A “Private Tax System” For The Super-Rich

A New York Times investigation says that a few thousand U.S. taxpayers are benefiting from what amounts to a private tax system in which they pay less than 17 percent of their income in federal taxes, slightly more than a family making $100,000 a year. Those numbers are achievable because the system’s beneficiaries pay millions of dollars a year to an “income defense industry,” consisting of lawyers, estate planners and anti-tax activists, and contributes heavily to politicians, mostly Republican. In return for that investment, they save ten or a hundred times that amount on their tax bill. The article details some of the political, PR and accounting strategies that are being employed, as well as some largely ineffectual attempts that have been made to counter or curtail them.