Source: Americans for Tax Fairness
“The staggering runup of billionaire wealth since the passage of the Trump-GOP tax law is a sure indicator of who that law was meant to serve–and who it would go on serving if Republicans succeed in their plan to make its expiring provisions permanent,” said David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, “Instead of extending tax breaks for billionaires, Congress should be working to better tax them through President Biden’s Billionaire Minimum Income Tax and other reforms in how we tax the super-wealthy.”
Under current law, almost none of that wealth gain–billionaires’ biggest form of income–will likely ever be taxed. Investment gains are only taxed when the underlying asset is sold, but billionaires and other hyper-wealthy people don’t need to sell in order to benefit: they can obtain low-interest loans against their rising fortunes and live luxuriously tax-free. And when the gains are handed down to the next generation, they completely disappear for tax purposes.
by WillT_Super_Ninja
7 comments
Our country shouldn’t have billionaires, it means we are not taxing correctly.
[Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years)
Super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in past decade.
Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.
A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.
The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.
“Survival of the Richest” is published on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Elites are gathering in the Swiss ski resort as extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years.
“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires —a roaring ‘20s boom for the world’s richest,” said Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International.
“Taxing the super-rich and big corporations is the door out of today’s overlapping crises. It’s time we demolish the convenient myth that tax cuts for the richest result in their wealth somehow ‘trickling down’ to everyone else. Forty years of tax cuts for the super-rich have shown that a rising tide doesn’t lift all ships —just the superyachts.”
Billionaires have seen extraordinary increases in their wealth. During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while $16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together. A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent. Billionaire fortunes have increased by $2.7 billion a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains —the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years.
Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. They made $306 billion in windfall profits, and paid out $257 billion (84 percent) of that to rich shareholders. The Walton dynasty, which owns half of Walmart, received $8.5 billion over the last year. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, owner of major energy corporations, has seen this wealth soar by $42 billion (46 percent) in 2022 alone. Excess corporate profits have driven at least half of inflation in Australia, the US and the UK.
At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people —roughly one in ten people on Earth— are going hungry. Women and girls often eat least and last, and make up nearly 60 percent of the world’s hungry population. The World Bank says we are likely seeing the biggest increase in global inequality and poverty since WW2. Entire countries are facing bankruptcy, with the poorest countries now spending four times more repaying debts to rich creditors than on healthcare. Three-quarters of the world’s governments are planning austerity-driven public sector spending cuts —including on healthcare and education— by $7.8 trillion over the next five years.
Oxfam is calling for a systemic and wide-ranging increase in taxation of the super-rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering. Decades of tax cuts for the richest and corporations have fueled inequality, with the poorest people in many countries paying higher tax rates than billionaires.
Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, paid a “true tax rate” of about 3 percent between 2014 and 2018. Aber Christine, a flour vendor in Uganda, makes $80 a month and pays a tax rate of 40 percent.
I mean, that literally was the goal of the law: give rich folk a permanent tax cut and dupe the poor rubes into thinking they were along for the ride, even though they only got a couple years worth of gas.
I’d normally ignore an ideologically driven post like this one, but there’s a tad bit of truth here that’s important to understand. Large corporations have increased in “value” since 2017 and thus the larger shareholders have also increased in net worth as well. It wasn’t the “Trump-GOP” tax law that fueled those gains, it was the government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the opportunism that followed. You don’t have to take my word for it, find your “favorite villain” and research their net worth by year from 2017 onward and you’ll see where the big jumps happen.
It had been going on for close to a decade before the pandemic, but the pandemic greatly accelerated the power shift from smaller businesses and individuals to the large corporations. Where that balance is now isn’t good for individuals and ironically enough it’s not even good for the large corporations as they can’t ultimately survive without a robust and diverse economic base.
As for the US tax system, it could definitely use a fresh look and simplification, but as long as the conversation is allowed to degenerate to “tax the rich”, “eat the rich” or whatever dumb slogan no meaningful change will ever happen.
Musk only complained when he had to sell his shares to buy Twitter in 2022 but what about the other years? 🤔
[In](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax) 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.
Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.
ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.
Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.
Trump gave the rich billions in tax breaks and the broke bums guns and Jesus things.
it is simple. make the tax structure more progressive. Lower rates on lower brackets and several more brackets up top. Its not brain surgery.