Data revealing income tax paid by US billionaires has been leaked to a news website.
The website says it has seen the tax returns of some of the world’s richest people, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett. It alleges Amazon’s Mr Bezos paid no tax in 2007 and 2011, while Tesla’s Mr Musk paid nothing in 2018.
They claimed the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax, an average of 15.8% of adjusted gross income, than most mainstream US workers.
They also said said they were analysing what it called a “vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data” on the taxes of the billionaires, and would release further details over coming weeks.
Jesse Eisinger, senior reporter and editor at the website said, “We were pretty astonished that you could get [tax] down to zero if you were a multi-billionaire. Actually paying zero in tax really floored us. Ultra-wealthy people can sidestep the system in an entirely legal way.”
Source: bbc.com