UnlimitedTrickPony
26666
823
31
Feb 28, 2026 3:05 AM
UnlimitedTrickPony
26666
823
31
HowManyDicksWouldaDickbuttButtIfaDickbuttCouldButtDicks
And this happens ALL THE TIME. It's how the rich are in control of EVERYTHING. Unfettered hate on social media is the only recourse we have.
Zeplin
Yeah.... that's not how that works.
turborat
I'm too spent... for a good 15 seconds, I'm thinking about why sitting on a painting would increase its value 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️
meatsquatch011
Tax the rich
LivesInThe90s
I read a story years back, a guy made a copy of a famous landscape painting, spent an hour on it, donated to museum, claimed it was the real thing. Got invited to their party's with free food and booze. Made more paintings. Donated. invited to party's out of country, all expenses paid by museum. Gets caught. Police said no charges. There's no law for just lying. IF he had sold the paintings for cash, then straight to jail. But donated is fine. U.S.A, U.S.A.!
McFrazzlestache
Cool. I'll sell mine for $50k. Bargain basement prices, Mona Lisa quality.
taez555
ThePostPenultStraw
Does this work for "regular" people? Asking for a friend.
epistlero
Find a shitty artist (cough basquiet cough) buy a bunch of paintings cheap, auction one off. Have someone pay a million dollars for it. Bingo, now all your shitty paintings are worth a million bucks each
monsteroflove
Oh it’s not just artwork. Stock works the same way, real estate too.
Peden1
Capitalism is a hell of a drug.
FatBastardVegetarian
Even the rich that say taxes should be higher have clever accountants.
veritas1980
The dude who owns hobby lobby does this, but he donates to a museum that he owns also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQIdRNSdgQ0
davethecowboy
This is how the savings and loan industry was destroyed; buy a property for $1 million, get a crooked appraiser to value it at $10 million, get a loan on that amount, pocket the money and default.
GrandChampion
That’s literally the only reason the buy paintings of a red line and call it “art” to up it’s worth
drsatan1978
They do this so they can borrow against the asset, not so they can donate. Thats the tax scam. It's buy ,borrow, die.
ShinksAvoHazaar
Art belongs to all humanity as it’s worth resides in the facets of all those that view it. Slapping a $ amount to it makes is a “product”
Nukls
how much for a banana duct taped to the wall
Kotarisu
At least three-fitty.
The701
GrimleyGraves
This is exactly why "tax the rich" wont work, they have had decades to game the system.
makesense
*sigh* Charitable deductions for the wealthy are capped at 35% of the item's value. Also, the charity has to be an actual charity, not just that it was donated freely. I would also assume that the 'qualified appraiser' has to follow specific guidelines. Both the person donating and the appraiser can face significant fines and jail if they fraudulently over-appraise something.
DynamoJoeHoHo
That’s not a scam. That’s capital appreciation. It’s only a scam if the appraiser is lying.
Would you feel better that the precious piece of art was never seen?
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the wealthy. This isn’t one of them.
ReaperCDN
Capital appreciation is great way to say scam with more syllables.
DynamoJoeHoHo
So if your 401k goes up in value, that’s a scam? Spare me
Hashbrown123
Most art is just a way for people to launder money.
kirmokum
actually the opposite is true.
thebonesofmyancestors
Laundering money is mostly for art? I keed, I keed.
friendsofsandwiches
Is this how Banksy's get to be worth so much?
Nukls
no. he stole some rat stencil
and became prolific with it
grew some notoriey and
made some edgy spray
that caught some eyes
superman0000
That, plus the money he makes from Gorillaz and Tank Girl.
kirmokum
different guy.
superman0000
kirmokum
rob gunningham didn't do tank girl or gorillaz' art. so yes, different guy.
RoboVik
...i'm pretty sure you can't just get some random jackass to say your kid's macaroni art is worth 6 figures...
Zeplin
Yes, but this is Imgur, and the meme says rich people bad, so it must be true!
Toqom
No but a corrupt appraiser? Sure.
WillWasThere
Isn't this what the banana duct taped to the canvas was about?
bonkbone
this is nonsense. makes no sense. you have no concept of laundering $
Pilgrymm
Not about laundering it's about tax evasion.
bonkbone
https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1N3o2bmsyMDFuNTFtdWJpdXowN2VoZHE2NHpxcHJwbzdyMXNibXZ6YiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/uNE1fngZuYhIQ/200w.webp
Pilgrymm
They're really not the same. Sure they both entail hiding money from folks but they're not the same. You're trying to take trigonometry and calculus and mash them together to make elementary math.
ReaperCDN
Its not the same. Money laundering is taking illegal cash and converting it to legitimate. So say you got $10 million selling cocaine, you need a way to make that money appear legitimate. If you own a dry cleaner, you cook the books just a little bit to over-report on business and profit, using the illegal money as "proof" that stuff happened. The additional profit you report at year end is now laundered and you can safely deposit that somewhere. You hide the source of the money. /1
ReaperCDN
Tax evasion you dont hide the source, you hide the money from the law. So for instance, reporting you only made $1 million when you made $5 million. You're evading the taxes on the actual income. 2/2
BlindGardener
It doesn’t work that way in the USA. The basis of a painting that you donate is what you paid for it, not what it’s appraised at, and you’re only permitted to take the LOWER of the fair market value and the basis of non-cash donations.
n0gal
Appraisals are however used for insurance payouts. "Oh no my art was stolen whatever shall I do"
ArcherPointingFromTheComments
Which is why you take a loan using the appraisal value as collateral and a surety. Loans are classified as a debt, which can't be taxed as income. Use another asset to secure another loan to pay the first one off, rinse and repeat ad infinitum.
080080
this does not work because the institutions underwriting these loans would never accept something so illiquid and whose value is so subjective as collateral for the loan.
ArcherPointingFromTheComments
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1MDl1Y2w1c3RveWtwcjYxdGpmbmtkZ2M1NTFxM3FqY3Z1OTgzNXdkOCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/6ra84Uso2hoir3YCgb/200w.webp
BlindGardener
Yes, that works better
Spidey209
that's why you sell it at auction to someone that owes you $10m. Then they take the deduction.
080080
whoever sold it recognizes $10m of income in that case.
BiffMaGriff
I thought they just get loans so then it is never income.
Spidey209
It goes against the $10m debt incurred when loaning the money.
080080
okay, i'm trying my best to be kind. someone owes you $10m? that means you loaned them $10m in cash at some point in the past. you then go on to sell them a painting. how do they "pay" you when they owe you money? now let's say you mean the reverse, you owe someone $10m. you "sell" them a painting to clear the debt. that is a taxable transaction. if the $10m you owe someone gets forgiven, that is cancellation of debt income. your logic doesn't work.
Spidey209
I do you a political favour. You now owe me $10m. You buy my painting for $10m. I now have $10m you have your political favour. You donate the painting to a museum and collect the tax write off. You now have a political favour worth $10m and a $2m tax write off.
MyCatsAreTypingThis
I think that's only true if the charity is not using it- for example if they're going to sell it and keep the proceeds. If someone were to donate the painting to a museum for display they can take a larger deduction, but there are other rules.
nddstgm9gz12
But they usually say “on loan from”
draginator
That's different, donating vs letting them borrow and disaplay the piece
BlindGardener
I do taxes for a living. It’s true no matter what the charity does with it.
MyCatsAreTypingThis
https://www.icpas.org/information/copy-desk/insight/article/digital-exclusives-2022/donating-an-andy-warhol-what-to-know-when-seeking-a-charitable-tax-deduction
JayDeeDubs
Among the tax scams that billionaires use, this is among the least important. Far, far more damaging is the low taxation on investment earnings vs income, and most important: borrowing against assets while having virtually no actual income.
khora
There is no taxation on investments, and we want it to be that way because we want money to be moving. It’s about policing what isn’t actually investments.
JayDeeDubs
Dividends are taxed, but at a lower rate than traditional income. And gains on investments are taxed at same, again at a lower rate.
khora
I'm only talking company investments as there isn't a distinction between consumption and investments in personal tax law. And for companies you only tax the profit, not the revenue, and profit is revenue minus expenses and investments.
ReaperCDN
Property tax is a tax against investments. Dividend taxes are taxes against investments. Neither are bad things. We need to stop letting the uber wealthy keep their wealth away from taxation.
khora
They are great things. Doing the investment isn’t taxed.
ReaperCDN
Yeah agreed. Property tax is how we pay for municipal services for example.
khora
I was thinking about companies though, as there isn’t a the concept of investments in personal tax law, whereas in corporate tax law you deduct investments from the revenue, lowering the profit, which is what is taxed.
Exyr
Heh I feel like its more once its appraised for 10m you can then sell it for 10m and then dirty drug money is now clean.
MissIWasntItching
Except it was never worth 10m, so nobody is going to pay 10m for it. It's still worth 10m in tax breaks, because the system is broken.
Atomic2
When I saw this shared before, the premise was that the appraisal was bullshit. They either bribed the appraiser, or were friends with them. I forget which.
But like all viral shared ragebait, take this with a grain of salt.
TinyBadger101
It's definitely the donation tax scheme most often. To make it even "better", most of them donate to private museums they own, so it's not even available to the public to view the art. It's sometimes literally a building they own, on land they own, with a "private collection" that was donated by them.
Tenugui
That's the beauty of this scheme though: you don't need a buyer for some useless modern art, you just get the credit for donating. No dirty(or clean) money because there never was any money in the art. But your other income gets a much better treatment since on paper you took a big loss by making that generous donation. This is why the Alternative Minimum Tax was established, to prevent excessive paper losses from resulting in no tax liability.
LittleDragon
You get more of a tax break donating it. If you sell it you have to pay taxes on the money you got from that.
chefsoda
You get a tax break donating, but it’s always less than selling it. Highest tax bracket in the US is 37%. No matter what the value is, selling means you keep at least 63%, donating gives you a deduction of less than 37%.
And the charitable donation value is on fair market price, not a crazy value purchased from a corrupt appraiser, so OP’s plan is just tax fraud
Exyr
Yeah but once you pay taxes on money its clean money that the government has accounted for. Cant just have 10m sitting around.
Snooj
You don't worry about taxes when laundering money. That's just the convenience fee. If you have 10 million in dirty money it's better to end up with 7 million you can spend than to keep the 10 million you can't.
DarknessfillsmyheartwithpainTIMMAY
The point is that it's not worth $10m, so no one would pay that
SpammersAreScum
If you sell it for $10 million, you pay capital gains taxes on it, which is only 20%. right? So you're net $8 million. Even if you paid regular tax, you'd net over $6 million. If you donate it, you reduce your taxable income by $10 million, which means you net the tax you saved on that, which is less than $4 million.
SpammersAreScum
And, of course, the reason people donate despite that analysis is that $10k is a bullshit figure which no-one will pay, but you can still get away with claiming it on you taxes when you donate, maybe.
MeowWoof
Yup! That's why, when you can't find anyone to pay $10 million for it, you set it on fire and claim a $10 mil loss. That way you save $3-4mil in taxes for your $100,000 investment.
baals
Nah your buddy buys it for 10m and reappraised it for 100m
chefsoda
Except Individuals can only claim a tax loss for personal property if there’s a federal disaster area involved. Other than that, as in a house fire, it’s on their insurance, and that’s just felony fraud.
MeowWoof
Not if I get my political friends to defund the IRS baby! It's only a crime if someone is trying to catch you.
Kotarisu
Or be Xanatos, donate it to the museum, then have it be "stolen" by an "unknown organization." Oh and test some kickass power armour prototypes whilst you are at it.
onlymostofthetime
this is also very similar to what Lex Luthor did in the first few episodes of the Superman cartoon, except it involved insuring a suit of his company's new power armor and hiring someone to steal it. hmm it's almost like this is the sort of thing only despicable people do
Redshadow09
GARGOYLE MENTIONED WHOOOOOWWW
SandyTentaclez
Presented by Jonathan Frakes.
Zyrixion
I hear he plays a mean game of speed chess.
WackyWavingFlailingArmTubeMan
"Pay a man enough money and he will walk barefoot into hell
Mikeiller
man, not enough rich people's plans involve testing kickass power armor prototypes these days.
Onlyhereforthelaughs
We really are in the worst timeline... :C
Hashbrown123
So an evil Tony Stark?
RatsLiveOnNoEvilStar
Aka Lex Luthor
nclu
Turns out the real life evil Tony Stark is so much dumber than we ever imagined
Kyen155
[ Lex Luthor has entered the chat ]
Hashbrown123
Generally Lex isn't evil, he just really hates Superman.
ChazzK
His hatred of Superman is why he's specifically going after Supes, but all the General Corporate Evilness - including such things as slavery, murder, extortion and war-mongering while playing both sides - were pure Lex!
TheSwedishMoose
He was the founder and leader of THE LEGION OF DOOM.
RyanSilver612
Lex is greedy and narcissistic. He will put whole continents in peril to "save the world". He doesn't care about the people in the world as the praise and notoriety he will reap from defeating the evil.