Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros didn’t pay income tax, IRS data dump reveals
BILLIONAIRES like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros paid little or nothing in taxes from 2014 to 2018, according to IRS data.
A new report that looked into Internal Revenue Service data over the years found that the 25 richest Americans were able to use tax code loopholes to avoid paying up.
The data, obtained by ProPublica, showed that the nation's richest people paid just $13.6billion in federal income taxes on $401billion of wealth.
Warren Buffet, the CEO and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, avoided the most tax, paying a rate of 0.1 percent on the $24.3billion he accumulated between 2014 and 2018.
Amazon's Bezos ended up paying around .98 percent of his income during the same time period and Bloomberg, who controls Bloomberg L.P., paid around 1.3 percent, according to the outlet.
The report illustrates how the ultra wealthy are able to avoid taxes due to not only tax code loopholes, but the fact that the US focuses on taxing labor rather than wealth.
Assets like shares in their companies, pricey homes, and other investments are not technically considered "taxable income."
From 2014 to 2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans paid an average of 15.8 percent in personal federal income taces.
ProPublica did not say how it obtained the tax information, but did say the documents were provided "in raw form, with no conditions or conclusions."
A statement from a spokesperson for Bloomberg questioned how the outlet came to obtain the tax records, noting that, "The release of a private citizen’s tax returns should raise real privacy concerns regardless of political affiliation or views on tax policy."
Still, the article has led to renewed calls for President Joe Biden to make moves to tax the ultra-wealthy, including creating a "wealth tax."
"Our tax system is rigged for billionaires who don't make their fortunes through income, like working families do," Sen Elizabeth Warren tweeted.
"The evidence is abundantly clear: it is time for a #WealthTax in America to make the ultra-rich finally pay their fair share."
Biden and his advisors have said in the past that the wealth tax would be difficult to implement and instead, the administration has suggested giving the IRS more resources to go after people attempting to evade taxes.
But those who support a wealth tax, like Warren, have called for placing a 2 percent tax on an individual’s net worth above $50 million, which would include assets like stocks and property.
ProPublica claims to have tax records going back more than 15 years that show how shockingly little that nation's billionaires have paid.
In both 2007 and 2011, Bezos didn't pay a penny in federal income taxes, the outlet reported.
In 2018, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk also managed to not pay any federal income taxes.
Billionaire investor George Soros managed to pay nothing for three years in a row, according to the report.