ProPublica: America's Richest People Pay Little To Nothing In Federal Income Taxes

ProPublica, The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax:

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.

In 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. ...

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. 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.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

• ProPublica, Why We Are Publishing the Tax Secrets of the .001%
• ProPublica, How We Calculated the True Tax Rates of the Wealthiest
• ProPublica, The Secret IRS Files Short Form: A Quick Guide to What We Uncovered
• ProPublica, You May Be Paying a Higher Tax Rate Than a Billionaire
• ProPublica, Help Us Report on the Ultrawealthy and Taxes

• Bloomberg, U.S. Billionaires Faced Tax Rates as Low as 0%: ProPublica
• Esquire, America's Oligarchs Are Operating in Financial Disneyland
• New York Times, Wealthiest Executives Paid Little to Nothing in Federal Income Taxes, Report Says
• NPR, ProPublica: Wealthiest U.S. Individuals Avoid Paying Their Fair Share In Taxes
• Washington Post, IRS Records Show Wealthiest Americans, Including Bezos and Musk, Paid Little in Income Taxes, Report Says

(Hat Tip: Bill Turnier)