US’S RICHEST PAID ZERO TAXES IN SOME YEARS, REPORT SAYS

NEW YORK: Several of the richest Americans have paid zero income tax in some years, according to an investigative report Tuesday that comes as Washington weighs new proposals to address tax avoidance by the wealthiest individuals and companies.

The bombshell report, by New York journalism non-profit ProPublica, showed Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011, while Tesla chief Elon Musk avoided all payments in 2018.

Some of the richest Americans “pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth -sometimes, even nothing,” said ProPublica, which did not disclose how it obtained the confidential tax data.

Others who paid nothing to the Internal Revenue Service in some years included the news industry billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, activist investor billionaire Carl Icahn, and philanthropist and financial giant George Soros. ProPublica says the billionaires did nothing illegal in their tax declarations, but employed tax-avoidance strategies “beyond the reach of ordinary people”.

The report comes days after G7 finance ministers endorsed a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%.

Other efforts include Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren’s initiative to tax the super-wealthy. “Our tax system is rigged for billionaires who don’t make their fortunes through income, like working families do,” Warren said on Twitter.