity is the net present value of future cash flows--meaning it's 'taxed' at the rate at which corporations are taxed.

In addition, spending a lot of money and then making it a 'work expense' still requires lots of income. You can't effectively write off your limo charges unless your income at least equals them.

And I don't know how common it is to treat a residence as a work expense. There's a home office tax deduction, but that is a common audit flag.

As a side note, one interesting difference between owning equities from a company that you started versus that you purchased from savings is that your work invested into the company is NOT taxed.

If you can create $100k of value a year in your own company or earn a salary of $100k (which after taxes nets you only $60k that you can contribute to purchasing assets), it will take you a lot longer to build up the value of your assets. Of course, capital gains distributions from either asset are taxed the same.

Your work is not normally taxed; your income is. If your company is worth something, it's based on some kind of future earnings. And those future earnings are taxed.

Consider two developers that make 100k per year before taxes and live off of 40k / year. Now assuming they work for each other they pay 100k and get 65k after taxes, spend 40k and get to invest 15k which they spend on advertizing for their company.

Now assume the work for themselves They pay they only need to live off of 40k so they pay themselves 70k and get to invest 30k on advertizing without paying taxes on that value. Note: numbers are not accurate but they do give context. The idea, is companies can invest in future earns though things like advertizing or R&D without paying taxes on the income uses to pay for that advertizing.

Now you are supposed to pay yourselves market rate, but if you generate 300k in value each year you don't need to pay yourself that money.

Right, if you invest that money, you will only realize the value through dividends or selling a stake. And the value of that stake is once again based on the NPV of future cash flows, which are taxed.

What rich people do to avoid paying income tax is to structure the payment as long term capital gain. Capital gain is taxed at a lower rate than income tax. Of course if you stuff the jet/car/residence/gold-cards as corporate expenses, the capital gain would be lower, too.