Mother Jones | Tax Me If You Can by Jeffrey Winters
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Democracy in the United States has long tolerated a quiet oligarchy, but recent decades have seen that influence explode into the open: Supreme Court rulings such as Citizens United unleashed “dark money” and allowed a handful of ultra‑rich individuals—Elon Musk, the late Sheldon Adelson’s family, Timothy Mellon, among others—to funnel billions into elections, accounting for nearly half of 2024’s presidential‑contest spending. At the same time the IRS has been progressively crippled—first by the 1970s sabotage of investigator Dick Jaffe, later by drastic budget cuts that slashed enforcement capacity by more than 90 percent—leaving a colossal tax gap (estimated at $700 billion‑plus in 2022) that the government cannot close. Wealthy Americans evade taxes through intricate offshore structures and a powerful “Wealth Defense Industry” of former tax agents, prosecutors, and elite law firms that neutralize investigations, turn audits into costly, drawn‑out battles, and often settle for fractions of the owed sums while keeping the details private. High‑profile cases such as the Wyly brothers’ $3.2 billion claim reduced to $300 million, and the Smith–Brockman scheme that ended in non‑prosecution agreements and lavish philanthropy, illustrate how oligarchs routinely sidestep accountability. This combination of unchecked campaign spending, weakened tax enforcement, and sophisticated legal defenses has cemented an environment where the super‑rich can act with near‑impunity, eroding democratic accountability and reinforcing oligarchic dominance over American politics.
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/oligarchy-tax-evasion-avoidance-irs-powerless-enforcement-books-blind-spot-excerpt-jeffrey-winters/
#CitizensUnited #IRS #oligarchy #politics #taxes #SheldonAdelson #ElonMusk #DonaldAlexander #RobertFSmith
