Jeff Ernsthausen is a senior data reporter at ProPublica.
In recent years, he has primarily covered the U.S. tax system. He worked with a team of reporters on “The Secret IRS Files,” which revealed the ways that the ultrawealthy avoid taxes. Before that, he reported on the ways that wealthy developers influenced the Trump-era Opportunity Zones tax break. He also contributed to ProPublica’s coverage of debt collection, evictions and bailouts during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to joining ProPublica, he worked on the investigative team at The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, looking into topics such as sexual abuse by physicians nationwide, police misconduct in Georgia and evictions in metro Atlanta. Before his career in journalism, he studied history and economics and worked as a financial and economic analyst at the Federal Reserve.
He has won numerous awards, including the Selden Ring, two Scripps Howard awards and several awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, including the Philip Meyer Award for data journalism.
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It’s a simple bargain: The rich get huge tax breaks by donating art, property and company shares to benefit the public. But some donors collect millions while offering little or no public access.
With $80 billion in new funding, the previously gutted agency pledged to renew its pursuit of wealthy tax dodgers and address a number of problems that ProPublica has been reporting on in recent years.
Congress outlawed tax deductions on “wash sales” in 1921, but Goldman Sachs and others have helped billionaires like Steve Ballmer see huge tax savings by selling stocks for a loss and then replacing them with nearly identical investments.
The billionaire TikTok investor specializes in securities trades that are taxed at around 40%. A ProPublica analysis reveals how Yass and his partners have kept their tax rates at 20% or lower.
Susquehanna founder and TikTok investor Jeff Yass has avoided $1 billion in taxes while largely escaping public scrutiny. He’s now pouring his money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers.
Secret IRS files reveal the top US income earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400.
After ProPublica's Secret IRS Files showed how the richest avoid taxes — often by minimizing income and relying on their wealth — the Biden administration unveiled a plan that could raise hundreds of billions in tax revenues. Its fate is uncertain.
In an interview, Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden described the effect of the tax dodging revealed in “The Secret IRS Files” and argued that his stalled efforts to make the ultrawealthy pay what he calls “their fair share” could still bear fruit.
Citing ProPublica’s reporting, letters to Jorge Perez of Related, Kushner Companies and others request details on projects in opportunity zones created during the Trump administration.
In the early 1900s some of the wealthiest Americans claimed their fortunes would never last through the generations. A century of tax avoidance later, the dynasties are going strong.
Phyllis Taylor’s company is responsible for the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history. That’s been a disaster for the Gulf of Mexico — but a tax bonanza for Taylor.
Thoroughbred horses, auto racing, massive ranches, luxury hotels. The hobbies and side businesses of the ultrawealthy create huge write-offs that can let them get away with paying little or no income tax for as much as a decade at a time.
Donald Trump and other ultrarich Americans have earned billions, but they’ve also managed to repeatedly avoid paying any federal income tax by claiming huge losses on their businesses.
Secret IRS records show billionaires use trusts that let them pass fortunes to their heirs without paying estate tax. Will Congress end a tax shelter that has cost the Treasury untold billions?
Calling ProPublica’s Secret IRS Files series a “bombshell,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse demanded an investigation into how the rich use “legal tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of income taxes.”
Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who donated $8 million to her own campaign, and her hedge fund manager husband paid nothing (or almost nothing) to the IRS four times in six years.
ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.
ProPublica started with a trove of private tax data — then analyzed those records, along with sources ranging from Forbes’ list of billionaires to publicly available information from the IRS, the Federal Reserve and more.
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