EPA / Clemens Bilan
Jeff Bezos
US President Joe Biden is facing calls to introduce a wealth tax.
This comes after a report according to which the richest American directors, including Tesla boss Lon Mask and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, avoided paying income tax, some for several years.
The non-profit organization for investigative journalism, Pro Publika, announced that its findings show that the amounts of their tax liabilities were extremely small in relation to the huge wealth and other assets they own, according to the report of the Brian Sky News television.
According to the calculations of that organization based in New York, the wealth of the 25 richest Americans jumped by 401 billion dollars from 2014 to 2018.
According to the findings of Pro Audience, they paid a federal income tax of $ 13.6 billion during that period, which is 3.4 percent of the amount by which their total wealth was increased.
The low amount of taxes paid comes down to crossing tax strategies that are completely legal, Sky notes.
Tax evasion measures may include reducing the tax base on charitable contributions or not receiving a salary, for which the tax rate goes up to 37 percent, instead profiting mainly from investment income for which a lower rate of 20 percent is common.
The report states that Bezos did not pay income tax at all in 2007 and 2011, and Musk did not pay 2018. Bezos and Mask are among the three richest people in the world.
Entrepreneur and politician Michael Bloomberg, businessman Carl Aikan and philanthropist George Soros have also avoided paying all federal taxes for some years, it added.
The authors of the study estimate that this practice “destroys the foundations of the American tax myth – that everyone pays their share of taxes, and that the richest pay the most.”
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