George Soros Gave Billions to Left-wing Causes in Years He Paid No Federal Income Tax
Billionaire left-wing financier George Soros gave millions of dollars to left-wing political campaigns, and billions to his own liberal foundation, in years when he paid no federal income tax.
On Tuesday, ProPublica, citing Internal Revenue Service documents, revealed that several of America’s richest people — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Soros, among others — paid no federal income tax in certain years, as they claimed to have made net losses that offset gains.
Soros’s tax avoidance is among the most striking, since he funds a vast array of left-wing groups, which generally share the belief that the rich should be taxed more to redistribute their wealth to the poor, and to fund government programs.
ProPublica reported:
In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.
Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.
…
A spokesman for Soros said in a statement: “Between 2016 and 2018 George Soros lost money on his investments, therefore he did not owe federal income taxes in those years. Mr. Soros has long supported higher taxes for wealthy Americans.”
It is not clear exactly how Soros lost so much money. The stock market rose substantially between 2016 and 2018; at its high in 2018, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 70% higher than it had been at its lowest point in 2016.
Notably, however, Soros had plenty of money to donate to Democrats and left-wing causes that were organizing the so-called “Resistance” to President Donald Trump. It was in 2018 that Soros began spending millions of dollars to elect left-wing prosecutors across the nation; those contributions have helped shape nationwide efforts at criminal justice reform.
Moreover, in 2017, Soros gave a staggering $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations, which funds left-wing causes. The New York Times described it as “one of the largest transfers of wealth ever made by a private donor to a single foundation.” It may also have functioned as a tax shelter, allowing Soros to deduct money from his taxable income.
Soros, like many other Americans, evidently believed he could spend his own money more wisely than the government. As ProPublica notes, however, many Americans have seen their taxes rise more than their household wealth has grown
Democrats have chased Donald Trump’s tax returns for years, certain that he would be found to have paid no taxes. In 2020, during the presidential election, the Times reported Trump had paid no net federal income taxes in several years.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Soros-Backed Group Plans ‘Third Reconstruction’ Push
Group sets sights on Manchin in effort to abolish ICE, advance reparations and single-payer health care
A left-wing advocacy group funded by George Soros and backed by 30 House Democrats is planning a yearlong campaign for a "Third Reconstruction" that includes abolishing ICE, expanding welfare for illegal immigrants, and removing criminal penalties for violent protesters.
The Poor People’s Campaign, which received a grant from the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations following the death of George Floyd as part of the organization’s $220 million "anti-racist" initiative, held a Day of Action on Monday to kick off its crusade. The group counts Democratic Reps. Cori Bush (D., Mo.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) as top supporters, with the "Third Reconstruction" described to the Washington Free Beacon by a senior GOP Senate aide as the "next Green New Deal."
Neither the Poor People's Campaign nor the Open Society Foundations returned requests for comment.
In a release announcing the grant, which reached the Poor People's Campaign through one of its "anchor organizations," the Open Society Foundations touted groups "fighting for an end to policing as we know it." Alex Soros, deputy chair of the Open Society Foundations, added, "This is the time for urgent and bold action to address racial injustice in America."
The "Third Reconstruction" includes a laundry list of far-left demands such as automatic voter registration, a single-payer health care system, a reparations commission, and "relief from student debt, housing debt, utilities debt, medical debt, and other household and personal debt that cannot be paid." Despite proposing that the dozen-plus programs, estimated to cost well into the trillions of dollars, be financed "using deficit spending," the "Third Reconstruction" calls for a 10 percent cut to the military budget.
"With this resolution, we (1) acknowledge the deep harms we have suffered from systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of health care, militarism and the false narrative of white supremacist nationalist extremism and (2) commit to heal and transform the nation by addressing these interlocking injustices, beginning with those most impacted, with moral and just laws and policies," the Poor People’s Campaign wrote on Facebook.
As part of their strategy to pressure Democrats into supporting the initiative, the Poor People’s Campaign will hold a march on Washington, D.C., in June 2022. In 2018, the group organized "40 Days of Action," which resulted in thousands of arrests. Protesters in dozens of states held sit-ins at government offices and blocked roads while demanding local legislators pass hikes to the minimum wage and expand welfare benefits.
On Monday, the group announced a protest against Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) over his decision not to support H.R. 1, a bill that radically overhauls how the nation conducts elections.
"They said it's time to march on his office," Poor People’s Campaign co-chair Rev. William Barber said. "It’s time for people of all differences to stand together against him—we call it ‘from the hollers in the mountains to the hood.'"
Manchin previously met with the group to discuss a federal $15 minimum wage, although he later opposed the proposal. Democrats, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) and Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), claim the "Third Reconstruction" will "end poverty" and address the country’s income disparities allegedly caused by systemic racism. The language used by supporters of the "Third Reconstruction" follows much of the post-Civil War-era rhetoric from Democrats that has defined the early days of the Biden administration. The president’s recent failure to pass H.R. 1 came after his impassioned appeal to racial violence 100 years ago as evidence the country needs new voting rights today.
"For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent, it doesn’t mean that it did not take place," President Joe Biden said on June 1, which marked the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. "And while darkness can hide much, it can never erase what happened. That’s why we’re here: to shine a light, to make sure America knows the story in full."
Other Democrats, including Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York, who supports the "Third Reconstruction," called Manchin’s opposition to the bill an effort to "preserve Jim Crow." Biden himself has referred to GOP-led efforts to stop voter fraud as "Jim Crow in the 21st century."
Manchin did not respond to a request for comment.
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