MAUREEN DOWD: Fat Cats on a Hot Tin Roof
.Monday, June 14, 2021 -- Paying taxes is an expression of citizenship. You can't belong to the club and not pay your dues. You shouldn't come into the world with the ambition to pay no taxes. Paying more taxes should be a sign that you made more money -- and good for you. We don't want to ding you for succeeding, but we're halfway to a plutocracy here. The richest of the rich want unspeakably high gains with unspeakably low costs. It may not be against the law, but it certainly isn't right. It's tacky.
Posted — UpdatedI find this all quite taxing.
How rich.
“In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes,” ProPublica reported. “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.”
“Taken together,” ProPublica concluded, “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.”
“My intention as the author of the 2017 tax reform was not that multibillionaires ought to pay no taxes,” he said. “I believe dividends and capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate, but certainly not zero.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and the chair of the Finance Committee, said he was working on a bunch of proposals to force billionaires to pay their fair share, including some sort of minimum tax.
The Times story noted that ProPublica shed light on the fact that “the superrich earn virtually all their wealth from the constantly rising value of their assets, particularly in the stock market, and that the sales of those assets are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income from a paycheck.” And while the value of those assets grows by the billion, untaxed, these rich folks can borrow against them, deducting the interest.
Republicans talk a good game about adopting the winning parts of Trumpism, but you can’t be populists if you shield the rich and stick it to everybody else.
Given what this country has been through with COVID, given all the corrupt bankers who got off scot-free after the economic collapse and given how hard it is to earn a buck, this new glimpse into inequities is genuinely disgusting. Paging Madame Defarge: Where do you get your knitting needles?
Paying taxes is an expression of citizenship. You can’t belong to the club and not pay your dues.
You shouldn’t come into the world with the ambition to pay no taxes. Paying more taxes should be a sign that you made more money — and good for you. We don’t want to ding you for succeeding, but we’re halfway to a plutocracy here.
The richest of the rich want unspeakably high gains with unspeakably low costs. It may not be against the law, but it certainly isn’t right. It’s tacky.
Show some public spirit, Monopoly Men! Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
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