Joe Biden Exploited S-Corporation Loophole to Avoid Payroll Tax
The establishment media is all aflutter Monday after a New York Times story over the weekend about incumbent GOP President Donald Trump’s tax records, but it turns out Democrat candidate former Vice President Joe Biden used a series of tax code loopholes to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes over the years.
Back in August, the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Jacobs exposed how the Biden family structured what is called an “S-Corp” to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.
“How the Bidens Dodged the Payroll Tax,” was Jacobs’ headline on Aug. 10.
In it, the Journal details how the Bidens set up an S-Corporation to avoid paying more than half a million dollars in taxes they would have otherwise owed.
“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. He continued: “‘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.”
Jacobs continued in his expose by noting the corporation the Bidens established to avoid paying the payroll taxes on millions of dollars in income amounts to more than half a million dollars in taxes that Joe and Jill Biden did not pay.
“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 wrote. “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 ObamaCare 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.”
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.
Joe Biden: Unfit for Office
Never in American history has a major political party nominated two candidates for president and vice-president who are so manifestly unfit for the elective offices they seek.
Joe Biden, the corrupt, unaccomplished 47-year career politician, with a reputation of having been a proud segregationist, an unabashed plagiarist and liar, a resolute tale-teller, and a serial flip-flopper, is pretending to head up a radical social-democratic ticket for President of the United States that includes as his running mate the ambitious, disagreeable junior senator from California: Kamala Harris.
Biden, Obama’s vice-presidential lackey for eight years (a period of unprecedented corruption and personal enrichment for both men), has always craved power and attention. But unfortunately for Joe, his mouth, hands, and nose have consistently undermined his presidential ambitions.
This year, courtesy of an international pandemic, unprecedented social unrest, an obsequious leftist media, and the customary DNC shenanigans, Biden miraculously emerged from the basement as the last Democrat candidate standing -- figuratively speaking, of course.
Touted as the most acceptable contender in a general election, the ever-manipulative DNC, with assists from Majority Whip James Clyburn, foisted the 77-year old empty suit on the Democrat voters, despite an interminable career of incompetence and uncontrollable pervy conduct around women and young girls, including a credible allegation of sexual assault.
Joe Biden is the DNC’s so-called “empathy candidate,” and “restorer of America’s soul.” Uncle Joe -- the perpetual advocate of blue-collar, lunch-bucket workers, friend of the common man, and supposed champion of every solution destined to restore calm to the country and dignity to the White House -- is the candidate that cares about you. Not like the brash, egotistical, illegitimate, and unrefined President Trump.
And yet, despite a lethargic, uninspiring campaign, and a shocking dearth of mental competence and physical vivacity on Joe’s part, Biden stands incredibly today, at the pinnacle of his political career; anointed as the Democrat Party’s nominee for president, despite two prior, failed attempts, including one in the last century.
Joe’s good fortune, however, is based on a lie; a political mythology, as it were, deviously by the elite power brokers, that Joe was, and still is, a moderate and is therefore, the most electable Democrat out there. It cannot be based on the candidate’s unifying, optimistic, and patriotic vision for the future, because there is none. There are no reasonable, practical, and substantive ideas being proffered regarding freedom, liberty, prosperity, and security for the American people. On the contrary, the Harris-Biden candidacy is distinguished by a dark, overtly divisive, and destructive agenda, masked most days by shameless untruths and unrelenting criticism of President Trump. So much for empathy and unity.
Once the nomination was secured, Biden promptly sold his soul to the radical left wing of the Democrat Party for the purpose of appeasing the puppet masters and fulfilling his lifelong dream. Biden, the overrated, aging, and broken-down pol just wants to be president. And perhaps even more so, “Dr. Jill” wants to be First Lady. If Joe needs to be scripted, guided, and controlled by radical left-wing power brokers and his stonyhearted wife, so be it. Integrity, honesty, and principled positions are not essential elements of the Biden’s quest for power, perks, and prestige. Come On, Man!
In his effort to bamboozle the American voter, Biden has effectively embraced the anti-American, Marxist policies of Obama, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez while still pretending to be a moderate. The treasonous fake news media and propaganda arm of the DNC have enthusiastically aided and abetted Biden as they shamelessly promote the centrist lie.
Sadly, this dishonest and extremely corrosive strategy, if successful, will only serve to hasten the destruction of the America as we know it. Socialist-Marxist policies implemented by a radical Harris-Biden administration will undoubtedly diminish our freedoms, our liberty, threaten our security, and severely impact our daily pursuit of happiness and prosperity. We would be on the fast-track to Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America.
It’s not the radical, anti-American policies that make Joe Biden unfit for office, however. Rather it is the indisputable fact that Joe is not all there. Joe Biden is a hollow man. He is incredibly low energy, with obviously declining faculties. Joe Biden is physically and mentally incapable of performing the duties and responsibilities of the most difficult job in the world. Joe Biden does not have the cognitive abilities to string coherent sentences together without the use of notes or teleprompter, let alone make critical decisions. Physically and mentally, Biden is a shell of his former self.
The prospect of a 78-year-old man of such diminished capacities in the White House is terrifying, to say the least. Coupled with his unprincipled embrace of hard-left policies, a Biden presidency would pose an unprecedented danger to the country. A President Biden on the national and international stage would be an embarrassment to America and would confer way too much power and influence on Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett (Obama’s brain), and the ambitious, “harpy in waiting,” Kamala Harris.
There can be no doubt, that a President Joe Biden would merely be a figurehead. A dithering and doddering Biden will be allowed to masquerade as POTUS until such time as the puppeteers find it expedient to wheel Joe and his security blanket out the White House door, replaced by Kamala Harris. Harris in fact, has publicly and accurately stated that the correct designation, is in fact, the “Harris-Biden ticket.” Kamala knows the plan, and apparently Joe is okay with his “second fiddle” status as he has recently confirmed the reality of a Harris-Biden ticket. The truth is that the Harris -Biden campaign is nothing more than a cynical manipulation of public opinion, with Biden being the empty vessel by which power is attained.
Likewise, Wall Street is behind Biden’s plan
to hugely expand legal
immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards
and 1.4 million visa workers a year.
Biden has elated Wall Street
so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are
donating to Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for
Responsive Politics analysis reveals.
CNN:
‘All the Big Banks’ on Wall Street Backing Joe Biden Against Trump
28 Sep
20203,632
3:20
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden is raking in Wall
Street cash from all the big banks at five times the rate of President Trump, a
CNN report admits.
An analysis by CNN found that “all the big banks are backing
Biden” against Trump, with the former vice president taking a larger margin of
Wall Street donations than even failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton did in 2016.
CNN reports:
The securities and investment industry donated just $10.5
million to Trump’s presidential campaign and outside groups aligned with it,
according to a new tally by OpenSecrets. It has sent nearly five times as much cash, $51.1 million, to
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. [Emphasis added]
That means Trump is losing the fundraising race among Wall
Streeters by a slightly greater magnitude than in 2016. During that cycle, former New York Senator Hillary Clinton and
groups aligned with her raised $88 million from the securities and investment
industry, while Trump took in just $20.8 million. [Emphasis added]
…
But a CNN Business analysis of OpenSecrets research shows that Biden is beating Trump in fundraising
from all of America’s big banks — in some cases by wide
margins. [Emphasis added]
At the big banks — which saw little-to-no consequences for their role in the 2008 financial crisis — Biden is
sweeping up donations from employees by huge margins. At Goldman Sachs, for
example, Biden has raised more than $156,000, while Trump has taken less than
$12,000.
JPMorgan Chase employees have given three times as much campaign
cash to Biden as Trump. Biden has taken nearly $380,000. At Morgan Stanley,
Biden has taken more than twice as much as Trump, taking nearly $258,000 from
the bank’s employees compared to Trump’s $96,010.
Despite pitching himself as a defender of blue-collar Americans,
Biden has not only been widely backed by Wall Street
but also by wealthy residents on Park Avenue.
Biden’s campaign has raised over $1 million from donors living
on Park Avenue, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, as
Breitbart News reported. This is more than
eight times the $127,000 raised by the Trump campaign from the same area.
This month, Biden touted Wall Street’s
support for his plan to abolish America’s suburbs by seizing control of local
zoning laws to construct housing developments and multi-family buildings in
neighborhoods. Likewise, Wall Street is behind Biden’s plan
to hugely expand legal
immigration levels, beyond already historical highs at 1.2 million green cards
and 1.4 million visa workers a year.
Biden has elated Wall Street
so much that for the first time in a decade, more financial executives are
donating to Democrat candidates than Republicans, the latest Center for
Responsive Politics analysis reveals.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on
Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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