How the plutocrats get out of paying taxes

This provides good explanations of their favorite current schemes.

With taxes due this week, it’s an apt time to consider some of the ways our federal tax code favors America’s wealthiest, and how a subset of those fortunate folks will use every trick in the book to game the system even further to their advantage.

Much of it revolves around the way the IRS taxes long-term investment profits—a.k.a. capital gains. President Joe Biden is asking people to pay a lot more on these profits. For decades, after all, the tax code has rewarded investors, particularly those at the very top of the nation’s wealth and income distributions, with very favorable rates. This policy is based on the long-debunked notion that the benefits of giving rich people even more money to invest will eventually trickle down and lift up the masses via job creation and so forth...

In other words, the tax code favors passive investment gains over actual work. This stands in opposition to the longstanding—perhaps mythical—American ideal that not only is hard work honorable, something to be encouraged and rewarded, but that all Americans should have equal opportunities. In fact, most Americans own little to no stock, while asset ownership soars as one moves up the wealth and income ladders. A proprietary analysis published by Goldman Sachs last year estimated that, as of late 2019, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans owned a staggering 56 percent of all public and private equity held by US households. Since March 2020, meanwhile, America’s billionaires, despite the pandemic—and also because of it—have seen their collective wealth grow by more than $1.6 trillion.

The disparity in tax rates for work earnings versus investment earnings, which Biden hopes to eliminate, has been a major factor in the rapid growth of the wealth and income gap in recent decades. The disparity also drives financial behavior by wealthy individuals and corporations alike. - Mother Jones

Make the rich man pay up, for infrastructure

Makes perfect sense. It's most unfortunate, that the bulk of our elected "representatives" at the federal level are nothing but the rich man's whimpering, groveling curs.

If this sounds drearily familiar, that’s because you’ve heard it all before. Republicans are always frantic about spending unless they are the ones doing the spending (see: the massive 2017 tax cut for rich folks). The lines are being drawn for yet another bottomless gibberish festival from the right, designed only to impede if not destroy the progress promised by a full-fledged infrastructure bill with its eye on sustainability and the threat of climate disruption.

Before we get lost in that bog, I have an idea. The papers were awash yesterday with reports that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has all but gotten out of the business of taxing the wealthy, resulting in uncollected taxes estimated to add up to $1.4 trillion over 10 years. - Truthout

The plutocrats are screwing us maybe worse than ever

Great current summary, well worth saving for reference.

When Dr. Jonas Salk was asked about a patent on his polio vaccine in 1955, he said, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” When Gilead Sciences recently developed an anti-Covid drug for about $12 per treatment, they set the price at $3,200.

As Republicans and business leaders decry the word ‘social’ as anti-American, they continue to promote the free-market “winner take all” philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to survive without adequate health care and life savings and job opportunities. Our richest corporations are much to blame. A review of the facts should make this clear. - Nation of Change