Your purchasing of a product is a net consumption of a product.
A business expense is the research, development, building, production, and innovation of a product. Surely you can understand the concept that one should be emphasized as important to economical growth and the other is going to happen regardless?
Yeah no that's an arbitrary distinction and evaluation that a business which is the extension of a person should have its individual investments for its personal benefits tax deducted. For example, if you were the CEO and had lunch everyday with potential clients you can write that off as a job expense. if you as a person are looking for jobs and pay for lunch during your job search or during your interview day you can't. If a business pays for lunch in order to make $100 dollars that day, its fine. If you pay for lunch so that your body doesn't shut down so you can make $100 dollars at your job site, you can't. its actually really funny. I work in a field where I can be a contract worker or can be a salaried employee. There are many things I can write off as a contract worker that I can't write off as a salary worker even though the job is the same, the tools are the same, my needs are the same, my necessary physical investments needed to do the job are the same [ie office at home, etc].
The only difference is as a contract worker I can call my work a business, whilst as a salary worker I am an employee.
Its completely arbitrary to claim that investments companies make to ensure their own financial growth and independence are more important and should be tax deductible when individuals make those same investments in order to ensure a steady income they can't. I mean, if a company rents a building to ensure a steady income thats fine but if I rent an apartment to ensure a steady income its not deductible. There is no reason in this country to sometimes treat companies as individuals when it benefits them and to sometimes treat them as non-individuals when it doesn't.
This article seems like a hit piece. Mainly because the average American does not understand the difference between wealth and income.
In America we are taxed on income not wealth and for a good fucking reason.
I think you're missing the entire basic idea of the story which is 2 points.
You can hide from what is basically income by calling it "wealth" and not income.
In addition, wealth when it does get taxed is taxed at a much much lower rate than income. For example, many people pay 30-40% taxes between state and federal on their income. However if you're a billionaire and you're only taking in "wealth" from capital gains, you're paying a much much lower tax rate if anything at all when you use tax strategies that allow you to use your company to shield you from tax liabilities.
I'd love for my company to pay me in amazon stock or bitcoin or whatever so I can avoid taxes but it can't. I get paid in real dollars and it gets taxed. Another way to think about it is what would happen if EVERYONE DID THAT. if 100% of the US did what these billionaires are doing, the country would be broke tomorrow AM.