VIDEO: This Is the Biggest Tax Dodge in History
CEOs of the largest corporations in the country are dodging billions in taxes each year by gaming the estate tax — a federal levy on inheritances that only applies to the heirs of estates worth tens of millions.
The estate tax is the only existing legislation we have to address these massive, inter-generational transfers of wealth. But as IPS experts Chuck Collins and Bob Lord explain in a new video for More Perfect Union, America’s oligarchs and their wealth managers have perfected a system of complex workarounds.
There’s an “entire wealth defense industry,” they explain, made up of tax attorneys, lawyers, and accountants who help the wealthiest people circumvent the estate tax, among other levies. “It would not be unheard of to have a billionaire have a team of estate planners,” Bob says. “The planning for estate and gift tax avoidance is not only perfectly legal, it’s not even considered aggressive anymore. It’s just basic planning” for the ultra rich.
As a result, inherited fortunes — and the dangers they pose to our democracy — are only growing. Chuck says this is why “you have 800 billionaires in the United States with combined wealth over $7 trillion,” a group whose “wealth is escalating thanks to the current administration.”
“Wealth, at some point, becomes insignificant for the goods and services it can buy and becomes important only for the power it buys,” Bob warns — including, Chuck adds, “the power to own the media, the power to warp and capture our political system. And yet here we talking about dismantling the estate tax — the one tax at the federal level that actually slows this concentration of wealth and power.”
Instead, Chuck and Bob advocate for legislation introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and others that would close these loopholes, make heirs pay their fair share in taxes, and protect our democracy from the corrosive influence of inherited fortunes.
Watch the full video on “The Biggest Tax Dodge in History” below.
