Chuck Darwin<p>Fourteen years ago, Congress set out to remedy a basic unfairness in the tax code. </p><p>The tax that funds Medicare, because it’s aimed mainly at wages, hits even the poorest American workers. </p><p>But the wealthy could easily avoid paying their share. </p><p>So lawmakers created a new type of Medicare tax to capture the kinds of income the rich often enjoy: <br>interest, dividends and capital gains from investments.</p><p>❌ A host of billionaires <br>— sports team owners, oil barons, Wall Street traders and others <br>— have managed to avoid paying it, ProPublica found.</p><p>To study who was actually paying the new tax, ProPublica analyzed its trove of IRS data containing information on thousands of the wealthiest Americans. </p><p>We identified 17 people who, in the first six years of the law, 2013 through 2018, <br>💥each shielded at least $1 billion in capital gains from the tax. </p><p>Together, this small group, by collectively exempting more than $35 billion, saved about $1.3 billion in taxes.</p><p>Most members of the group were able to sidestep the tax because of a huge gap written into the law, <br>which allows owners to exempt gains from the sale of their businesses. </p><p>They include <a href="https://c.im/tags/Donald" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Donald</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Sterling" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Sterling</span></a>, the disgraced former NBA team owner who avoided the tax when he sold the Los Angeles Clippers to Steve Ballmer for $2 billion in 2014</p><p>But others eluded the tax in ways that raise questions about how the law is being enforced.</p><p>One clear target of the new tax was investment professionals who rack up capital gains. </p><p>Yet ProPublica found examples in the IRS data of financiers who claimed outsize profits but did not pay the tax. </p><p>Tax experts contacted by ProPublica said they couldn’t think of a legitimate reason why those individuals were exempt.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/Lynn" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Lynn</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Tilton" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tilton</span></a>, a hard-charging private equity manager, <br>who has been dubbed the “diva” of distressed asset investing, <br>is one example. </p><p>The biggest avoider of the new tax in the data was <a href="https://c.im/tags/Jeff" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Jeff</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yass" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Yass</span></a>, the Republican megadonor who sits atop one of the most profitable trading firms in the world<br><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-net-investment-income-tax" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">propublica.org/article/billion</span><span class="invisible">aires-net-investment-income-tax</span></a></p>