I can't stand billionaires who lecture everyone to pay more in taxes while doing everything they can to reduce their personal and corporate taxes.

That said, we now have a pure BS piece that the media are peddling today in a bid to lobby for Joe Biden's agenda or for a wealth tax, as proposed by Elizabeth Warren and other radicals.

As Breitbart News describes it:

ProPublica Reveals How Soros, Bezos, and Other Famous Billionaires Avoid Paying Taxes

ProPublica says its reporting is based on “a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service Data” revealing that billionaires, who often finance Democrat campaigns to raise taxes in working Americans, “paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years” amounting “to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.”

A household earning the median income in the U.S. would typically face a tax rate of around 14 percent.

ProPublica calculates what it calls the “true tax rate” based on the increase in an individuals wealth rather than just income. That includes unrealized capital gains that occur when real estate or stock holdings rise.

It's completely misleading.

A "true" tax rate based on an increase in published wealth is pure garbage.  Just because someone owns stock or real estate that goes up in value, does not indicate that he should pay taxes on those unrealized gains.

If the stock market and real estate drop and someone's wealth goes down, how will the "true tax" rate look?  Would you divide a positive number by a negative number?  If the rich paid income tax in those years where their wealth went down, it would show a tax rate of more than 100%.  Would that be meaningful?

The people publishing this propaganda obviously have no way to know what a "true" tax rate is on people whose wealth has diminished.

Almost everything the media report is pushing for a left-wing agenda and makes articles like this worthless.

These articles are meant to mislead or confuse the public instead of inform them.  Just like garbage polls.

It is truly a shame that so many people posing as journalists spend their time campaigning for Democrats and lobbying for their agenda instead of reporting meaningful facts.

Jack Hellner is a certified public accountant with significant experience in tax matters.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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