Bob Lord

3 weeks ago | ips-dc.org | Bob Lord |Caleb Crowder

How do rich Americans get away with paying so little in taxes? I’ve written before about the mechanics behind Buy-Hold for Decades-Sell, the perfectly legal pathway that lets rich Americans pay taxes on their investment gains at super low effective rates. How unfair a tax reality — for average taxpayers — has Buy–Hold for Decades–Sell helped create? Let’s consider how our current federal tax system goes about treating two prototypical taxpayers we’ll call Bob Golfsalot and Morris Worksalot.

4 weeks ago | ips-dc.org | Bob Lord |Caleb Crowder

The most gaping loophole in our tax law? The tax-free compounding of gains on investments. This classic loophole enables the two most lucrative inequality-driving income tax avoidance strategies. The first, buy-borrow-die, allows wealthy Americans to avoid income tax entirely on even billions in investment gains. These wealthy need only hold on to their appreciated assets until death. What if they need cash before then?

2 months ago | ips-dc.org | Bob Lord |Caleb Crowder

The second in a multi-part series on the fortune-building magic — for America’s rich — of current federal tax policies. Read the first installment. For decades now, the growth rate of America’s largest fortunes has dwarfed the growth rate of our total national wealth. The political power those massive fortunes can now buy has pushed us perilously close to oligarchy. Billionaires, as we now see, are dominating the new Trump administration.

Jan 10, 2025 | nationofchange.org | Bob Lord

America’s ultra-rich today love to play tax-avoidance games. One of their favorites goes by the tag “buy-borrow-die,” a neat set of tricks that lets billionaire households avoid any taxes on the gains they make from their investments. The simple rules of the buy-borrow-die game: buy an asset — with your millions or billions — and watch it grow. If you have a hankering to pocket some of that gain, don’t sell the asset. Any sale would trigger a capital gains tax.

Dec 3, 2024 | counterpunch.org | Bob Lord

The Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation has long functioned as an apologist for America’s deepest pockets. Analysts at the Foundation have spent years assuring us that our wealthiest are paying far more than their fair tax share — in the face of a reality that has our richest aggressively growing their share of the wealth all Americans are creating.