How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
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The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax — ProPublica
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Admittedly I have only skimmed this article and will read it later, but immediately it jumps out that this is a very misleading headline (shocker, I know). It seems to be focused on wealth increase, like stocks or real estate going up in value, which obviously should not be taxed the way income is.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
@89th said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
should not be taxed the way income is
Tell that to Senator Warren who has proposed exactly that.
No, Sen. Warren has not proposed "exactly that". See Sen. Warren's proposal on her own website here: https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/ultra-millionaire-tax
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Megan McArdle
@asymmetricinfoI thought the ProPublica analysis of billionaire taxes was going to be exciting. Instead, it told me things I already knew: that the US tax code offers deductions for charitable donations, loan interest, and business operating expenses, and only taxes capital gains when you sell.
The most exciting thing is wondering who gave them the information, and how long that person will spend in jail when they're caught, as I suspect they will be.
This isn't a case where you could have gotten one person's partial records from an accountant or a disgruntled ex-spouse. Practically speaking, unless all the billionaires have the same tax attorney, I suspect the only place the data could have come from is the IRS itself.
If so, I see two possibilities:
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The IRS was hacked, which would be a huge scandal, and make you wonder just how many tax returns the hackers have.
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Employee, which would make you wonder just how bad IRS IT security is, and how good the employee was at covering their tracks
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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From my survey of leftist ideas back when I listened to VOX podcasts (mainstream progressive thought from mainstream progressives), they are fully on board with the idea that 'no normal people own stocks'. They would be just fine with the government appropriating all wealth held in the stock market, by whatever means necessary. These people are thought leaders. They're adults, they have kids, they control the political ideas of the schools and all of pop culture, and they vote.
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@horace said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
From my survey of leftist ideas back when I listened to VOX podcasts (mainstream progressive thought from mainstream progressives), they are fully on board with the idea that 'no normal people own stocks'. They would be just fine with the government appropriating all wealth held in the stock market, by whatever means necessary. ...
Non sequitur.
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Me/rry/Christmas
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@lufins-dad said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
@loki said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
Flat Tax!!!
I still support a consumption tax.
A flat tax plus consumption tax skews the burden significantly towards poorer people who aren't saving anything already.
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@george-k said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
@89th said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
should not be taxed the way income is
Tell that to Senator Warren who has proposed exactly that. I doubt it would pass constitutional muster, but it's been floated as an idea for months.
I think that's an awesome idea. Tax the hell out of it, that's fine. Just use the money wisely.
Which with this congress effectively means I think it's a terrible idea and should be fought tooth and nail.
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In the RWEC, the major story is not that very rich people avoid taxes, legally, but the fact that this information was leaked.
At NRO:
The relevant question is not whether you like Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk. The question is whether the IRS declaration that tax returns are confidential applies to everyone or not. This morning it’s pretty clear that the your tax return is confidential, as long as no one at the IRS thinks it is newsworthy. But if they do, you’re screwed. …
The true problem isn’t the reporters, it is the people with access to classified, privileged, confidential or sensitive information who decide to violate their oaths and the law to leak that information, and that is the proper target for prosecutions. That said, a publication can look at leaked information and conclude they’re not going to play a supporting role in the violation of a person’s right to privacy.
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-They’re doing it simply someone at the IRS gave private materials protected by law to them? Really? The news agency that “investigates abuses of power” seems to overlook a very large example of just that kind of official abuse to expose … legal behavior. ProPublica has done excellent investigative work in the past, but this raises all sorts of questions as to motives and manipulation.
Not at ProPublica, however:
Today, ProPublica is launching the first in a series of stories based on the private tax data of some of our nation’s richest citizens. We obtained the information from an anonymous source who provided us with large amounts of information on the ultrawealthy, everything from the taxes they paid to the income they reported to the profits from their stock trades. …
Many will ask about the ethics of publishing such private data. We are doing so — quite selectively and carefully — because we believe it serves the public interest in fundamental ways, allowing readers to see patterns that were until now hidden.
Tax experts have long understood that the wealthiest Americans reap outsized benefits from the federal tax code’s emphasis on taxing income rather than assets like stock holdings and property. Yet, when The New York Times disclosed in 2020 that President Donald Trump had amassed so many deductions he paid no taxes in 11 of 18 years, it was assumed that his case was an anomaly, reflecting the unique breaks real estate developers receive under our tax system.
It is now clear that there isn’t just one such taxpayer — there are many, in multiple industries. We believe that disclosing the identities of billionaires who paid little to no taxes in years their fortunes grew by billions of dollars will help readers understand the magnitude of the tax advantages the ultrarich enjoy.
If “tax experts have long understood” this, then what’s the point of exposing private information — especially since it’s not the taxpayers who control this, at least directly? Tax returns are protected by law for a reason — they want filers to have no excuses for being completely honest about their income. If ProPublica wants to cover the unfairness of the tax system, interview the tax experts and construct hypotheticals — or ask some of these “.001 percenters” for permission to use their tax returns.
There’s no indication that these particular filers aren’t being honest. If these taxpayers were breaking the law and getting away with it, that might be a good reason to expose the people and their returns as a way to pressure the IRS and the Department of Justice into enforcement. That’s not the issue for this ProPublica article, however; they’re unhappy about the policy and regulation with which these filers comply.
And more to the point, so is the person who leaked this material. This isn’t a whistleblower calling attention to official abuse of power or lawbreaking. It’s someone who has a beef with the law as it stands, and is himself abusing the power of his position to manipulate public opinion about it. ProPublica is playing along for its own political purposes, which puts them in a moral position of cooperating with abuse of power rather than investigating it.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:
More
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-They’re doing it simply someone at the IRS gave private materials protected by law to them? Really? The news agency that “investigates abuses of power” seems to overlook a very large example of just that kind of official abuse to expose … legal behavior.
FBI, Treasury are investigating the leak.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-investigates-disclosure-tax-records-rich-americans-2021-06-08/ -
It must be hard for Treasury employees to leak returns undetected or we'd probably have seen much more of it over the years.
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Somebody needs to go to jail.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
The timing of the leak is amazing, it would be a fantastic coincidence if it isn’t politically motivated. I’m not making any infererences as to who did it.
If our laws allow ProPublica to publish it and on a slow drip our laws should be equally aggressive in protecting the victims of the crime.
We spent the last four years making such a big deal about “process” crimes. This one is much more significant.
