Tax the Wealthy

A series of reports from ProPublica uses secretly obtained tax records to illustrate how little income tax the rich typically pay.

Our analysis of tax data for the 25 richest Americans quantifies just how unfair the system has become.

By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion.

For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth.

The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion.

The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion.

Update (June 16):  More about the mechanisms by which the rich avoid transparency and taxes.

Today’s tax code incentivizes the nation’s billionaires to plow as much of their money as possible into investments in … family funds, further amplifying their wealth.

Update (June 21):  A report published by the Institute for Policy Studies and Inequality.org finds that "dynastic" wealth has exaccerbated political inequality in the U.S.

The 27 families who were on the Forbes 400 list in 1983 had a median increase in their net worth, adjusted for inflation, of 904 percent over those 37 years. In contrast, between 1989 and 2019—the most recent year available—the wealth of the typical family in the U.S. increased by just 93 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The five wealthiest dynastic families in the US have seen their wealth increase by a median 2,484 percent from 1983 to 2020.

Update (June 28):  John Stoehr reacts to ProPublica report.

Unlike normal people, whose income is what they earn with their labor, the very obscenely rich's "income" is what their assets earn with their asset's "labor".

None of this would be a BFD if the very obscenely rich paid their fair share. They do not. Yes, they pay income tax on income. But, again, the vast bulk of the money coming into their households is not taxable.

Unsaid in the ProPublica report, but worth saying clearly, repeatedly and loudly, is that the US tax system encourages idleness while discouraging actual work.

Update (July 13):  Sarah Anderson, Brian Wakamo, and Justin Campos discuss tax inequality.

The raging debate over public investment financing has created a huge opening for long overdue fair tax reforms. Without drastic changes in the tax code, we will continue to see those at the top accumulate ever more obscene levels of wealth and power while our physical and human infrastructure crumbles and low-income Americans, particularly people of color, get left behind.