An unprecedented trove of IRS data reveals that the wealthiest Americans—including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffett—legally avoid paying federal income taxes, sometimes down to zero, even as their fortunes expand by billions of dollars. This tax avoidance is enabled by a system that only taxes realized income, such as wages and asset sales, rather than unrealized growth in stock and property value. This stark disparity challenges the fundamental progressivity of the U.S. tax system and intensifies debates over rising wealth inequality and tax reform.
**THE DAILY INQUIRER**
*The Paper for the Public Interest*
**EXTRA EDITION**
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### **THE GREAT TAX SHAM REVEALED!**
#### **Moguls of the Modern Age Dodge Uncle Sam’s Ledger While Common Working Men Pay the Piper!**
*Secret Treasury Papers Exposed by Muckrakers—Bezos and Musk Escaped the Revenue-Man Without Paying a Single Copper!*
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**NEW YORK, June 8** — It is the greatest financial flimflam of our modern epoch! While the honest, sweat-stained working stiff of this great Republic forks over his hard-earned greenbacks to keep the wheels of government turning, the high-flying kings of industry are playing a different game entirely.
Confidential ledgers from the absolute inner sanctum of the Internal Revenue Service—guarded more fiercely than the gold reserves at Fort Knox—have been laid bare by the crusading scribes at *ProPublica*. This vast treasury of secret files, spanning more than fifteen years, strips the gilded masks off America’s mightiest titans: Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and Mark Zuckerberg.
What lies within these secret scrolls? It is an unprecedented look into the private ledgers of the ultra-wealthy—their stock-jobbing, their gambling jackpots, their audits, and their deepest financial secrets.
And it demolishes the grandest fairy tale ever spun by the politicians in Washington: the myth that every citizen pays his fair share, and that the wealthiest men pay the most.
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### **THE SULTANS OF ZERO**
Consider the audacity! In the year of our Lord 2007, Jeff Bezos—the undisputed Sultan of Amazon and now crowned the richest man on God’s green earth—pulled off a financial magic trick that would make Harry Houdini gasp: **he did not pay one single copper in federal income taxes.**
By Jove, he did it again in 2011!
Not to be outdone, Elon Musk—the high-flying motorcar wizard of Tesla and the second-richest gentleman in the world—performed the very same stunt in 2018, escaping the tax-man completely.
The roll call of the tax-dodging gentry does not end there. Michael Bloomberg, the grand media kingpin, pulled off the same trick in recent years. Carl Icahn, the Wall Street hawk, did it twice. George Soros, the legendary financial speculator, went three long years in a row without sending a single dime to the federal coffers!
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### **THE WORKING STIFF VS. THE GILDED GENTRY**
| The Citizenry | Average Annual Earnings | Uncle Sam’s Cut |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **The Average Joe** | $70,000 | **14%** (Paid in Hard Cash) |
| **The Top 25 Moguls** | Millions (in Wealth Growth) | **3.4%** (A Mere Pittance!) |
While the average wage-earner lives hand-to-mouth, watching his tax rate climb with every extra dollar he squeezes from his labor, the Gilded Gentry simply sidestep the entire system.
How do these fat cats pull off this great escape? They do not defy the law; they simply exploit a loophole wide enough to drive a steam locomotive through!
Under the laws of our land, the skyrocketing value of their stocks and properties is not recognized as taxable income until they sell. And these moguls almost never sell!
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### **THE "TRUE TAX RATE" HOAX**
To expose this grand charade, *ProPublica* undertook an analysis never before attempted in the annals of journalism. They compared the federal taxes paid by the 25 wealthiest Americans against the astronomical growth of their fortunes, as calculated by *Forbes*.
They call this the **True Tax Rate**. The results are enough to make a temperance worker take to the bottle!
Between 2014 and 2018, these 25 industrial barons saw their collective fortunes swell by a staggering **401 billion dollars**. Yet, over those same five years, they paid a total of just 13.6 billion dollars in federal income taxes.
While that sounds like a mountain of cash, it amounts to a True Tax Rate of **a measly 3.4 percent!**
Now look at the middle-class worker in his early 40s. Over those same five years, the typical household saw its net worth grow by about $65,000 (mostly from the rising value of their family bungalows). Yet, because their earnings came from honest wages rather than stock manipulation, their tax bill over that period was nearly identical: a whopping $62,000!
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### **THE GRANDFATHER OF OMAHA’S TEN-CENT SWINDLE**
Of all the 25 wealthy barons, none dodged the tax-man as spectacularly as Warren Buffett, the grandfatherly "Oracle of Omaha." This is a shock to the senses, given his public posturing as a champion for taxing the rich!
Between 2014 and 2018, Buffett’s personal mountain of gold grew by **24.3 billion dollars**. Yet, the secret ledgers show he reported paying a mere **23.7 million dollars** in taxes.
That works out to a True Tax Rate of **0.1 percent**—less than ten cents for every hundred dollars added to his vault!
Buffett achieves this marvel by keeping his company, Berkshire Hathaway, from ever paying a dividend. If his company distributed its profits like a normal enterprise, Buffett would have pocketed over a billion dollars in dividends annually, owing hundreds of millions to Uncle Sam.
When cornered by our reporters, Buffett defended his ledger, declaring he plans to give 99.5 percent of his fortune to charity before he meets his Maker. "I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically," he claimed.
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### **THE "BUY, BORROW, DIE" SCHEME**
```
[ THE THREE STEPS OF THE GILDED HIGH-ROLLER ]
1. BUY ------> Acquire vast empires of stock.
2. BORROW ----> Take out massive loans using stock as collateral.
(No income tax on borrowed cash!)
3. DIE -------> Pass the fortune to heirs. Capital gains are wiped
clean by the pearly gates!
```
How does a billionaire buy his silk shirts and high-speed yachts on a nominal salary of one dollar?
They borrow!
For the common man, a loan is a heavy yoke around the neck. For the plutocrat, it is a magic key to the vault. By pledging their immense stock holdings as collateral, they secure giant fortunes of untaxed cash from the banks at rock-bottom interest rates.
* **Larry Ellison** of Oracle secured a line of credit backed by $10 billion of his shares.
* **Elon Musk** pledged 92 million shares, worth some $57.7 billion, to back his personal loans. Musk’s tax bills are a laughing matter: he paid $68,000 in 2015, $65,000 in 2017, and not one red cent in 2018.
* **Carl Icahn** did not pay a single dime in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, despite an adjusted gross income of $544 million. He had a $1.2 billion mortgage with Bank of America, secured by his Manhattan penthouses.
When asked if he should pay taxes, Icahn barked back: *"There’s a reason it’s called income tax! If you have no income, you don't pay taxes. Do you think a rich person should pay taxes no matter what?"*
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### **THE SPECTRE OF 1920: EISNER VS. MACOMBER**
This entire tax-dodging apparatus rests on a single, fateful decision handed down by the Supreme Court in the landmark year of **1920: *Eisner v. Macomber***.
The High Court ruled that "income" only occurs when a gain is *realized*—meaning an asset must be sold and cash pocketed before the tax-man can demand his cut.
At the time, Congressman Cordell Hull, the father of the income tax, issued a prophetic warning. He predicted that this ruling would open a gaping canyon in the law, allowing industrial robber barons to build massive corporate monopolies, borrow against their stock to fund their lavish lifestyles, and "live upon the value" of their companies without ever paying a penny to the Treasury.
A century later, Hull’s nightmare has bloomed into a gilded reality.
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### **A CONFRONTATION WITH DESTINY**
Our nation now stands at a historic crossroads. As we reel from the economic wreckage of the recent pandemic—which left millions out of work while the billionaire class added **1.2 trillion dollars** to their heaps—the cry for reform grows to a thunderous roar.
In Washington, President Biden and his allies are pushing to raise the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent. But *ProPublica’s* shocking revelations prove that such tinkering is like throwing a cup of water on a house fire. If you do not tax wealth itself, the super-rich will go on unscathed.
Firebrands like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are demanding a direct tax on wealth, while Senator Ron Wyden aims to shoot a bullet straight through the heart of the 1920 *Macomber* ruling by taxing unrealized gains.
The wealthy are already howling, claiming these disclosures violate their sacred right to privacy. But we ask: does the public interest not outweigh the modesty of the millionaire?
As the bridges crumble, as federal budgets wither, and as the common man shoulders the heavy burden of the state, we are reminded of Warren Buffett’s own chilling boast from 2011:
**"There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won."**
The question now is: will the American people let them keep the trophy?