"The global financial system needs legally stable tax-neutral jurisdictions in order to facilitate international business transactions, which in no way dodge any taxes." - Patrick Boyle, talking about offshore tax havens like BVI and Caymans, in light of the Pandora Papers.

Governments like the US gov also use them, for investment like in the TARP program, which helped bring liquidity to the markets after the Global Financial Crisis.

#Tax

107m households paid none. So around 20m households paid, ti looks like. For reference to a normal year, in 2019 76m households didn't pay any -- it's been around this number for the last decade.

Tax credits and higher unemployment during the pandemic is the reason. An example is a household that almost reached the income rate where they would pay taxes, but then received a few stimulus payments, which put them into the category of nonpayers.

Fed income taxes don't include payroll taxes. 80% of households paid at least payroll taxes in 2020.

The number is expected to go down this year just a few percent (to 57%) and then return to around 40% in 2022, as long as the economy recovers. However, Congress made some changes for 2021 which will have less households paying, such as an increased child tax credit, earned income tax credit, and child and dependent care tax credit (affects millions of families).

The country is undecided how to deal with tax revenue. In 2020 80% of fed income taxes were paid by the top 20% of earners (30% of fed income taxes were paid by the top 1%, which is up from 25% in 2019). Democrats want high earners to pay more, while Republicans say they already pay quite a bit.

#Taxes #USA

No one knows how the journalists at ProPublica got hold of tax records for several years for some of the richest Americans.

Bezos, Musk, Soros, Buffet, etc., paid what appear to be small dollar figures in income tax for certain years (some years $0, some years around $70k were the most quoted figures, dating back to the year 2011). This is because they don't generally make income (particularly when you're talking about each year). Instead, they hold assets. Their largest asset is generally company stock, which is only taxed if it is sold (capital gains). Some years, they need to raise cash and so they take loans against their assets. This is not taxable.

#Tax #Money #USA