Anyone who follows the international news may feel like they know everything about the billionaires of this planet
Anyone who follows the international news may feel like they know everything about the billionaires of this planet. For months now, not a single day has passed without Elon Musk being in the news, while Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Bernard Arnault have been occupying the press with their business moves, their charitable actions, but also their personal and family issues .
That is why it seems very unlikely that there is at least one mysterious billionaire who managed to live and die without anyone knowing the name and source of his enormous wealth. This mystery was brought to the surface by the – otherwise boring – figures of the US tax authorities with the daily financial transactions of the US government. Specifically, the daily transactions of the US government show that on February 28 of 2023, someone paid $7 billion in inheritance or gift tax. It was the largest such tax paid since at least 2005.
Based on the US tax rate, paying $7 billion means someone left as an inheritance or free wealth 17.5 billion dollars.
If this person made use of various tax-reducing exemptions and methods known to financial advisors in the US, then the amount of wealth transferred could be as high as $35 billion.
More if the lower amount is taken into account, it seems that the owner of this property was one of the 100 richest people in the world.
So who could this mysterious billionaire be? As Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of Berkeley, tells Quartz, it could be a very rich person who “escaped” from Forbes, a large donation, or a late tax payment from a billionaire who died several years ago. It might also be a payment related to a divorce.
However, Forbes' list of billionaires who died in 2022 doesn't include any Americans who were rich enough to have made such a big deal. payment. So the mystery gets complicated.
