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Billionaires including Amazon
AMZN,
founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla
TSLA,
co-founder Elon Musk and media titan Michael Bloomberg have avoided paying federal income tax in some years, according to a report from ProPublica, which cited a trove of Internal Revenue Service data.
Warren Buffett, the chief executive and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
BRK.B,
has avoided the most tax, according to the ProPublica trove, paying a tax rate of 0.1% on the $24.3 billion in wealth he accumulated between 2014 and 2018. (Taxes are assessed on income, rather than wealth, it should be noted.)
ProPublica said it is not disclosing how it obtained the data, which was given to it in raw form. It is illegal for the IRS to give out the personal returns of any individual. ProPublica says it has the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.
The report said it reached out to all the individuals named in the story, and of the ones willing to comment, all pointed out they paid the taxes that were due. George Soros, the billionaire investor, said he didn’t pay any taxes in years in which he lost money on his investments.
