Wealthiest 1% Have Robbed Nation With $7 Trill In Tax Evasion Over Last 10 Years
- Daily Kos, Sept. 8, 2021.
The good news for the IRS is that most Americans pay their fair share of taxes. A new analysis of incomes and returns suggests that tax compliance for low- and middle-income workers is “high.” As The New York Times reports, the same can’t be said of the rich.
Where the income received by the majority of Americans comes primarily in the form of paychecks, with taxes deducted at the time they are issued and totals reported directly to the Internal Revenue Service, that’s not true of the wealthy. Those at the top of the income pyramid are more likely to be rewarded in ways that aren’t as visible and certainly don’t have taxes carved out in advance. Add to that the number of loopholes and dodges available to those wealthy enough to employ experienced tax attorneys and accountants, and compliance among the wealthy is not high. It’s that other thing. The one that has created a “tax gap” with $7 trillion left on the table over the last ten years alone.
That means that 18 months' worth of the entire U.S. budget has been lost in a decade, simply to tax cheats. A new report from the Treasury Department gets more explicit about the source of this “tax gap” by pointing a finger right at the top of the income pyramid. It’s not just that the wealthy tend to underpay their taxes; the wealthiest tend to underpay by the greatest amount. That leaves the top 1% of Americans alone responsible for $163 billion a year that should be going to roads, schools, parks, and healthcare … but is instead going directly to their silk-lined pockets.
The purpose of the Treasury report is not just to make it clear that America is failing to collect anything close to a fair amount from those who pay themselves through a nest of LLCs, remote accounts, and false fronts, but to end this deception is going to take a dedicated effort—and more resources at the IRS. And the report spells out explicitly why one group of Americans are demonstrably complainant, and a much smaller group is not.
Today’s tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe...
- More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/8/2051031/-The-U-S-could-operate-for-the-next-year-and-a-half-just-on-the-taxes-the-wealthy-have-dodged
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