It's not just the expense of getting around taxes, but also the difference in sources of income. If most of the income is on a W-2, there are just not as many ways to get around any income taxes. But if it's mostly business or investment income, that's like Minecraft for accountants.

And a lot of people always throws around terms like "almost nothing" without defining it in terms of actual dollars. Is it like 50M is nothing compared to their 10B net worth? What are we talking about/comparing here?

Trump paid zero for years.

Privately, I know how to make investment income go to zero if you have enough of it. It’s all rather fascinating. Really, the top 5% of the top 1% could do it. But if you have less than $1m income (or cap gains), then it’s likely not worth it.