Tax evasion by the rich and powerful: An in-depth look with FBN's Charles Payne
It's no secret that no one likes paying taxes.
Time and time again, we see that these same individuals who call for a tax on the rich avoid paying taxes themselves.
Just take a few examples from the news:
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently opened an investigation into Danske Bank facilitating the laundering of $230 billion, mostly by Russian citizens, through its branch in the Northern European country of Estonia.
Swiss Bank UBS was slammed by a French court with more than $5 billion in fines and damages for its role in helping wealthy French citizens evade nearly $11 billion in taxes.
Australia's tax avoidance taskforce said it has recouped almost $8 billion from foreign owned and multinational companies, and nearly $5 billion from wealthy individuals.
If you look within the last year, you will see that even high-profile celebrities have gotten caught for intentionally not paying their taxes. Chinese actress Fan Bingbing was fined $70 million for tax evasion and soccer superstar Christiano Ronaldo forked over close to $22 million to avoid jail time in Spain.
Despite the numerous examples of individuals and corporations around the world doing their part to avoid paying taxes, there are still some wealthy individuals who applaud taxing the rich. Their taxing sentiment is applauded by many millennials and progressives. In a Fox News poll conducted in January of this year, 70% of participants supported taxing individuals earning ten million dollars or more while only 24% opposed it.
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What the public doesn't realize is that these wealthy corporations and individuals are using tax havens to avoid paying their fair share. According to Gabriel Zucman of The Guardian, the U.S. loses the most tax revenue to tax havens than any other country while countries like Russia benefit from them the most.
Therefore, the tough question politicians on both sides of the aisle will continue to face is, are these corporations and wealthy individuals avoiding paying taxes because they are too wealthy and greedy, or are taxes too high, unfair and hurting American businesses?