Billionaires Pay Lower Effective Tax Rates
A UC Berkeley study by Akcan Balkir, Emmanuel Saez, Danny Yagan, and Gabriel Zucman finds America's 400 richest residents paid an average effective tax rate of 23.8% from 2018–2020, well below the Joint Committee on Taxation's 34% estimate. They report deductions, pass-through rules, and depreciation produced paper losses that reduced taxable income, and link the decline partly to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and 2024 extensions under Trump.
Key Points
- 1Estimate: top 400 pay 23.8% effective tax rate (2018–2020), not 34% JCT figure
- 2Reveal: deductions, pass-throughs, and depreciation create paper losses reducing taxable income substantially
- 3Implication: TCJA and 2024 extensions lower billionaire taxes, shifting burden onto lower-income households
Scoring Rationale
Strong, novel empirical findings from reputable economists, but relevance is policy-focused rather than central to AI/ML or data-science.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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