Our Tax System Should Make You Furious

About this episode

The episode discusses the inequities in the American tax system as highlighted by the low tax rates paid by ultra-wealthy individuals.

Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett are three of the richest people in the world, but they pay little in income tax relative to their wealth. In 2021, ProPublica published an investigation built on leaked tax documents that reveal what some of the richest Americans really pay — or don’t. Warren Buffett had a true tax rate of 0.1 percent. Jeff Bezos: 0.98 percent. Michael Bloomberg: 1.3 percent. Ultra-wealthy Americans have essentially been written out of the tax system. “It’s wrong as a matter of principle. It’s wrong because we need their money. It’s wrong as a matter of fairness. It is wrong for so many reasons,” the law professor Ray Madoff told me. She’s the author of the new book “The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy,” and she’s interested in helping people understand how broken the American tax system is and how to fix it. In this conversation, we discuss the techniques the ultra-wealthy use to evade the tax system, why they think “salaries are for suckers” and what tax reform could look like. Mentioned: “The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax” by Jesse Eisinger, Jeff…

People in this episode

Host: Ezra Klein

Guest: Ray Madoff

Topics covered

• tax system
• wealth inequality
• tax reform
• ultra-wealthy
• fairness in taxation

Keywords

• tax system
• wealth
• income tax
• tax reform
• Ray Madoff

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy, The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax, Taxation: The People’s Business, Philanthrocapitalism, The Age of Extraction, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, Crossroads

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