For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions

Noam Scheiber and Patricia Cohen, For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions. The New York Times, 29 December 2015. Part of a series entitled Buying Power: “Articles in this series examine America’s growing concentration of wealth and its consequences for government and politics…. The very richest are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield billions in income…. With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.”

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