Tax-Dodging One-Percenters Are Killing America
A new report from the Internal Revenue Service indicated that the upper-echelon of wealth is hoarding more money than we initially thought, reported The Washington Post.
We all know how much money the one-percent hoards, but what about the top one-thousandth percent? To be apart of that group, one must make at least $62 million per year. TruthOut noted that those who make $62 million are “the poorest of the richest” earners. The very highest earners make about $160 million per year.
The average American household pays 15-28 percent in income taxes each year. By law, households earning more than $439,000 must pay 39.6 percent. However, billionaires who make their money from the stock market pay only 20 percent of those earnings. This is no accident. Businessmen and Wall Street have used their wealth to control American politics and the economy.
“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution,” said Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944. “They demand free enterprise, but are spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
Wallace was dead right, and Citizens United is the embodiment of that prediction. Corporations and the one percent freely spend money on the candidate that will promote their interests of profit and wealth.
Corporations and billionaires have found loopholes in the American tax code as they stash enormous amounts of money in several offshore tax havens. As of March, American corporations have hidden over $2 trillion in offshore bank accounts in order to dodge US taxes.
By cheating the law, the tax burden has been shifted upon the lower class and shrinking middle class. We are the ones responsible for funding education, defense, infrastructure, Social Security, etc. Meanwhile, the billionaires count their riches and contribute little to the American economy. As TruthOut noted, they don’t create any real wealth for the country.
Billionaires have a stranglehold on American politics and the economy. They know that if they control one, they control the other. It all begins with the tax rates. Tax the wealthy, ban offshore banking, and the ship will begin to correct.
