Wednesday, November 17, 2021

ProPubica, How These Ultrawealthy Politicians Avoided Paying Taxes:

 

Exclusive: Geoffrey Cox opposed tax havens crackdown after making £220k from Cayman Islands law firm Mirror


ProPubica, How These Ultrawealthy Politicians Avoided Paying Taxes:

Pro PublicaIRS records reveal how Gov. Jim Justice, Gov. Jared Polis, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and other wealthy political figures slashed their taxes using strategies unavailable to most of their constituents. ...

The records show that rich Democrats and Republicans alike have slashed their taxes using strategies unavailable to most of their constituents. Among them are governors, members of Congress and a cabinet secretary. ...

As ProPublica has revealed in a series of articles this year, these tactics, if sometimes aggressive, are completely legal. And they’re not universal among wealthy politicians. ProPublica reviewed tax data for a couple dozen wealthy current and former government officials. Their data shows that many of them paid relatively high tax rates while employing more modest use of the fairly standard deductions of the rich.

The politicians who paid little or exploited loopholes either defended their practices as completely proper or declined to comment. ...

ProPublica’s data shows that at least two federal officials have already taken steps to preserve their family fortunes for their heirs, exploiting loopholes that divert revenue from the federal government.

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:


The great divide in America today is between middle-class “working people” on the one hand and the educated elites and their pet “marginalized” peoples on the other. The elites are insulated from the consequences of the policies they espouse. The “marginalized” people are the beneficiaries (in theory) of the elites’ compassion. By contrast, the “working people” (of whatever race) are the ones who pay the price when neighborhoods become unsafe, when schools fail to teach, when taxes go up, when electric rates increase, when gasoline prices double, when hamburger costs $2 more per pound, and when their daughters get raped in high school bathrooms.