Everyone "knows" that the wealthy pay proportionately less in taxes than middle-income American workers. Now, an investigative reporting site called ProPublica.org is detailing how they do it.
"Certainly, there are illegal tax evaders among [the wealthy]," ProPublica says, "but it turns out billionaires don’t have to evade taxes exotically and illicitly — they can avoid them routinely and legally." ProPublica's source is an IRS trove of tax returns from the 25 wealthiest Americans over several years. ProPublica says it "obtained" the records, but not from whom.
The ultra-wealthy can become ever more wealthy without paying taxes because of the delayed taxation of capital gains. That is, if you own stock or property that skyrockets in value, you are that much richer, but you don't have to pay taxes on your burgeoning bucks until you actually sell the asset that has become more valuable.
At WRP, most of us know how this works. When Ritchie Rich sells, say, some shares of stock, he pays capital-gains taxes on the difference between the price when he bought it and the price he gets when he sells it -- and the capital gains tax rate is lower than it used to be.
ProPublica spends quite a bit of outrage on how little the zillionaires pay as an overall tax rate when their assets rise. It's a small fraction of what salary- and wage-earning workers pay in income taxes. Workers pay with every paycheck, but the wealthy, whose income derives from assets, can pick and choose when they want to make their assets liquid.
An example is Jeff Bezos of Amazon. ProPublica says, "for every $100 of wealth growth" from 2006 to 2018, "typical Americans paid $160 in taxes. Bezos paid only $1.09."
Before Ritchie Rich sells, he has the benefit of using his boku bucks as collateral to get loans at an ultra-low rate of interest. (You'll recall that loan rates are barely above zero these days.) That's a good way to avoid touching assets; a loan can go for spending money or for projects like adding a wing on the ol' family mansion.
Added to that, of course, are the deductions that the wealthy can take for donations. Warren Buffett, for instance, told ProPublica, “I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing U.S. debt.”
What does it all mean? It means that the U.S. is overdue for a tax overhaul. Because this way, nobody wealthy is paying "their fair share" of the cost of running the country.
The article link is below.
What would be a fair share for the wealthy to contribute in taxes?
What do you think the U.S. needs to do to make the tax rates more fair?
Should the U.S. tax the assets of the wealthy directly, whether the capital gains are realized or not?
How would you go about taxing a person who is not making a traditional income?
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax?fbclid=IwAR1WieU3fB3dMeDOjhbrYabbVu8cNY-R-VEw5qsfoHb7ZpjojG_pcBeBZBw
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