Why Are Billionaires Always Presumed Innocent?
After an IRS leak about billionaires’ massive tax avoidance schemes, corporate media says there’s nothing to see here because the avoidance is surely legal. But there’s no reason we should assume that these billionaires are playing by the rules.
Jeff Bezos at an event for Amazon, 2019. (Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images)
In the wake of ProPublica’s recent disclosure of how billionaires avoid income taxes, a narrative has been manufactured: We are told that while the moguls’ schemes to reduce tax liability may be immoral, the tactics are all “perfectly legal,” in the words of ProPublica, an idea that was then echoed by the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the pundit world.
This conventional wisdom — depicted as unquestionable fact throughout corporate media — is held up as don’t-hate-the-player-hate-the-game proof that we should be angry only at the tax system, but not necessarily at the oligarchs getting rich off it. In fact, the only person so far presumed to be worthy of any law enforcement scrutiny is not any of the billionaires avoiding taxes, but the whistleblowing source of the IRS leak.
But ask yourself: Why does anyone make such charitable assumptions about the supposed legality of billionaires’ tax tactics? Such assumptions, in fact, reflect deep bias and privilege by the people making them.
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