This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Can we start taxing wealth now? Or have some kind of minimum percentage paid by billionaires per year that catches all of these schemes? It’s ludicrous to go after the poor for some minor error in their taxes while allowing millions to go unpaid through shenanigans by the wealthy.
The first nine are familiar, but overcoming the Rule Against Perpetuities as in South Dakota dynasty trusts is stunning. Even without any evidence that the dead need money, the rich can now plan for this contingency should it arise in the next 20 billion years.
Keep following up on this. The wealthy use their power to enrich themselves and to control the tax structures so that they do not contribute as much to the general welfare.
I have a frtond who has a trust fund. She bought a house when at her first professional job. I thought, o, she has a little help, good for her. I don’t know what happened, maybe her grandarents died, but at some point, her parents started indulging their every whim ( addition with an olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, addition with an observtory and massive telescope)
And her kids don’t need to work for a living (they both have jobs). But the thing is, they are 5 or 6 generations from the guy who made the money.
In the mean time, other young adults are struggling with student loans and unaffordable housing because they didn’t have the right second great grandparents