Wealthy Americans but poor in paying taxes

When we hear names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg, everyone has thoughts about their net worth and their position as billionaire in the world among others. 

But this time these people were highlighted in the media for wrong news by paying less tax or no tax. Even in the two years pandemic, their positions as world’s richest men have not changed. ProPublica obtained confidential tax documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service. ProPublica is an NGO which publishes news aimed to conduct investigative journalism.

Tax payers are real patriots of any country. They directly pay the taxes to the governments and play a vital role in the development of the nation. ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Bezos was the world's richest man in 2007 and didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011 and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no income taxes. Financial giant George Soros, also known as the man who broke the Bank of England, has paid no income tax over three consecutive years. On the contrary, it’s a completely different scenario for middle-class American employees. As per the report, 25 richest Americans have paid a tax rate of just 3.4% between 2014 and 2018 which is less than 14% of tax paid by the average American household. The ProPublica tax leak clearly exposed American tax system.