The “golden age of tax avoidance,”

  

The Inequality.org team estimates more than $30 trillion globally is sequestered by the wealthiest people on the planet. The United States has become a premier tax haven thanks in part to the manipulation of U.S. trust law. Trusts are a lynch-pin in the wealth hiding apparatus. They are an antiquated ownership system that professional enablers have morphed and manipulated to serve the needs of their wealthy clients. Complexity is the bread and butter of the wealth defense industry, who often layer multiple ownership systems to hide the transactions. 

Wealth advisor Marlena Sonn worked for several members of the Getty family for eight years, advising them on socially responsible strategies for their investments. But she was troubled by the Getty family’s use of Nevada-based trusts and a Reno-based family office, to maintain the fiction that family members did not live in higher-tax California. When she suggested they pay their California tax obligations, she was fired. The full family gossip is well chronicled in The New Yorker piece.

 Wealth advisors proclaim they are helping their clients obey the law. But they are actively writing new legislation and lobbying to have them installed. Last week investigative journalists in Florida uncovered how the Walton family, of Wal-Mart, hired tax lawyers and lobbyists to change Florida state family trust law to allow their trusts to exist for a thousand years and have less disclosure obligations. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), after receiving contributions from Walton-backed intermediaries, dutifully signed the trust changes into law over the summer of 2022.

Nevada and South Dakota — now a global destination for billionaire dynasty trusts — are working together to become the “Delaware of the West,” attracting corporation formation and not levying corporate or income taxation. Nevada also extended its state rule against perpetuities so trusts can exist for 375 years and without the obligation to report beneficiaries. The state is working to keep information sealed about trusts, passing a law in 2009 to exempt trust company documents from public disclosure. They are possibly the only state that does not cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in sharing data, a vestige from the state’s secrecy around the gambling industry. 

There are over a dozen states actively changing state laws to compete for global trust business. 

Opinion | Hiding Wealth the Walton and Getty Family Way | Common Dreams