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    warren buffett

    Jeff Bezos laughs in a cowboy hat.

    We Must Reform Our Regressive Capital Gains Tax for the Sake of Our Democracy

    The richer you are, the smaller the portion of your investment gains you pay in tax and the greater the portion of those investment gains converted to permanent wealth. That’s how wealth concentrates.

    Bob Lord
    May 15, 2025

    The top tax rate wealthy Americans pay on their investment gains today runs barely half the top rate the rest of us pay on our wages. But that only begins to tell the story of how lightly taxed our richest have become compared to the rest of us.

    On the surface, the nominal tax rate on long-term capital gains from investments seems somewhat progressive, even given the reality that this rate sits lower than the tax rate on ordinary income. Single taxpayers with $48,350 or less in taxable income face a zero capital gains tax rate. Taxpayers with over $533,400 in taxable income, meanwhile, face a 23.8% tax on their capital gains, a rate that includes a 3.8% net investment income tax..

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    Opinion
    taxation
    Warren Buffett raises his arms.

    The Tax Foundation’ Misleading Math Overstates How Much Billionaires Really Pay

    By taking into account corporate taxes while ignoring corporate income, the foundation’s methodology drives up effective income tax rates for the super rich only because these rich happen to own a massive amount of corporate stock.

    Bob Lord
    Mar 04, 2025

    An income tax rate of over 100% would be hard for anyone to sustain. At a rate a smidge over 100%, our deepest pockets might be able to get by if they drew down their wealth or borrowed against it. But keeping up, year in and year out, with an income tax rate of over 1,000%, 10 times income? That seems, on its face, totally implausible.

    Yet the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation would have us believe Warren Buffett did just that for at least five years running, all while enormously growing his own personal wealth.

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    Opinion
    taxation
    Elon Musk

    The Super Rich Are Getting Richer

    Despite a decline in the total number of U.S. billionaires, the total wealth of the exclusive nine-figure-club grew by $500 billion over the last five months.

    Chuck Collins
    Sep 18, 2024

    There are now 801 billionaires based in the United States with a combined wealth totaling $6.22 trillion, according to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of the Forbes Real Time Billionaire List.

    The total number of billionaires is down 11 people as of September 13, 2024 from April when Forbes published their 38th annual World’s Billionaire List. Despite that decline in the number of billionaires, the total wealth of the exclusive nine-figure-club grew by $500 billion over the last five months.

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    Opinion
    billionaires

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