George Soros’s $18 Billion Tax Shelter

Congress is still scrambling to find ways to pay for its tax cut, so perhaps it should pay closer attention to last month’s news that George Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune to a private charity that he controls. There it will be sheltered from the Internal Revenue Service forever. This may be the single biggest tax dodge in U.S. history, yet no one on the right or left seems to have raised an eyebrow.

True tax reform is predicated on the principle that all income should be taxed at a low rate once, and only once. But much of the wealth that Mr. Soros spent years moving into his Open Society Foundations will never be taxed. A gift of billions of dollars of appreciated stock escapes any capital gains tax, and the estate tax as well. So Mr. Soros can donate appreciated stock that Open Society Foundations can liquidate without the government ever taking a cut.

There’s more. When a person donates untaxed, appreciated assets to a private foundation, he may also deduct up to 20% of its market value on his personal return, carrying forward this deduction for five years. This double write-off may be the sweetest deal in the tax code.

End the deduction for private foundations and tax their income.

Big, Very Rich and Dangerous: Time to Rein in Private Charitable Foundations

Together, private and public charitable foundations are apparently sitting on trillions of dollars of assets.

These organizations have grown to massive size -- and are poorly, if at all, regulated. Instead of meeting the charitable needs of citizens that government funds were inadequate to provide for, foundations are regularly being misused to fund organizations and outfits antithetical to our best interests, disenfranchising us and working at cross purposes to the desires and beliefs of most Americans. The achievements of a few big foundations include undermining the war on terror, Balkanizing our universities and society, lobbying for open borders, and undermining our economy with radical environmentalism. -

The most egregious offenders in terms of size seem to be those foundations categorized as private “non operating foundations” such as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation --which exist primarily to give grants to others, and it will be these to which I refer here. (Operating foundations function rather like public charities, providing direct support to a school, a hospital, or another specific charitable program, and are not the subject of this article.)

The Foundations that are my focus are those like the Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation. Evidence of their anti-democratic, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Israeli activities is copious and well documented.

The Ford Foundation

Ford funded the Black Power Movement, helped establish the Black studies, Womens Studies, Hispanic Studies and Diversity Programs in colleges throughout the country, and supported Multiculturalism in place of assimilationist policies. It created and funded the Black Power Movement and La Raza, the Mexican national group here. Ford fought to expand the welfare state, created the Open Borders Lobby, underwrote the “human rights “ focus in America’s law schools, and pushed affirmative action programs. Its sponsorship of the anti-Israeli, anti-American Durban Conference got it into hot water, after which it promised to cease funding “subversive groups” including those calling for the destruction of Israel,

In recent decades, the Ford Foundation has continued to play a major role in shaping American culture, popular opinion, and public policy, by funding organizations whose agendas and worldviews are consistent with its own. These agendas and worldviews include:

the weakening of homeland security and anti-terrorism measures on the theory that they constitute unacceptable assaults on civil liberties;

the dissolution of American borders;

the promotion of mass, unchecked immigration to the United States;

the redistribution of wealth;

the blaming of America for virtually every conceivable international dispute;

the depiction of Israel as an oppressor state that routinely victimizes its Palestinian minority;

the weakening of American military capabilities [snip];

a devotion to the principle of preferences based on race, ethnicity, gender, and a host of other demographic attributes;

the condemnation of the U.S. as a racist, sexist, homophobic nation that discriminates against minorities, women and gays;

the characterization of America as an unrepentant polluter whose industrial pursuits cause immense harm to the natural environment;

the portrayal of the U.S. as a violator of human rights both at home and abroad;

the depiction of America as an aggressively militaristic nation; and

support for taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand as an inalienable right for all women.

Read the whole thing.