Richest Hide Away Their Money: How to Stop It, Oscar Mayer Heir Says (businessinsider.com)
The Oscar Mayer heir who gave away his fortune reveals how the rich hide their wealth — and how to stop them
- New research indicates that the wealthiest Americans hide their money from tax collectors.
- Chuck Collins has written a whole book on how the wealthy hide their fortunes.
- He told Insider that it's a fixable problem but that it would require closing loopholes.
Chuck Collins knows how rich people hide their money.
Collins was an heir to the Oscar Mayer wiener fortune, an
inheritance he gave away. That meant he learned firsthand how the wealthy, even the very charitable, hold on to their fortunes. It's one thing to give up your income, he learned, and another to compromise the principal — and deprive future generations of accrued wealth.
He opted to give it all away. Today, he's the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he delves deep into billionaire gains, income inequality, and how the ultrawealthy dodge taxes in America.
The situation is likely worse than many people think.
Recent research found that America's highest earners might have been
hiding billions from the IRS, far more than assumed. The report, from the IRS and academic economists, found that the top 1% of Americans didn't report 21% of their income and that the figure might be twice as high for the top 0.1%.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has
introduced legislation that would increase taxes and cut loopholes, and
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that President Joe Biden was looking into beefing up the IRS.
In his upcoming book, "
The Wealth Hoarders," Collins dives into what he calls the "wealth defense industry," the army of tax attorneys, family offices, accountants, and more who are devoted to protecting clients' wealth — and circumventing taxes. His thesis implies that this industry is an inevitable outgrowth of
financialization, in which the financial sector grows out of proportion to the rest of the economy. But he argues it's not too late to reverse it.
Ahead of the book's publication, Insider spoke with Collins about his history, the book, and what needs to come next.
The state of the 'wealth defense industry'
Collins writes that the wealth defense industry has "mushroomed" since his introduction to it in 1983. For instance, there are now over 10,000 family offices worldwide, he writes.
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