IRS Winks at Rich Deadbeats

IRS Winks at Rich Deadbeats

The federal tax system that millions of Americans are forced to deal with before April 15 is not at all what you think it is.

People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million,

One 1985 law, promoted in the Senate as (relieving middle class Americans) gave a tax break to corporate executives who make personal use of company jets. CEOs may now fly to vacations or (Saturday golf outings) in luxury for a penny a mile.

Congress shifted the real cost of about $6 per mile to shareholders, who pay two-thirds, and to taxpayers who suffer the rest of the cost lost as a result of reduced corporate income taxes.

Since 1988, Congress has also cut in half the Internal Revenue Service's capacity to enforce tax laws, replacing it with extra effort to reduce audits of corporations and the rich.

On March 30, Congress was told that 78 percent of known tax cheats in investment partnerships are not even asked to pay Congress and the Bush administration rejected the request by the IRS Oversight Board, a citizen panel Congress created, for extra money to pursue some of these tax cheats and stop about 1 percent of the $311 billion in estimated annual tax cheating.

In the late '90s, a crooked banker gave the IRS records on 1,600 criminal tax cheats who used his Cayman Islands bank. The Justice Department prosecuted 49 of them, but the other 1,551
(were not even asked to pay)

Two billionaires in New York, the art dealer Alec Wildenstein and his former wife, Jocelyn, testified under oath in their divorce that for 30 years they never filed a tax return.
(They have not been prosecuted)

While letting rich tax cheats run wild, Congress did finance a crackdown on The working poor, most of whom make less than $16,000,
yet are eight times more likely to be audited than millionaire investors in partnerships.

*note* The audits of low-income taxpayers found little cheating.

Few Americans realize that:
Corporate income tax laws reward companies that move jobs offshore, allowing them to earn untaxed profits as long as the money stays offshore.
-- Widespread cuts in health insurance and pensions for the rank-and- file are driven by a special law that lets top executives defer paying taxes for years, in a way that adds 35 percent to the cost of their bloated pay.
-- The 2001 Bush tax cuts included a stealth tax increase on the middle class and upper-middle class that will cost them a half trillion dollars in the first 10 years
-- Since 1983, under a plan devised by Alan Greenspan, Americans have paid $1.8 trillion more in Social Security taxes than have been paid out in benefits, (money that is used to finance tax cuts for the super rich)
-- A family earning $50,000 this year will have about $1,500 of its money funneled to the super rich because of the Greenspan plan.

In 1993 the top 400 paid 30 cents out of each dollar in federal income taxes. Under Bush, their burden is less than 18 cents.

Everyone else felt their tax bite rise to 15 cents from an average of 13 cents.

While wage earners have every dollar of income reported to the government, the super rich control what the IRS knows about their incomes. But the rich are rarely audited anymore.

* In 1970, the poorest third of Americans had more than 10 times as much income as the super rich, the top 1/100th of one percent.
* Back then the poor had more than 10 percent of all income and the super rich had one percent.
* By 2000 the two groups were equal --
* 28,000 Americans at the top had as much income as the 96 million at the bottom.
* The poor's share of income fell by half while the super rich's share rose to more than 5 percent of all income.
* The average 25-year-old man in 1970 made $2 per hour MORE, adjusted for inflation, than in 2000.
* Over those three decades the bottom 99 percent of Americans had an average increase in total income of less than $100 per year, (the equivalent of a nickel an hour raise each year for 30 years).
* The super rich did fabulously better,
their average incomes rising $20. 3 million
to an average of $24 million each.

(((Follow Up))))

1970 the wealthiest controled 1% of All Income
2000 The wealthiest NOW control 5% of all Income
500% Increase

Compare That with "How" the poorest Americans "Faired"

1970 the Poorest Americans controled 10% of All Income
2000 The Poorest Americans NOW control 5% of all Income
<50%> Decrease


Contains Eliments Of:
San Francisco Chronicle Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston's: Article: IRS has Become a Subsidy System for Super-Wealthy Americans http://amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Rich-CheatEverybody/dp/1591840694