United States: billionaires evaded income tax for several years

Elon Musk (left) partron of Tesla and Jeff Bezos (right) founder of Amazon.

According to the survey, these rich people did not commit fraud but benefited from tax optimization.

AP - Britta Pedersen

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

In the United States, several billionaires have evaded income tax for several years.

This is what reveals a survey by ProPublica which falls in the midst of the international debate on tax hikes for multinational companies.

According to this independent organization based in New York, these rich people did not commit fraud but benefited from tax optimization.

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To arrive at these conclusions,

ProPublica

claims to have been able to consult thousands of tax returns of wealthy Americans over more than fifteen years.

Multi-billionaires are singled out by the organization: the latter asserts, for example, that Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, the richest man in the world paid no federal tax in 2007 and 2011 while the billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, escaped it in 2018.

US authorities embarrassed

Other well-known names appear in the list such as the philanthropist Georges Soros or the businessman Michael Bloomberg.

These revelations embarrass the American authorities;

because they demolish the foundations of the American tax myth that everyone pays their fair share and the richest pay most, the report's authors say.

Moreover, the US Treasury Department considers the disclosure of these documents illegal and says it is investigating these leaks.

This means that ProPublica could be subject to legal action.

See also: China: the number of billionaires on the rise despite the pandemic

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