BREAKING: This morning has what I consider the most important story we have ever published.
It concerns a trove of secret IRS files we were given on the tax returns of the nation’s richest people. The findings are extraordinary.
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Turns out that many of the ultra wealthy pay NO income taxes for entire years— Soros three times, Bezos and Icahn twice, Musk and Bloomberg once. Bezos one year even claimed a $4000 child credit.
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As a percentage of their gains in wealth, Buffett has paid 0.1% (10 cents on every $100), Bezos 1.1%, Bloomberg 1.3%, the 25 richest as a group just 3.4%.
Even on just their income, the richest pay less than 16%, far below the 37% top rate:
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The 25 richest Americans are collectively worth $1.1 trillion. It takes 14.3 million average wage earners to tally the same wealth. The average earner group paid literally 70 times as much in income taxes in 2018 as the 25.
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Here’s a note from and I about why we’re publishing, and what we’re saying about sourcing, privacy and the law:
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Here’s 's methodology on calculating true tax rates as a percentage of gains in wealth by the richest, as well as relative tax burdens on average wage earners:
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This isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff, guys. Nearly all of this isn't tax avoidance or tricky loopholes. It's following the most basic rules of the U.S. tax system....so hopefully that's who you're upset with, not Buffett and Bezos.
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Exactly. Why should this wealth go back into the state's coffers!? To waste on $700 toilets and bombing children in Yemen?
Why not overhaul the entire tax code, a non-groundbreaking flat tax, and close these loopholes.
Wealth tax. Increase in capital gains tax. Financial Transaction Tax.
We can't even get these simple things done to start to remedy this situation.
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Why are so many people defending the ultra wealthy for not paying their fair share of taxes, even if it’s legal bc of all the loopholes? WTH is wrong w/you? It’s crap like this that creates the grotesque inequality that allows these people power within our gov they shouldn’t have
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Do you want to be taxed on the paper gains of your asset? If your house gained 10% this last year, would you be ok paying taxes on that even though you didn’t sell it?
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