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Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
, 8 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
In normal times and with a sane political landscape, the Times report on Trump family taxes would be dominating the news 1/ nytimes.com/interactive/20…
So let's not let it slide away and imagine that it's just about Trump. Tax evasion -- not avoidance using legal loopholes, but raw fraud -- looks increasingly like a major factor in the rise of the super-wealthy 2/
The must-read is @gabriel_zucman and associates on tax evasion via offshore holdings -- which is over and above the kind of tax fraud the Trump family carried out 3/ gabriel-zucman.eu/leaks/
They used data from the Panama Papers and other leaks to estimate tax evasion for Scandinavia countries -- which were willing to cooperate matching data from domestic records. The numbers were big -- 25% of taxes owed not paid at the top 4/
No reason at all to think the U.S. looks any better. How much money are we talking about? Well, the top .001% of US taxpayers (by income, not wealth, but probably not a big difference) paid about $116 billion in taxes for 2016 5/
If that was only 3/4 of what they really owed, that's $40 billion of cheating right there. Plus more evasion, though not on the same scale, for the merely as opposed to filthy rich. Say >$60 billion a year? 6/
That's roughly what we spend on food stamps, a vital lifeline for tens of millions the GOP wants to cut, because deficits. 7/
Tax fraud also has negative effects on society: not only does it worsen income and wealthy inequality, it specifically reward the most unscrupulous at the expense of those who play by the rules. Reality is even uglier than it seems 8/
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