Can a billionaire die without anyone noticing?
This is what has been asked for days in America regarding
the mystery of a missing Scrooge.
It all stems from the payment of a maxi 7 billion dollar inheritance tax received by the US Treasury on February 28th.
This is a record figure, the highest for this type of tax since at least 2005,
according to media reports.
The fact is that none of America's super wealthy died in 2022, and the strange thing is how someone with that much wealth could have lived off the radar until the very end.
A Treasury spokesman told Quartz that "it wasn't an error," and an Internal Revenue Service spokesman also ruled out problems with the processing system.
This is the only information available as privacy regulations prevent government officials from disclosing details of any tax returns.
Quartz has tried to make a simulation on the amount of inherited assets for which a tax of 7 billion has been paid,
estimating it between 17 and 35 billion dollars.
A substantial fortune which, even considering the lowest value, would make the mysterious deceased billionaire one of the 100 richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg News ranking.
The site then recalls that although the property tax was reduced in 2017 during then-President Donald Trump's tax reform, income has soared in recent years, likely due to the excess deaths of the elderly during the pandemic.
In the current fiscal year (which began in October), the US government collected nearly $8 billion more in property and gift taxes than a year earlier.
Based on the tax rate, the $7 billion payment received from the US Treasury would thus imply a fortune of approximately $17.5 billion.
But in case the possible exemptions were applied, the Washington Tax Policy Center think tank notes that properties generally pay an effective tax rate of 17%.
And even if only 50% of the assets were taxable, there would be a potential value of $35 billion.
The mystery of the missing Scrooge remains so dense and it is excluded, because he died the previous year, Sheldon Adelson the casino magnate who died in January 2021.
