Disgusting yet expected data, with a response from the Biden administration that almost ups the ante: “The Biden administration responded to the explosive report by announcing a probe into who leaked the private IRS filings.” Words kind of fail to describe the confounding, shameless malice with which our governing bodies act. & numbers often fail at describing the real implications of the taxes missed out on—numbers like 100M, 400B, 1T... how could they possibly mean anything real to people on the ground? And what can we do about it?

"A major exposé by ProPublica has revealed how U.S. billionaires pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth, or sometimes even nothing. Private tax records of some of the country’s top billionaires show that between 2014 and 2018 the wealthiest 25 Americans saw their collective wealth jump by more than $400 billion, but they paid just over $13 billion in federal income taxes — amounting to a tax rate of just 3.4%. “Typical wage earners like you or me, we pay taxes every time we get a paycheck,” says Jeff Ernsthausen, a senior data reporter at ProPublica. “But for the ultra-wealthy, it’s a completely different story.”"