Thanks to her skills on stage and attention-grabbing personality and ensembles, Lady Gaga’s lavishly loaded. But despite the fantastic account balances the Lady may be viewing during her ATM visits, the fact is that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s rapidly expanding billionaire fortune easily dwarfs the money piles of the “Born This Way” singer. So why is it, then, that if Gaga’s earnings have remained relatively steady, she may end up paying more to the taxman in 2012 than Zuckerberg?
David S. Miller, a celebrated tax lawyer from New York, sorts out some of the issues behind this bizarre state of affairs. In a recently published opinion piece written for the New York Times, Miller even muses about what he calls the “Zuckerberg tax.” He espouses the later as a much better alternative to the “Buffet rule” that’s sort of making the rounds in Washington. Both proposed taxes aim to make the tax burden more equitably distributed among Americans of all income levels. Miller’s imagined Zuckerberg tax would make unsold stock susceptible to income taxation.
In the coming years, Zuckerberg will have plenty of unsold Facebook shares on which he will pay no taxes, but next year at least, he’s expected to make history after paying a tax bill exceeding $2 billion on account of stock maneuverings that he’s expected to make in an effort to secure more control over the company he’s built.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/the-zuckerberg-tax.html