Off-shore 'shelters' highlight income inequality

Onerous, confiscatory taxes are being trotted out as the reason there is the need for companies and wealthy individuals to shelter their incomes in shell corporations "off shore" from their home countries.

Without getting into the weeds about the proper levels of taxation, one has to ask of politicians caught in the web of the Panama Papers expose where they got the vast sums of money that needed sheltering in the first place.

Those monies didn't need sheltering so much as they needed hiding.

As to the hedge funds that take 20 percent of the gains plus management fees, why should the founders of the funds only be taxed at the capital gains rate and not at their normal income tax rate. Much of the money realized is not kept within the fund but taken out as income.

If the gains were to be reinvested into growing businesses or starting them, that's one consideration, but when hundreds of millions of dollars are being taxed at reduced rates, with the remaining money sheltered for personal use, something isn't right here. How much does one need?

If enormous wealth were to remain in the country where it is earned and taxed at the same rate as the "little guy," one would see a true political upheaval that would result in true, fair and equitable tax reform.

Politicians bemoaning the gaming of the system by the super wealthy are the same politicians that take the donations from the same people they decry. Income inequality is written into our tax laws. Any politician bemoaning income inequality is crying crocodile tears.

They write the laws. They can change them too.

Steve Sarich

Grayslake