Large grain of salt required. But, at least they were honest enough to state (in the middle of the article), that the information on which this is based is suspect:
"We do not know the identity of our source. We did not solicit the information they sent us. The source says they were motivated by our previous coverage of issues surrounding the IRS and tax enforcement, but we do not know for certain that is true. We have considered the possibility that information we have received could have come from a state actor hostile to American interests."
What exactly do I need to "take" with a large grain of salt? Have you been in seclusion for the past 20 years? I'm pretty sure we're at the point where the burden of proof is on the billionaires to demonstrate they aren't funnelling away their money, not vice versa.
> However, there is a lot that says that the 1% actually pay the vast majority of taxes collected:
Yes, that's an argument against people who want Europe-style social programs while simultaneously making the US tax code even more progressive than it already is (it's generally considered the the most progressive in the world).
It's true that the top 1% to pay most of the taxes, and it's also true that the top 0.1% or so pay a significantly lower tax rate than those in the income ranges just below that level.
"The top earners pay the majority of tax already!" is a smoke and mirrors argument to try and distract you, especially when they've been collecting all the income gains. Consider that if there are income gains which go exclusively to the wealthy but the tax code stays the same, by definition they will end up paying an increasing percentage of total tax revenue, even though this situation does not mean their taxes need to be decreased - precisely the opposite.
That article fails to address a key point: the vast majority of those "regressive" taxes are really forced savings for retirement, where you get a return based on your contributions.
FICA taxes are capped because the benefits are as well.
> , there is a lot that says that the 1% actually pay the vast majority of taxes collected:
What a strange argument. I will personally pay 95% of all taxes in the US if I somehow make me make 99% of all income. Which seems fairly equivalent to your point, except both of my numbers are slightly exaggerated.
Now you're shifting the goalpost. You're revising it now to income taxes. It's most certainly not true of all taxes, and I don't even believe of all federal taxes.
I'm not shifting the goalposts, this conversation is about federal income taxes and every reference in the post you originally replied to is discussing federal income taxes.
On top of that, the top 20% of income earners do pay a larger share of taxes overall than their share of revenue, even according to organizations advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/13/tax-day-taxes-statistics...
The next article in the series states that the mass of citizens with equivalent wealth pay about 100x the tax.
The billionaires may pay more tax individually, but they don’t pay a fair share, if that’s true. Given what we know about Trump’s taxes and what Buffett has been saying, I found it entirely believable.
> we do not know for certain that is true. We have considered the possibility that information we have received could have come from a state actor hostile to American interests
If they have no way to verify or at least assure themselves that it isn’t this, then they have no business publishing it.
Also, many of their statements are just lies in that context:
E.g. We are disclosing the tax details of the richest Americans …
Is a lie.
“We are disclosing what an unknown source who could be a hostile foreign agent has told us are the tax details of the richest Americans.”
Is true.
It will be interesting to see whose secrets are included and whose are not. For example if they have Bloomberg’s details, do they have Trumps?
"We have gone to considerable lengths to confirm that the information sent to us is accurate. We compared the tax data in our possession to other sources of the same information wherever we could find them, some of which were public (a tax return for a candidate for national office), others of which were private. In every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources."
I find it unlikely that even a state actor would have access to literally all the same private data that ProPublica has acquired over the years, and that they'd know what data ProPublica has and what can be safely manipulated.
Let's say a state actor had access to a whole pile of tax returns and wanted to manipulate them to change the conclusions ProPublica would draw. The state actor changes half the data points. Let's say ProPublica was able to check an average of 3 data points on those 50 individuals they reviewed. The data point could have either been manipulates or untouched. I'd model this like a coin flip and say that if ProPublica didn't find the manipulation after checking 150 data points, it's like flipping 150 heads in a row or 2^150 or basically impossible.
Firstly we have no idea how many of the 50 individuals data were public or not. All public data can be discounted since the state actor can just copy it.
Secondly, for the private data, the definition of ‘private’ is unspecified. It really just means not part of a published record. If propublica has access to it, then why couldn’t someone else?
I agree that if there were 150 separate sources with data not disclosed anywhere else, it would be impossible to guess.
But that’s just a made up scenario.
There could be many correct records that are public, and one or two that are private but available to (or even provided through another channel of) the state actor.
As long as the fake records are not part of the public or private data propublica already has, there would be no way to verify them.
This of course assumes that propublica’s list of records itself is kept securely.
I’m assuming good faith on ProPublica’s part, that a reasonable amount of the data was private and that it was truly private. If I didn’t trust them I wouldn’t read their reporting.
This is a straw man. There is no reason they would need ‘literally all’ of Propublica’s data. We don’t know how many data points were verified, but it need not be many.
>In every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources.
So we know it was at least 50 data points and not all of them were public. It was likely many hundreds of data points since it would be trivial to check more than one number if you already had 2 copies of a tax return pulled up.
If we take ProPublica's words to be accurate, then how would a state actor know exactly which 50 individuals ProPublica would have access to given that they would have a vast network of contacts and can and did ask the individuals involved to review the information they received and point out any inaccuracies.
Either these are real tax returns, ProPublica is lying or the state actor has a crystal ball.
Still a straw man - how many of these 50 were public? It’s only the private ones that matter.
> It was likely many hundreds of data points since it would be trivial to check more than one number if you already had 2 copies of a tax return pulled up.
How is this relevant? Multiple points from public sources don’t show anything.
The only thing that matters is the number of sources who are both independent and private.
All an attacker would need to do is have access to a few of these private records and they could make their leak look genuine.
> Provenance is not essential; accuracy is. We have gone to considerable lengths to confirm that the information sent to us is accurate. We compared the tax data in our possession to other sources of the same information wherever we could find them, some of which were public (a tax return for a candidate for national office), others of which were private. In every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources.
They did assure themselves by verifying any detail that they could corroborate, it seems.
"We do not know the identity of our source. We did not solicit the information they sent us. The source says they were motivated by our previous coverage of issues surrounding the IRS and tax enforcement, but we do not know for certain that is true. We have considered the possibility that information we have received could have come from a state actor hostile to American interests."