Daniel S. Loeb, who runs the $17 billion Third Point hedge fund, has contributed to Jeb Bush's Super PAC and given $1 million to the American Unity Super PAC, which supports gay rights. He is also one of many ultra-wealthy Americans who have figured out tricky maneuvers to avoid forking over millions in taxes, The New York Times reports:
With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.[...] 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. [The New York Times]
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