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.