Do you pay your taxes?
Of course you…..but there are some that get a free ride on their taxes…..
An analysis released Wednesday shows that in 2022, the wealthiest people in the United States collectively held a “staggering” $8.5 trillion in wealth that is not—and might never be—subject to taxation.
Examining recently released data Federal Reserve data for 2022, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) found that the roughly 64,000 U.S. households with at least $100 million in wealth—less than 0.05% of the population—controlled more than one in every six dollars of the country’s “unrealized gains,” profits that aren’t taxable until the underlying asset, such as a stock position, is sold.
“But the ultra-wealthy don’t need to sell to benefit: They can live off low-cost loans secured against their growing fortunes. And once inherited, such gains disappear completely for tax purposes,” ATF’s Zachary Tashman and William Rice explained in the new analysis. “While most Americans predominantly live off the income they earn from a job—income that is taxed all year, every year—the very richest households live lavishly off capital gains that may never be taxed.”
That small, ultra-rich fraction of U.S. society is sitting on more unrealized capital gains than the bottom 84% of the country—roughly 110 million households—combined, Tashman and Rice noted.
Most of the typical U.S. household’s unrealized capital gains are in the form of their homes, which face state and local property taxes. But 93% of the unrealized gains of America’s wealthiest are tied up in businesses, stock portfolios, and mutual funds, ATF found. As a result, mega-rich individuals such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk—the wealthiest man on the planet—wind up paying little to nothing in federal income taxes.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/rich-untaxed-wealth
This country has a debt of $34 trillion….
In September, the United States broke its national debt record, reaching $33 trillion. Now, just three months later, a new record has been set. CNN Business notes that, per year-end figures released by the Treasury Department last month, our government’s debt shot up to $34.001 trillion on Dec. 29, which Maya MacGuineas, head of the watchdog group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, calls “a truly depressing ‘achievement.'” She adds in a Tuesday statement: “Though our level of debt is dangerous for both our economy and for national security, America just cannot stop borrowing.”
Here is a couple ideas…..stop funding every goddam war on the planet…..tax the bastards that are escaping their debt to the country and find and return all the offshore cash these rich bastards have squirreled away.
So yeah I am all for a ‘billionaire tax’.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”