Down to brass tax

The first April Tax Day since 2019 (COVID pushed it to July in 2020 and May last year) isn’t really today, but on Monday, but April 15 remains a fitting time to consider the details on the personal income tax returns of the 400 highest earners published by the non-profit newsroom ProPublica.

Yes, the very richest (taking in more than $110 million a year) are very different than the rest; they pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes (22%) than the merely super-rich ($2 million to $58 million a year), who pay closer to 28%. That’s because the IRS looks at income, not wealth, and investment earnings are taxed lower than the wages that most of us live on. Legal? Absolutely. Fair? Not entirely, but Congress doesn’t seem to have the appetite to change it with the sinking of President Biden’s proposed 20% minimum tax on unrealized capital gains.

The well-known billionaires created by Microsoft, Apple, Google, Tesla and Amazon are mixed in with those who struck it rich in private equity or hedge funds. That’s certainly where the biggest money is.

We credit ProPublica for getting this motherlode of secret tax data covering more than 15 years and for producing compelling comparisons about taxes and fairness. We also laud them for largely protecting the privacy of these Americans who had their confidential tax records stolen, apparently straight from the IRS. Of the 400 individuals examined, ProPublica shielded the identities of 358, exposing only the top 15 earners and 27 others, many heirs to the Walmart and DeVos fortunes.

But the tax secrecy of thousands of citizens (including Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg) was still violated by whoever hijacked this IRS data. That’s a crime. After the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913 and Congress imposed an income tax, returns were intermittently public for a dozen years or so, but since 1926 the info has been secret by law. While the Daily News would love to publish Donald Trump’s 1040s, pilfering it from the government is still a felony.