扎克伯格“裸捐”：“慈善”还是投资？

质疑扎克伯格等亿万富豪捐钱搞慈善动机的美国人大有人在，在“小札”宣布捐钱后，美国新闻网站《每日野兽》(thedailybeast.com)便刊登了专栏作家马耶洛(Michael Maiello)一篇评论文章，称“小札”捐钱对自己来说也是一笔十分划算的买卖。

 

　　可以少缴个人所得税，免交资本利得税

 

　　马耶洛引用了纽约大学商学院教授戴维·叶尔马克2008年的一篇论文称，那些富豪或高管们捐股票的动机并不单纯，有的只是为了卖掉大幅增值的股票而又不违背内幕交易法；同时，那些高管们以后通过新成立的慈善基金还可以继续控制公司。

 

　　叶尔马克的研究显示，富豪们在将股票捐给慈善基金会后，其公司的股价通常会大跌。这意味着，富豪们很可能事先就知道公司的股价要跌，所以在高位时将股票脱手。这其实是一种内幕交易，但由于是捐给慈善事业，所以不受内幕交易法约束。富豪们这样做的目的是为了多拿个人所得税退款。考虑到美国富豪的巨额资产和个人所得税的高税率，这笔钱是相当可观的。

 

　　马耶洛同时指出，具体情况具体分析，作为超级富豪，扎克伯格的慈善举动未必是为了多拿个人所得税，因此在他把股票捐出后，脸谱网的公司股价也并不一定会跌。

 

　　马耶洛认为，对扎克伯格来说，把公司股票捐给家族基金会的一大好处便是：他转移了脸谱网股票的所有权，但却不用缴纳资本利得税。小编在这里解释一下，资本利得税，是对资本利得（低买高卖资产所获收益）征税。常见的资本利得有买卖股票、债券、贵金属和房地产等所获得的收益。扎克伯格脸谱网的公司上市以来，股价一路飙升，如果他通过卖股票的方式变更股权，那么肯定要交一大笔资本利得税。

 

　　另外，扎克伯格还可以立即享受到财务上的一个好处：将股票捐出后，缴纳个人所得税时，扎克伯格应缴税收入便大幅减少了。据粗略估计，省去的这笔钱，相当于他捐出股票价值的三分之一。让我们来算一下，扎克伯格计划首先捐出10亿美元，那么他就可以少缴3亿多所得税。

 

　　还可以省遗产税

 

　　扎克伯格慷慨捐赠的举动还可以使他的后代获益。这是因为美国有遗产税，而且美国的遗产税采用累进税制，资产越庞大，子女继承遗产时缴纳的遗产税就越多。除了遗产税，继承人还要缴纳个人所得税。按照目前的税率，扎克伯格的子女仅能继承大约一半遗产，另一半都要用来缴税。

 

　　这还不是最狠的，美国税法规定，遗产受益人在继承遗产前，要先交纳遗产税。这意味着美国富豪要想把遗产留给子女，还要给子女留够缴纳遗产税的钱。扎克伯格虽然身家百亿，但财富绝大多数都是以脸谱网股票的形式存在的。所以，如果扎克伯格真的想把钱留给子女，就只能出售股票。而这显然不是一个明智的选择。因为一方面把股票变现需要交很多税；另一方面，按照惯例，大股东出售股票必须经由董事会同意，如果扎克伯格执意抛售股票，那么脸谱网的股价就将狂跌。这些都会损失大笔财富。

 

　　把股票转赠给慈善基金会，就不一样了。因为根据美国法律，慈善捐款可以免税，慈善基金会符合一定条件也可以免税，还可以投资获利。扎克伯格捐出的股票最终流向了自己掌管的家族基金会。待扎克伯格及其夫人百年之后，控制权可能会由其子女继承。即便其子女没有掌管基金会，基金会也可以保证他们生活得很好。美国《财富》此前在评价比尔·盖茨将全部财产捐给盖茨基金会的行为时称：他根本不需要留钱，3个子女都会有基金会照顾，这辈子衣食无忧。

 

 

延伸阅读：

 

How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself

 

Zuckerberg set up a limited liability company, which has reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup and will help minimize his tax bill.

 

by Jesse Eisinger

ProPublica, Dec. 3, 2015, 10:30 a.m.

 

 

This story was co-published with The New York Times

 

 

Mark Zuckerberg did not donate $45 billion to charity. You may have heard that, but that was wrong.

 

Here’s what happened instead: Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle.

 

Sorry for the slightly less sexy headline.

 

Zuckerberg is a co-founder of Facebook and a youthful mega-billionaire. In announcing the birth of his daughter, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, declared they would donate 99 percent of their worth, the vast majority of which is tied up in Facebook stock valued at $45 billion today.

 

In doing so, Zuckerberg and Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His PR return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having, in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other.

 

An LLC can invest in for-profit companies (perhaps these will be characterized as societally responsible companies, but lots of companies claim the mantle of societal responsibility). An LLC can make political donations. It can lobby for changes in the law. He remains completely free to do as he wishes with his money. That’s what America is all about. But as a society, we don’t generally call these types of activities “charity.”

 

What’s more, a charitable foundation is subject to rules and oversight. It has to allocate a certain percentage of its assets every year. The new Zuckerberg LLC won’t be subject to those rules and won’t have any transparency requirements.

 

In covering the event, many commentators praised the size and percentage of the gift and pointed out that Zuckerberg is relatively young to be planning to give his wealth away. “Mark Zuckerberg Philanthropy Pledge Sets New Giving Standard,” Bloomberg glowed. Few news outlets initially considered the tax implications of Zuckerberg’s plan. AWall Street Journal article didn’t mention taxes at all.

 

Nor did they grapple with the societal implications of the would-be donations.

 

So what are the tax implications? They are quite generous to Zuckerberg. I asked Victor Fleischer, a law professor and tax specialist at the University of San Diego School of Law, as well as a contributor toDealBook. He explained that if the LLC sold stock, Zuckerberg would pay a hefty capital gains tax, particularly if Facebook stock kept climbing.

 

If the LLC donated to a charity, he would get a deduction just like anyone else. That’s a nice little bonus. But the LLC probably won’t do that because it can do better. The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the LLC donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax.

 

Zuckerberg didn’t create these tax laws and cannot be criticized for minimizing his tax bills. If he had created a foundation, he would have accrued similar tax benefits. But what this means is that he amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. Any time a superwealthy plutocrat makes a charitable donation, the public ought to be reminded that this is how our tax system works. The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes.

 

Instead of lavishing praise on Zuckerberg for having issued a news release with a promise, this should be an occasion to mull what kind of society we want to live in. Who should fund our general societal needs and how? Charities rarely fund quotidian yet vital needs. What would $40 billion mean for job creation or infrastructure spending? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a budget of about $7 billion. Maybe more should go to that. Society, through its elected members, taxes its members. Then the elected officials decide what to do with sums of money.

 

In this case, it is different. One person will be making these decisions.

 

Of course, nobody thinks our government representatives do a good job of allocating resources. Politicians — a bunch of bums! Maybe Zuckerberg will make wonderful decisions, ones I would personally be happy with. Maybe not. Heblew his $100 million donation to the Newark school system, as Dale Russakoff detailed in her recent book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” Zuckerberg has said he has learned from his mistakes. We don’t know whether that’s true because he hasn’t made any decisions with the money he plans to put into his investment vehicle.

 

But I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Zuckerberg. I am self-aware enough to realize many people would disagree with my choices. Those who like how Zuckerberg is lavishing his funds might not like how the Koch brothers do so. Or George Soros.

 

Mega-donations, assuming Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.

 

The point is that we are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not as excited as some to welcome the newSilicon Valley overlords.

 

 

Jesse Eisinger is a senior reporter at ProPublica, covering Wall Street and finance. He writes a regular column for The New York Times’s Dealbook section.

 

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Why Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Charity’ is a Scheme to Dodge Billions in Taxes

 

Tom Cahill | December 3, 2015

 

Facebook pays almost nothing in taxes. And now its founder won’t either.

 

 

On the surface, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he’s donating 99 percent —roughly $45 billion — of his Facebook stock to philanthropy seems genuine. Other notable billionaires, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have made similar pledges to donate a large bulk of their net worth to charitable causes. However, this is actually just a clever ruse that allows these billionaires to get out of paying taxes on their enormous sums of wealth. As facts come out about Zuckerberg’s new organization, the Initiative seems less like charity and more like a tax ploy.

 

Unlike the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the newly-created Chan Zuckerberg Initative (named after both the Facebook mogul and his wife, Priscilla Chan) is an LLC. This frees up the Initative to do everything from invest its endowment in private corporations as well as fund charitable efforts and participate in politics. A public release from Facebook confirmed the structure of Zuckerberg’s new project:

 

“The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will pursue its mission by funding non-profit organizations, making private investments and participating in policy debates, in each case with the goal of generating positive impact in areas of great need … Any profits from investments in companies will be used to fund additional work to advance the mission.”

 

The release also states that Zuckerberg will maintain control of all the shares donated to the Initiative and that he’ll serve as the organization’s principal figure for the foreseeable future. Forbes author Robert W. Wood noted Zuckerberg’s decision to donate stock rather than cash is a business-savvy decision allowing much greater opportunity toavoid paying taxes:

 

Why donate stock? With stock, the donor gets a charitable contribution deduction based on the fair market value of the shares. Value and basis are different things, which can mean enormous tax advantages. In the past, Mr. Zuckerberg has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, as he has to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Of course, he donates millions of shares, thus skipping tax on the run up in value. Facebook went public in May 2012, with shares initially priced at $38. They proceeded to dip below $20 but then rose by more than 25% by the time of Mr. Zuckerberg’s year-end donation. Zuckerberg’s deduction is keyed to that market value.

 

Alice Ollstein of Think Progress wrote that by donating almost all of his stock to the LLC, Zuckerberg will saveat least 20 percent in capital gains taxes that normally would have been levied upon sale of the stock. And Max, the child that inspired Zuckerberg to launch the LLC, will be spared from paying millions in estate taxes from the wealth she will eventually inherit from her father. As Wood explains, the “donation” is actually just shifting wealth from one account to another tax-free one under the guise of “charity.”

 

After all, by donating the stock, the gain [Zuckerberg] would have experienced on selling it is never taxed. The donee organization can either hold or sell the stock. But since it is a tax-qualified charity, if it sells the stock it pays no tax regardless of how big the gain. And since Mr. Zuckerberg will get credit on his tax return for the market value of what he donates, he can use that to shelter billions of other income.

 

This kind of tax strategy is not a foreign concept to Zuckerberg — Facebook’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), which went live in 2012, was a tax strategy in itself. Thanks to tax breaks for executive stock options, Facebook was able to pay $0 in state and federal income taxes in its first year after going public. As Citizens for Tax Justice explained in a 2013 report, Facebook actually ended up getting $429 million in tax refunds due to its IPO:

 

Facebook’s income tax refunds stem from the company’s use of a single tax break, the tax deductibility of executive stock options. That tax break reduced Facebook’s federal and state income taxes by $1,033 million in 2012, including refunds of earlier years’ taxes of $451 million. But that’s not all of the stock-option tax breaks that Facebook generated from its initial public offering of stock (IPO). Facebook is also carrying forward another $2.17 billion in additional tax-option tax breaks for use in future years.

 

German billionaire Peter Krämer sees right through “charitable efforts” like Zuckerberg’s new LLC. In a 2010 interview with Der Spiegel, Kramer said philanthropy efforts like Warren Buffett’s pledge for billionaires to donate at least 50 percent of their net worth to charity is often just a ruse for billionaires to get out of paying their fair share of taxes:

 

Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That’s unacceptable.

 

SPIEGEL: But doesn’t the money that is donated serve the common good?

 

Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

 

In Zuckerberg’s defense, he maintains that the Initiative will dedicate its funds to “providing everyone with basic healthcare,” “preventing, curing or managing all or most [diseases] in the next 100 years,” and funding “personalized” online education programs. But as I reported last month for US Uncut, Zuckerberg’s previous foray into education-related philanthropy involved dumping $100 million into Chris Christie’s pillaging of Newark public schools. The money was spent on hiring consultants who charged $1,000 a day, firing 1,000 public school teachers and 800 staff, and closing public schools while opening charters. That effort has beenwidely criticized from a multitude ofnews outlets.