At least $15M a year over most 3 year horizons, or the insane compounding effect of $300M invested over the long haul. Your question makes sense from a "normal" perspective, but doesn't once you're UHNW [0].
> It's either way going to be more money than you'll ever be able to spend.
Not even close. At UHNW levels there are whole classes of things to "spend" on that ramp pretty quickly into 8, 9, 10+ figure values. Influence, power, status, prestige, legacy, ideology, politics, rinse, repeat. And the UHNW "brackets" are a real thing (you're either in the tres commas club or you're not, etc).
Sure, pay your taxes. But once you crack these numbers there are entire industries dedicated to helping you work the system, and it's unfortunately pretty workable (because there are substantial interests lobbying to make/keep it so).
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high-net-worth_individua...
"UHNW" people are crazy, evil and dangerous. There is no amount of stuff that will ever satisfy them. They will consume, and cheat on taxes, obsessively - until our natural world is destroyed.
It has come down to us vs. them. We didn't start this fight, but we are going to have to finish it.
How about the insane compounding effect of a better funded society, through less multi-mill/billionaire tax avoidance?
>Your question makes sense from a "normal" perspective, but doesn't once you're UHNW
Or rather, it makes sense from a normal (non quotes) perspective, but not from the point of a power hungry sociopath.
or founding more border patrols instead of local police? or funding local police, which then spends it on legal fees to fight against releasing body cam footage?
also note, that I'm not saying the people who optimize away their taxes spend it better (yachts! country clubs in the middle of the desert!)
this "compounding" is not captured by the private individual, where as the compounding from the saved taxes is.
Your basic premise is flawed.
Note that I'm not even talking about taxes. But tax avoidance also becomes a lot easier the more money you have.
Of course, I understand that if you're in that wealth bracket, the actual tax/accounting acrobatics is abstracted from you. You probably hire some consultant to do all the work, and in the day only pay a fee to get your tax cut by x.xx%. That's zero work for you, minus whatever time you spent on a meeting with the consultant.
But still, there are people that will be heavily involved in these things themselves.
Yes, it is a polarizing topic. Some people refuse to pay taxes because of how the money is spent - or they have some idea of how the money is spent. But from a pragmatic point of view...what's the difference between sitting on say $500MM in cash, and $800MM? It's either way going to be more money than you'll ever be able to spend. Hell, even the safest investments at that scale will yield more money than what most CEOs make in a year.
(With that said, I do have sympathy for the people living in countries where you have to pay wealth tax or tax on unrealized gains, which for founders means
1) taking out loans to pay taxes
2) increasing their yearly compensation, just to meet their tax burden or
3) to sell their equity
But these aren't really in the "exit" bracket)