Data leaks are an inevitability of the digital age. It’s all but impossible to have accounts online without losing some of your passwords to these attacks (which is why using 2FA is so important). But it’s one thing to know some of your passwords are out there somewhere; it’s another thing entirely to know there are billions of our passwords conveniently rounded up for the taking.
Hackers Now Have Access to 10 Billion Stolen Passwords
Clarke: Four More Takeaways From Moore
Evading The Solution For Tax Evasion
Tax officials are under pressure this weekend to publish estimated figures on offshore tax avoidance by some of the country’s wealthiest individuals after withholding the information in a report published during the election campaign.
In June 2022, Lucy Frazer, then financial secretary to the Treasury, pledged that HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) would publish figures on the offshore tax gap, but the release of the figures has been repeatedly delayed. An HMRC report published on 20 June this year – four weeks after the election was called – estimated the tax gap to be £39.8bn for the 2022-23 tax year. The tax gap is the difference between the amount of tax that should be collected and what has actually been paid.
HMRC withheld offshore tax avoidance figures for UK’s wealthy during election
The Secret IRS Files – Inside the Tax Records of the .001%
ProPublica: “In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then amultibillionaire 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.
Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes.
The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300. The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system…”