Lewis, Charles and Allison, Bill and the Center for Public Integrity. The Cheating of America: How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions and What You Can Do About It. New York: William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2001. 302 pages. In the 1950s, corporate taxes provided more than 27 percent of federal revenues, but by the 1990s this proportion had declined to ten percent. The burden has shifted to individuals. But not all individuals if you're rich enough, you might not have to pay any taxes at all. Increasingly, the rich are using off-shore channels to hide their money, at the same time that corporations use partnerships, transfer-pricing and other gimmicks. The IRS doesn't have the resources to challenge this. One IRS lawyer admitted, "Why do you think we go after the little guys? They can't fight back." The bulk of this book examines a handful of typical tax cheats, with a chapter on each. It was difficult work; many people refused to talk with the authors, and lots of fact-checking was required. This project required $200,000 in Center expenses beyond the publisher's advance. Trips to Belize City, the Bahamas, and other places where tax dodgers hang out, were needed to complete the research. While the end result is fairly good, it's still long on indignation and short on class consciousness. (That figure of $200,000, by the way, is also what we spent to develop NameBase over the last 20 years. Forgive us if we aren't overly impressed.) | |
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