Another reason to tax the rich. Someone just paid more than 236 million dollars for a painting.

[DFW]

5. I don't see that as a reason to tax the rich

Whoever bought the painting did it openly at an auction, so the invoice will be paid by check or wire with funds of traceable origin. Auction houses like Sotheby's, Heritage and Christie’s have compliance legal staff to make sure they never get unwittingly involved in money-laundering schemes.

A painting sold in NYC will net considerable sales taxes for the city and state of New York. Lauder is well-known for his philanthropy, so there is every reason to believe the net payment to Lauder (after Sotheby’s takes their cut) will go towards charitable causes. What would some bureaucrat do? Tax the painting proportionately and cut out 37% of it with a pocket knife? After all these years in Europe, and seeing how career bureaucrats can mess up people’s lives by inventing and enforcing useless rules, hiding behind “das ist Gesetz (it’s the law)!,”—like we haven’t heard THAT before in Germany—I’m fine with how this went down. Someone with $236 million in legitimate money just donated it, spreading it around, and just got a painting in return. Better the money goes that way than to some governmental bureaucratic Enteigner who says he knows better than anyone else how to spend it, though you have no right to ask details.

A couple of years ago, Heritage auctioned off a gold Nobel Prize medal won by a dissident Russian. The proceeds were designated in advance to go to help Ukrainians. Heritage arranged in advance for any buyer to wire directly to the Ukrainians, in order not to be forced to endanger the identity of the buyer by having the proceeds flow through them. The buyer was an anti-Putin Russian living outside of Russia. I don’t know his or her name, obviously. The buyer paid over $100,000,000 for the medal, and, due to the charitable designation for the proceeds, Heritage also made their charitable contribution by taking zero commission from either buyer or seller. At $100 million, I wonder if they were feeling so charitable afterward!! Even 2% would have been a chunk of change, though if you want to talk chunks of change, Sotheby’s probably netted around 20%, or over $45 million, from the painting. There’s charity, and then there’s charity.