Publication of the Propublica portal data on the amount of income tax paid by American billionaires led to calls to introduce a tax on wealth and became the object of investigation by the US Tax Department, writes TASS.
On the eve of his journalistic investigations, the portal said that the income tax paid in 2014-2018 with the richest American billionaires, among which the general director of the American company Amazon Jeff Bezos, the head of the Tesla and Spacex Ilon Mask and the head of the Berkshire Hathaway Investment Fund Warren Buffett is no more than a few percent of the growth of their wealth as a whole.
The state of the mask, for example, increased by $ 13.9 billion for the indicated five years, while he reported $ 1.52 billion income from which $ 455 million tax paid. Thus, in fact, Mask paid 3.27% of tax From the amount to which its condition has grown. An even smaller share listed the federal budget the richest man of the world of Bezos. With an increase in the state of $ 99 billion, he reported on income of $ 4.22 billion, paying $ 973 million tax (0.98% of the amount on which its condition increased).
A peculiar record of the minimum “tax rate” set 90-year-old Warren Buffett. His condition increased by $ 24.3 billion, while he reported on the income of $ 125 million and paid $ 23.7 million tax (0.1% of the amount on which its condition increased).
Publication of data on taxes paid by billionaires caused a significant public resonance. Propublica material with comments posted some leading American media. An expert economist of the California University in Berkeley Gabriel Tsukman in his Twitter called the publishing Propublica “The largest tax story of the year, if not decades”: “From open sources, it was always clear that billionaires pay not very much. But even I was surprised by the actual amount of their taxes. “.
President Joe Bayden Administration After publishing the investigation, Propublica stated that it investigates the leakage of confidential data, CNN transmits. The press secretary of the Ministry of Finance Lily Adams declared the illegality of the “unauthorized disclosure of confidential government information”. She reported that the case was about it transferred to departments that “possess independent authority to conduct an investigation.”