Politics

Documents leaked to media reveal how world’s richest avoid income tax

Washington, Jun 9 (EFE).- Some of the world’s richest billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates pay almost no income tax, a report by ProPublica published Wednesday claimed.

“ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of Internal Revenue Service information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing,” the non-profit investigative journalism outlet said.

The tax returns leaked to ProPublica showed that in 2007 Jeff Bezos, already a multi-billionaire by then and currently the richest man on earth, paid zero federal income taxes. He then did the same in 2011.

The report also claims Tesla founder Elon Musk paid no tax in 2018 while Michael Bloomberg and George Soros managed to do the same in recent years.

Out of the wealthiest 25, centi-billionaire Warren Buffet avoided the most tax, according to ProPublica. The organization calculated Buffet’s “true tax rate” was 0.1%.

“Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most,” ProPublica said.

The report sheds light on the increasing inequality in the United States, where many Americans live paycheck to paycheck while “the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.”

The FBI and tax authorities are investigating the report after a White House spokeswoman claimed the leak to be illegal.

ProPublica has not disclosed how it obtained the data, which it claims was leaked to them in a raw form, with no conditions or conclusions.

One of the billionaires mentioned in their report argued that publishing personal tax information is a violation of privacy.

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