Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Bloomberg Is A Tax Cheat

No surprise here - Mayor Moneybags uses offshore tax havens to shelter the money in his "charities" from the tax man:

Mayor Bloomberg's charitable foundation pumped $75 million into Caribbean tax havens last year.

New tax filings released yesterday show Bloomberg's charity was worth $2.2 billion at the end of last year, after the mayor donated an additional $420 million to it. Bloomberg's advisers invested through low-tax companies based in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands instead of companies that pay city, state and federal taxes.

"His foundation's investment strategy ... is designed to maximize the amount of money going to charity," said Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser.

Now of course this strategy is legal and most rich people do it to shelter their money from the tax man.

But when we get around to the Bloomberg announcement about budget cuts and layoffs later this week, can somebody from the press please bring up that one of the big reasons why the city has budget problems is because rich people like Bloomberg use tax havens in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Because I think it is, uh, relevant to the discussion about budget cuts and layoffs.

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