Bill Gates Notoriously Calls for Higher Taxes on the Rich — But Here’s His Own Tax History

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But dissimilar galore billionaires, Gates calls retired the American taxation strategy arsenic being decidedly unfair and successful favour of the affluent — and helium wants to alteration it. As Gates enactment it during a 2023 “Ask Me Anything” league connected Reddit, “I’ve been disproportionately rewarded portion galore others who enactment conscionable arsenic hard conflict to get by.”

But what is Gates’s ain taxation history, and however does helium comparison to different billionaires? And what precisely does helium suggest to alteration astir the taxation system?

One of the often-overlooked keys to gathering wealthiness is preserving it. It’s 1 happening to gain a large salary, but if you springiness it each distant successful taxes, it’s hard to go affluent. This is 1 of the edges that billionaires person implicit mundane moving folks successful America.

Salaried employees and wage earners person to wage mean income taxes connected their earnings. Billionaires, connected the different hand, thin to make wealthiness done investments and inheritances. The mode the existent taxation operation is acceptable up, this penalizes lower- and middle-class Americans successful examination to the ultra-wealthy.

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In immoderate cases, it’s truly existent that billionaires extremity up paying $0 successful national income taxes. Even Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the respective CEOs of Amazon and Tesla, person had years successful which they were already billionaires and inactive paid $0 successful national income tax.

Many different important figures successful the fiscal manufacture who whitethorn beryllium lesser-known names to the wide public, similar Carl Icahn, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg, person besides avoided paying immoderate national income taxes successful the past, successful immoderate cases aggregate times.

A 2021 investigation by ProPublica pointed retired however this level of taxation avoidance isn’t restricted to conscionable a fewer individuals. The ProPublica information shows that from 2014 to 2018, the 25 richest Americans lone paid a “real” taxation complaint of 3.4% connected the wealthiness they gained implicit that period. Bloomberg’s complaint was 1.3%, portion Bezos’s was little than 1%.