The rich are different from you and me
They're richer
Rich Americans don’t pay as much taxes as you do, and a new report released by ProPublica shows the multiple ways they manage that. Some lowlights from the report (which ProPublica promises will be multi-part)?
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid zero taxes in 2007 and again in 2011. Between 2006 and 2018, Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, though he only reported $6.5 billion in income. Whaaa?
Mr. Tesla Elon Musk paid zero taxes in 2018.
In general, the richest people do not, in fact pay their fair share.
In general, the richest people have multiple ways to legally avoid paying their fair share.
Here’s a detail, from ProPublica:
According to Forbes, those 25 [richest] people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.
Sadly, the Biden’s administration’s first public reaction — and the one I will always remember — came from press secretary Jen Psaki, who at a briefing said:
“Any unauthorized disclosure of confidential information by a person with access is illegal. We take this very seriously.”
By all means, let’s protect the privacy of Americans, but c’mon. For its part, ProPublica issued a statement as to its reasoning behind disclosing information it “obtained” (their word). The statement said, in part:
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.
Pres. Biden has talked about increasing taxes on the wealthy, though Republicans and business executives, two groups whose Venn diagram is a circle, have repeatedly said that’s a non-starter. For a large cohort of elected officials, it’s acceptable that rich people pay very little and sometimes nothing in taxes, and it’s acceptable that that all happens in secret.
I wish I thought that more people were reading and talking about this article: thank you for doing so.
And of course the article is an effort to rouse political pressure to alter the tax code so as to correct the tilt of the national financial plumbing so that it doesn't so automatically flood the pockets of the wealthy, which would change the political possibilities. (And then there's funding public goods and services. I miss those.)
Typo: "By all means, let’s protect the privacy of Americans, but c’mon on."
Also, nice reference to FSF: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
are. They are different." - FSF "The Rich Boy" 1926