Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson
Press TV – December 21, 2013
The wealthiest Americans are exploiting a tax loophole to avoid paying billions in estate or gift taxes, contributing to the soaring income inequality in the United States, according to a report.
The loophole has cost the US government more than $100 billion since 2000, the Bloomberg reported.
The popularity of the tax avoidance maneuver, known as the Walton grantor retained annuity trust, or GRAT, shows how easy it is for the wealthy to bypass estate and gift taxes, the report said.
Even Richard Covey, the lawyer who pioneered the tax maneuver, which involves rapidly churning assets into and out of trusts, says it makes a mockery of the US tax code.
“You can certainly say we can’t let this keep going if we’re going to have a sound system,” Covey said.
Covey’s technique is one of several common devices that together make the estate tax system essentially ineffective as a brake on soaring economic inequality, says Edward McCaffery, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.
Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson has given at least $7.9 billion to his heirs while legally avoiding about $2.8 billion in US gift taxes since 2010, according to calculations based on data in Adelson’s US Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Shares of Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. are at a five-year high, making the gambling billionaire one of the world’s richest men in the world, worth more than $30 billion.
Since 2009, President Barack Obama and some Democratic lawmakers have made fruitless proposals to narrow the GRAT loophole.
Covey has suggested one reason for the lack of action is that wealthy campaign donors and politicians want to keep the loophole in place.
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