Taxing Revelations

posted by The Vidiot @ 6:05 PM Permalink

How the US Super-Rich 'Dodge' Taxes

[...]
The Senate's subcommittee on investigations has spent a year tracking the finances of several billionaires and discovered they funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to tiny Caribbean islands and the Isle of Man.

Named in a subcommittee report are Robert Wood Johnson IV, the owner of the New York Jets American football team, Haim Saban, the billionaire behind the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show, Texan tycoons Charles and Sam Wyly and telecoms entrepreneur Walter Anderson.
[...]
The offshore deals, the report said, enabled Johnson and Saban to "shelter" hundreds of million of dollars through an opaque deal called POINT, or "Personally Optimized INvestment Transaction."

Saban blamed his tax advisors for the transactions, telling Senate investigators, "You have a very disappointed person, who feels misled, lied to, cheated."

Poor baby, he was cheated into millions of dollars! I'd have believed him more if he'd said it was 'drink and bad companions yer honor.'

Lawmakers estimate that such transactions cost the US taxpayer up to 70 billion dollars a year and they are demanding a radical reform of the law.
[...]
IRS commissioner Mark Everson told lawmakers that "offshore tax shelters are robbing the American treasury of billions of dollars," and vowed to prosecute their improper use.

so he 'vowed to prosecute their improper use'? How is he going to do that when

I.R.S. Will Cut Tax Lawyers Who Audit The Richest

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans

And what is Bush's response!?

He said Congress should extend tax cuts, [ED: to the rich] including the elimination of the estate tax, and pass a bill giving him a line-item veto.

And the money quote is from whitehouse.gov:

Just remember, when you're talking about, oh, we're just going to run up the taxes on a certain number of people -- first of all, real rich people figure out how to dodge taxes.

Gee, I wonder how he'd know that?