Patriotic Millionaires on Trump Tax Returns: The American People Should be Pissed Off
“This is evidence of the rot in our tax system, which is designed to allow rich people to avoid paying their fair share.”
Washington, DC – Yesterday, the New York Times released a bombshell report on President Trump’s taxes, showing that he paid no federal income taxes for 10 of the last 15 years, and that in 2016 and 2017 he paid only $750 a year. While this level of tax evasion is certainly unusual, it’s a symptom of a tax system that offers the rich countless loopholes to legally avoid paying taxes.
In response to this report, Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director of BlackRock, Inc., issued the following statement:
“It seems obvious that Trump has committed some amount of criminal tax evasion, but that’s not the biggest issue here. The real problem is a system that provides such absurd loopholes to the ultra-wealthy in the first place, and a deliberately underfunded IRS that lacks the capacity to properly prosecute rich people’s criminal tax evasion. Trump’s case may be particularly egregious, but he’s far from unique.
This is just evidence of the rot in our tax system, which is designed to allow rich people to avoid paying their fair share. This has been the case for decades, but the tax code is even more skewed in favor of the rich and powerful after Trump was able to rewrite the entire tax code to his liking in 2017 with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The American people should be angry about President Trump’s tax evasion, but that’s not all. They should be much more angry about how much of what Trump did is legal.
The American people should be more angry about how many other millionaires and billionaires are able to avoid supporting the country that made them rich in the first place.
Most of all, the American people should be pissed off about the fact that instead of offering them health care, or affordable childcare, or financial support during a pandemic, their government instead prioritizes protecting the wealth of the rich, powerful, and selfish.”
For further comments or questions, please contact Sam Quigley at sam@patrioticmillionaires.org.
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About the Patriotic Millionaires
Proud “traitors to their class,” members of the Patriotic Millionaires are high-net worth Americans, business leaders, and investors who are united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. The mission of The Patriotic Millionaires organization is to build a more stable, prosperous, and inclusive nation by promoting public policies based on the “first principles” of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens, and a fair tax system. You can find out more at https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/
The Patriotic Millionaires have appeared on hundreds of media outlets here and abroad, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and many others. You can find more coverage at https://patrioticmillionaires.org/media
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