At least 18 billionaires got stimulus checks for the pandemic

At least 18 billionaires received the stimulus checks awarded by the Government to help families affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

This is revealed by a report from the journalism portal ProPublica in which it is detailed how the statements allowed the wealthiest to access this emergency amount.  

The money was approved under the CARES Act, which allowed people who had income of less than $ 75,000 on their most recent tax return in 2020 to receive $ 1,200.

Families reporting less than 150,000 income could receive 2,400.

ProPublica found that 270 taxpayers collectively reported $ 5.7 billion in income, based on their previous tax return

, but that they spread their deductions in such a way that they qualified for stimulus checks.

All had negative net income on their tax returns.

Gaps in tax filing regulations have allowed billionaires to make more profits.Brian Snyder / REUTERS

Among those who received the checks are billionaires such as philanthropist George Soros, and his son, Robert, however, according to ProPublica, their representatives said that they both returned the sum of money. 

For his part, businessman Ira Rennert, who has a fortune valued at 3.7 billion dollars

, according to Forbes magazine, and also lives in a 62,000-square-foot house in the exclusive area of ​​the Hamptons in New York, received one of the checks for 2,400.

The ProPublica report explains with two similar cases how the money, destined for those who had lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 crisis, ended up reaching people with millionaire fortunes who were not economically affected by the pandemic. 

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In the publication the case of Timothy Headington, oil tycoon, developer and executive producer of such

films as exposed

and

.

His fortune is valued at 1,400 million dollars and in 2018 he had income of 62 million dollars, however after reporting 342 million dollars in deductions the final result of his return was negative 280 million dollars.

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The same thing happened to businessman Rennert: his $ 64 million of income that year was wiped out by the $ 355 million in deductions, for a final total of negative $ 291 million.

This is because wealthier taxpayers often have great flexibility in when and how they earn their tax revenue, allowing them to pay a tiny portion of their wealth growth in taxes.

For the wealthiest, wages are avoidable,

bearing the burden not only of income tax, but also payroll taxes.

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For this reason, as revealed by ProPublica, wages rarely made up a significant portion of the income of the 270 multi-million dollar stimulus check recipients.

In all, just $ 82 million, or 1.4%, of the $ 5.7 billion in income earned by the group came in the form of salaries.

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The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Democrat Ron Wyden, assured the publication that "the tax code is simply not prepared to tax billionaires fairly, or even to guarantee that they pay something."

ProPublica contacted all the recipients of the stimulus checks mentioned in this article.

Rennert and Headington did not respond to requests for comment.

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A report from this journalistic portal published months ago detailed how billionaires obtain tax deductions for owning sports teams,

for example, and several of them are among the beneficiaries of the stimulus payments. 

Terrence Pegula, who is worth $ 5.7 billion and owns the NFL's Buffalo Bills and the NHL's Buffalo Sabers, was one of them.

He also received a check from Glen Taylor, who is worth $ 2.8 billion and who earlier this year struck a deal to sell Minnesota's NBA and WNBA teams for $ 1.5 billion.

None responded to Propublica's request for comment. 

Millionaire taxes

The Democratic proposal called

would curb billionaires' ability to report negative income.

It would do this by restricting the ability to use business losses to offset other types of income, such as capital gains or dividends.

Instead, business deductions will only offset business income.

However, according to the publication, the draft presented last week did not include a provision that would have directly affected the ability of billionaires to manipulate their income. 

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Several of the wealthy who received stimulus checks reported negative income to the IRS despite getting rich.

Senator Ron Wyden recently introduced a bill that would create an income tax on billionaires, where increases in wealth would be taxed.