Rich Americans including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk ‘paid little to no federal tax for years’

Rich Americans including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk ‘paid little to no federal tax for years’

America's wealthiest individuals, including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Elon Musk, paid little to no federal income tax for years, according to tax returns leaked to the investigative website ProPublica. ProPublica said it has seen the tax returns of the country's wealthiest people covering more than 15 years. The White House condemned the unauthorised leak on Tuesday and the US Treasury said it had been referred to the FBI. ProPublica compared what the 25 richest Americans paid in taxes against how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew during the same period, and found they paid just a fraction in federal income taxes - $13.6 billion - on $401 billion in increased wealth. It claims to have seen the tax returns of Mr Bezos, the founder of Amazon , Tesla founder Mr Musk and billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Mr Bezos, for years the world's richest man, paid no federal income tax in 2007 and even reported that he lost money in 2011 because his income was offset by investment losses. Mr Musk paid no federal income tax in 2018, according to the documents. What ProPublica calls the "true tax rate" means that Mr Buffett, for example, paid only 0.1