What Happened to America’s Wealth? The Rich Hid It

> New research suggests that the superrich are hiding their money at alarming rates. A study by economists Annette Alstadsaeter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman reports that households with wealth over $40 million evade 25 to 30 percent of personal income and wealth taxes.

From what I've read of Zucman's work about modern-day tax evasion, he talks mainly about European families, for whom many quasi-legal options exist to hide and/or shelter income from taxes. This is a real problem in Europe, not just because it deprives them of tax revenue, but because it threatens to expose a corrosive moral hypocrisy: do as I say, not as I do (the European upper class says to the European working class).

For Americans, there really aren't any remaining methods to avoid paying income tax. Unless you're willing to commit felony tax evasion. At that point, you'd be much better off simply expatriating to a no or low tax juridiction, as Eduardo Saverin famously did prior to Facebook's IPO.

yeah, but the 0.1% also own the politicians. There is no legal way to engage it without something approaching a civil war, or more appropriately, a peasant uprising.

It's silly to talk about a "nation's" wealth in the age of neoliberalism.

I had a friend from a very wealthy family in high school. The guy had like a dozen passports. He was a citizen of canada, britain, israel, US, and a bunch of other nations I forgot. His father was a lawyer who had business all over the place where he could shield income from other nations. Apparently, some countries don't report your earnings to the US and vice versa. Not only that, he was born in NY, went to high school in new york and yet his family rented a house in long island and owned a home in florida. Apparently, you get legal protection of your homes in florida that you don't in NY.

In other words, nations belong to the wealthy. The wealthy do not belong to nations. And the wealthy make the rules.