The Privilege of Wealth

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

The wealth gap in this country is staggering. Almost 80% of the wealth in the United States is controlled by the richest 10% of the population.

And if the current federal income tax codes stay the way they are, they'll only get richer.

The nonprofit news organization ProPublica recently published an article saying they received confidential tax documents from the Internal Revenue Service showing some of America's wealthiest individuals have paid little, to no, federal income tax over the last few years.

The IRS leaked documents show millionaires and billionaires like the world's richest man, the CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos, the world's second richest man and despicable liar and SpaceX and Tesla swindler Elon Musk, George Soros, Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett manipulated their earnings and compensation to avoid paying federal income tax.

For years the official government line concerning the income tax system has always been the same. Presidents, Congressmen and women, and IRS administrators always say the beauty of the convoluted, complex, and intricate American tax code is all Americans pay their fair share of taxes. 

With the release of these documents, it appears this is a boldfaced lie.

It has always been known the rich stay rich because they go out of their way to restructure the way they make money to avoid paying federal income tax. 

And here's the rub — what they're doing is all above water and legal. Since the tax codes are written to tax earnings the heaviest, these über-wealthy move their wealrh around via investments and other financial vehicles that are taxed at a much lower rate. Some of these billionaires even manipulate their earnings to appear as if they've actually lost money.

The American people thought the Trump tax return debacle was bad; his lack of transparency doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

I'm not a statistician, so I'll try and keep the numbers as simple as possible. What it all breaks down to is this —the 25 richest Americans' tax rate ended up being 3.4%. Compare this to the average American whose tax rate is 14.6%  The worst offender was billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Although Buffett has been known as an advocate for raising the tax rate for the wealthy, Buffett's tax rate has been as low as 0.1%.

And the tax breaks don't stop there. Local and state governments regularly offer these billionaires millions of dollars in tax breaks to invest in communities with the promise of pumping countless dollars into local economics and creating high paying jobs for locals. Often times there is little, to no, accountability as these promises often times go unfulfilled (read — SpaceX).

Talk about misdirection. While the average American is busy fighting over what side of the political spectrum they're on; growing more and more divided over religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, the wealthy laugh as they dive into their vault filled with gold coins a-la Scrooge McDuck.

I've said it before, and ill say it again — the thing that will always truly divide the American people isn't politics, or religion, or any other social or cultural difference. It will always and forever be wealth and money.

It has never really been about Republican or Democrat. It has always been about the haves and the have nots.

To read the entire ProPublica article:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax