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Jun 7 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
📺 MEET BILLIONAIRE JEFFREY YASS

The richest man in Pennsylvania is spending MILLIONS to quietly influence our elections and crusade against public schools—while paying a lower tax rate than many Americans.

RT and share with #TaxThatYass to expose his dark money 🧵 1/
If you've never heard of Yass, that's just the way he likes it. He avoids publicity and doesn't give interviews, but his money speaks louder than words.

In the 2020 election cycle, he was the 7th largest billionaire political donor in America #TaxThatYass
forbes.com/sites/michelat…
Yass made headlines after he spent at least $18 MILLION on Pennsylvania's 2022 primaries.

What is he purchasing? Politicians he can "pick up the phone and exert [his] influence on" to rig the rules in his favor—and against public schools. #TaxThatYass
spotlightpa.org/news/2022/05/p…
Yass has already spent over $40 MILLION on his own state PACs dedicated to privatizing and diverting money from public schools.

Pennsylvania ranks 44th in the nation for public school spending. #TaxThatYass
wesa.fm/politics-gover…
Yass has also spent millions bankrolling conservative anti-tax group Club for Growth, and it's paid off for him.

According to @propublica, he pays a lower tax rate than many Americans, despite raking in an average of $1.3 BILLION a year. #TaxThatYass
inquirer.com/business/yass-…
It's not just the tax code Yass wants rigged. He gave 2 Republican Super PACs over $30 million in 2020.

These PACs backed lawmakers who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, including Hawley, Cruz, Boebert, and Cawthorn. #TaxThatYass
theguardian.com/us-news/2021/j…
If you're keeping track, that means billionaire Jeff Yass has spent tens of millions of dollars to:

💸 crusade against public schools
💸 rig the tax code in his favor
💸 threaten our democracy

All it takes is one undertaxed billionaire. #TaxThatYass

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More from @4TaxFairness

Americans For Tax Fairness Profile picture
May 19
BREAKING: Uncovered IRS tax records of 26 U.S. billionaires show they paid an average tax rate of just 4.8% from 2013 to 2018, despite collectively gaining $500 billion in wealth

Effective tax rates
Buffett: 0.1%
Bezos: 1.1%
Zuckerberg: 1.1%
Koch: 1.3%
Bloomberg: 1.8%
Musk: 2.1%
Our analysis of @propublica reporting calculates a 4.8% tax rate when counting wealth growth as income, like a billionaires income tax would

Based on the 26 billionaires' *reported* income, they paid an 18% federal income tax rate—less than 1/2 the 39% rate in effect those years
You can read the full analysis here: americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/based-we…
Read 8 tweets
Americans For Tax Fairness Profile picture
Apr 14
BREAKING: America's billionaires have officially gotten $2 TRILLION richer during the pandemic, largely tax-free

Elon Musk's wealth alone shot up by 1,080%

Workers struggling to afford gas, groceries, healthcare are paying their fair share this Tax Day. Billionaires should too.
Billionaire wealth growth is doing great in this economy.

Jeff Bezos ⬆️ 68%
Elon Musk ⬆️ 1080%
Larry Page ⬆️ 134%
Warren Buffett ⬆️ 84%
Steve Ballmer ⬆️ 89%
Charles Koch ⬆️ 65%
Walton family ⬆️ 26%

Corporate profits are at record highs, too.
axios.com/corporate-prof…
Billionaire wealth and corporate profits are directly connected. How? Billionaires don't take a paycheck like you and I do. They make their money in stocks—and they can go decades without paying taxes on that income because right now, it's only taxed when the stocks are sold.
Read 9 tweets
Americans For Tax Fairness Profile picture
Jan 21
BREAKING: New analysis finds that America's 661 billionaires pumped $1,200,000,000 into the 2020 elections.

That's double what they contributed in 2016, and 39x more than they contributed before Citizens United was decided.

It's been 12 years. It's time to #EndCitizensUnited.
But wait, there's more.

661 billionaires gave about $1 out of every $10 (9%) contributed in the 2020 election cycle.

As recently as 2010, billionaires gave *less than 1%* of all donations.

That was before the Citizens United decision.
Almost 40% of billionaire campaign contributions made since 1990 came during the 2020 election.

That's partly because billionaires' wealth grew by 1/3 between the pandemic's start and October of that year.

The richer billionaires get, the more distorted our democracy becomes.
Read 5 tweets
Americans For Tax Fairness Profile picture
Jan 19
BREAKING: The collective wealth of America's 10 richest billionaires has more than DOUBLED during the pandemic.

That breaks down to $1 billion every day.

Each made about the same in a single minute as the average American household earns in an entire year.

This can't continue. Image
We crunched the numbers after our friends at @Oxfam reported that the wealth of the world’s ten wealthiest billionaires also doubled while incomes fell for 99% of the world, 160 million were forced into poverty, and 21,000 died per day.

Economic inequality is killing us.
During the pandemic, the U.S. minted a new billionaire every 6 days.

The richest 156 U.S. billionaires now hold the same amount of wealth as the entire bottom 1/2 of American households.

But somehow we "can't afford" to make investments in working families in Build Back Better.
Read 6 tweets
Americans For Tax Fairness Profile picture
Nov 1, 2021
BREAKING: 250+ millionaires sent a letter to Congress urging them to include a Billionaires Income Tax in the final Build Back Better deal.

"It is neither fair nor smart to limit or exempt the bulk of billionaires’ growth in income from investments from tax reform," they write.
The Build Back Better framework is an enormous step forward to making the wealthy and corporations pay more of their fair share in taxes. But without the Billionaires Income Tax as proposed by @RonWyden, billionaires will still pay much less than their fair share.
"We have a rare opportunity to reform our broken tax code that has for far too long given the very wealthiest ways to avoid paying their share. Now is the time that we can and must create a more fiscally responsible America. Now is the time to pass the Billionaires Income Tax.”
Read 4 tweets
Americans For Tax Fairness Profile picture
Oct 18, 2021
BREAKING: America's billionaires have officially grown $2 trillion (70%) richer during the pandemic

March 2020: 614 billionaires worth $2.9 trillion
October 2021: 745 billionaires worth $5 trillion

They pay an effective tax rate of 8%, per WH. We need to tax billionaire wealth.
FYI, there's a plan for that.

@RonWyden's #BillionairesIncomeTax would treat billionaires' huge wealth gains as income so they pay their fair share on what they make just like the rest of us.

URGENT ACTION: Tell Congress to pass it in #BuildBackBetter 👇 actionnetwork.org/letters/take-a…
The $5 trillion in wealth now held by 745 billionaires is two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the entire bottom 50% of U.S. households.

Their $2.1 trillion 19-month wealth growth could pay for 60% of President Biden's ten-year #BuildBackBetter agenda.
Read 5 tweets

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