REPORT: Biden Used Tax Code Loopholes to Avoid Hundreds of Thousands In Taxes, Media Silent
By Mark Lutchman
September 28, 2020
The liberal media went absolutely ballistic after the New York Times
released a hit-piece on President Trump over his tax records. The problem is,
the same media is totally failing to report on loopholes that Former Vice
President Joe Biden used where he avoided paying hundreds of thousands of
dollars in taxes.
This massive report was dropped by Chris Jacobs with the Wall Street
Journal.
“How the Bidens Dodged the Payroll Tax,” the headline read.
“Joe Biden responded to President Trump’s partial suspension of payroll-tax
collections with a statement calling it the ‘first shot in a new, reckless war
on Social Security,’” Jacobs wrote. “‘Our seniors and millions of Americans
with disabilities are under enough stress without Trump putting their
hard-earned Social Security benefits in doubt.’ Mr. Biden’s objections might be
more persuasive had he and his wife, Jill, not gone out of their way to avoid
funding seniors’ entitlement benefits. According to their tax returns, in 2017
and 2018 the Bidens and his wife Jill avoided payroll taxes on nearly $13.3
million in income from book royalties and speaking fees. They did so by
classifying the income as S-corporation profits rather than taxable wages.”
“According to the Urban Institute, a couple featuring one high earner and
one average earner, retiring this year, will have paid a total of $209,000 in
Medicare taxes during their working lives,” Jacobs added. “The Bidens avoided
paying nearly twice that much in Medicare taxes during two years. The maximum
payroll tax affected by Mr. Trump’s suspension is $1,984—less than 1/250th of
the amount the Bidens avoided in 2017-18. The Bidens didn’t avoid any Social
Security tax, which applied only to the first $127,200 of income in 2017 and
$128,400 in 2018. But they would under Mr. Biden’s tax plan, which would impose
the 12.4% Social Security tax on income over $400,000; the same loophole he
used in 2017-18 would shield him from his own tax. And how can Mr. Biden claim
to protect Medicare and Obama Care when he avoided more than $500,000 in taxes
that fund the two programs? The media have largely ignored the Bidens’
accounting legerdemain, fixating on Mr. Trump’s tax returns instead. But at
least the president isn’t looking to raise taxes on everyone else.”
Breitbart reports:
The Wall Street Journal is hardly the only outlet to illustrate how the
Bidens used this tax code loophole of creating an S-Corporation to save
themselves from paying hundreds of thousands—perhaps now millions—of dollars in
taxes over the years.
CNBC’s Darla Mercado in 2019 wrote about it explaining to
her readers how they can use the same loopholes Biden did to
avoid paying their taxes.
“The former vice president and 2020 presidential contender and his wife
Jill Biden reported about $10 million in income in 2017 from a pair of
S-corporations, CelticCapri and Giacoppa,” Mercado wrote in CNBC. “The two
entities were paid for the couple’s book deals and speaking gigs. That mean any
amounts the Bidens received as a distribution wasn’t subject to the 15.3%
combined Social Security and Medicare tax. Here’s how it works. S-corporations
pay their employee shareholders in two ways: wages and distributions. The
S-corps reported another $3.2 million in income in 2018.”
In other words, on much of the income Joe and Jill Biden generated through
the corporations they established to pay themselves—CelticCapri and Giacoppa
are the names of the two so-called S-Corporations—they did not have to pay
payroll taxes collected to fund Social Security and Medicare.
Those on the left are not happy with the Bidens over the hypocrisy, either.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim in 2019 noted Biden
has used Delaware corporation laws to hide his financial information from the
American people.
“The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield
his income from public view, by setting up two tax- and transparency-avoidance
vehicles known as S corporations,” Grim wrote. “He and his wife Jill Biden
called them CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp., respectively, and, according
to the Wall Street Journal, have reported more than $13 million in profits the
previous two years that weren’t subject to specific disclosure or self-employment
taxes. As CNBC has described, money Biden made from book deals and speeches
flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as
‘distributions’ rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S
corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it,
nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the
Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half
a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)”
What’s more, as Ryan Ellis from the Center for a Free Economy wrote in
a Washington Examiner op-ed last year, the last budgets from the Barack Obama
and Joe Biden administration called for an end to this loophole allowing
S-Corporations to avoid payroll taxes.
That means Barack Obama, the former Democrat president of the United
States, does not support what Biden has established in these S-Corporations to
avoid payroll tax liability on millions of dollars in income.
