LAT Column:Can America's billionaires please stop whining about their privacy rights? [View all]

[DBoon]

Nothing spells “billionaires” in America like a demand that their efforts to exercise control over society be cloaked in secrecy.
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Do billionaires really have anything to complain about? Hardly. They and their fortunes are protected by a bodyguard of laws and regulations.

Their political donations can be kept confidential, thanks to lax enforcement by the IRS of regulations granting donor secrecy only to “social welfare” organizations, not those engaging in politics. As I wrote earlier this year, the IRS practice of handling millionaires and billionaires with kid gloves has been known and documented for ages.

Where does the IRS focus its firepower instead? On the middle class and poor: The agency audits households with less than $25,000 in income at five times the rate for anyone else.

When the Biden administration and Congress enacted an increase in the IRS enforcement capability that would start to redress the imbalance, Republicans on Capitol Hill reacted as though the very bedrock of the republic would crumble.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-16/column-can-americas-billionaires-please-stop-whining-about-their-privacy-rights

paywall, will try to find free link