A bombshell report from ProPublica recently exposed some of the world’s wealthiest people for paying little to none of their fair share of federal taxes.
After obtaining a “vast cache of IRS information” ProPublica released a report entitled “The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax” that exposed various prominent billionaires tax filings.
Left-wing mega-donor George Soros paid no income tax three years in a row, while failed Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg also avoided paying income taxes in recent years.
Bloomberg, whose net worth climbed from $45 billion in 2016 to $59 billion now, had a notably different perspective on taxes when he ran for the presidency in 2020. In a campaign ad titled “Rebuild America: Join Mike Bloomberg’s 2020 Presidential Campaign,” the narrator tells the audience that in Bloomberg’s America, “the wealthy will pay more in taxes.”
It would appear that Bloomberg, who is one of the top 25 wealthiest people in the world, has changed his mind.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is $189.1 billion, evaded income taxes in 2007 and 2011. Elon Musk also did not pay federal income taxes in 2018.
In an effort to accurately portray the immense wealth of these billionaires and account for the value of their assets, ProPublica calculated what they called the “true tax rate,” explaining that, “We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.”
This report displays the prominent disconnect between America’s ruling and middle classes, with many households paying more than some of the world’s wealthiest billionaires, many of whom were able to grow their wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic while many Americans struggled to retain their employment or keep their businesses afloat.
Source: The Federalist
