The Income Defense Industry

The New York Times reports on how “the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes.”

“Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government’s ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans.”