this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Is anyone surprised at all?
Fun fact: for all intents and purposes when a rich person sets up a charity that they own and control fully they are pinky-promising they will use the funds for charitable purposes. When they contribute funds to it they reduce their income tax burden.
When you no longer need income to survive as you have billions and billions and billions of wealth you can just stop paying income tax by giving your "income" of that year to the charity you own and control. You can later conduct business dealings by "donating" to organizations in a quid pro quo manner. You skirt income tax and determine 100% of where your money is spent. As a bonus you can "work" for your charity and expense all of your travel, lodgings and day to day reasonable expenses in the name of your charity because of the good work you are doing. Isn't that great?
e.g. "my charity will spend 100m building houses in ghana for the needy and i'll hire your construction company to do it. In return you will build me a mansion here and donate it to the founation I control and I will live there while maintaining the charity" shit like this happens all the time.
Imo this is the problem with modern foundations and charitable organizations. The people who donate the most are typically the owners of the foundation. Don't forget that you can donate 10m to your buddies' charities and they can donate 10m to yours... so it looks like you're not just playing with your own money too. Layers and layers of obfuscation!
With enough money you can funnel all kinds of nonprofit funds into for-profit goods and services "for the people"
With all that power, influence and money sheltered from taxes it should be no surprise that when someone comes around and is going to publish data you don't want to be seen which would impact your vast network of wealth you talk to your buddies who control the org she works for and try and quietly eliminate her position to minimize the damage.
Add in the fact that donations can also be funneled into political campaign funds... And you get one America.