Daily US Times: Tax details of US billionaires have been leaked to a news website, which shows how little returns US super-rich pay.
ProPublica says it has seen the returns of some of the richest people in the US, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk.
The website alleges Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid no returns in 2007 and 2011, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk paid nothing in 2018.
The FBI and authorities are investigating the leak, while a White House spokeswoman called the leak “illegal”.
The website said it was analysing the returns what it called a “vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data” on the taxes of the billionaires and would publish further details over coming weeks.
The alleged details leak comes at a time of growing debate about the amount of tax paid by the billionaires and widening inequality.
ProPublica said the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax than most mainstream US workers.
ProPublica said that “using perfectly legal tax strategies, many of the uber-rich are able to shrink their federal tax bills to nothing or close to it” even as their wealth soared over the past few years.
The wealthy, as with many ordinary citizens, are able to reduce their income tax bills via such things as drawing money from investment income rather wage income and charitable donations.
Using data collected by Forbes magazine, ProPublica said the wealth of the 25 richest Americans collectively jumped by $401bn from 2014 to 2018 – but they paid $13.6bn in income tax over those years.
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