Sympathy for Celebs and Their High Income Taxes

Source:www.mobileecosystemforum.com

Throughout my blog posts,  I have researched celebrity bankruptcy and how it affects their lives. I have also researched celebrities that do in fact take several measures to make sure that they save their money. In one of my final blog posts, I have researched other ways that celebs get into trouble with law due to their money: tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud. In the article “5 Lessons From Celebrities Who Cheat on Their Taxes”, Megan Elliot discuss exactly how celebrities try to get out of paying taxes. This calls a key idea into question:because celebs have to pay such high taxes, is this what leads them to trying to get out of paying such a high income tax? Hopefully in this blog post, I will break this question down and answer it.

According to Elliot, in 2006 (which is the latest date she has information from, “the IRS reported a “tax gap” — the amount of owed taxes that weren’t paid on time — of $385 billion”. To say the least this is quite a big number. A majority of this number, “376 million” to be exact, comes from under reporting income. Millions of people are now being investigated and convicted of crimes such as false bankruptcies claims, tax evasion, and not reporting to correct amount of income one makes. Many people do this today, but the most profiled people who are accused of such crimes are celebrities.

According to this article, there are 5 things we can learn from celebrities; basically 5 crimes that celebrities commit that most normal people do not in fact do. But, some of these things are actually quite interesting. For example, Wesley Snipes was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison for failing to file tax returns, which cost and estimated 7 million. Other celebrities have tried to hide some of their income in other countries so that they have to don’t to pay high taxes on it. Nicolas Cage got in trouble with the IRS for being “14 million dollars in debt” due to “improperly writing off numerous personal expenses”. These are just a few examples how celebrities try to avoid paying such a high tax rate due to the amount of income they make.

When looking at how celebs try to conceal their money, it seems to me that they would go to major lengths to try to avoid paying high income taxes. Of course, not all celebs do this. Many of them just “bite the bullet” and pay it because for now, this is how the tax system works. Obviously, I agree with the the punishment of celebs who try to cheat the system. If they are going to break the law, they need to pay for that. But, I think this shows a much bigger flaw in our system. If celebs are going to such length to try to get out of income tax paying, then maybe the tax is too high. I believe that they should be taxed at a higher rate that other people who make less money, but I think it should be a reasonable number. They shouldn’t be paying a huge chunk of their income to taxes just because they make so much more money that most people do.

I’m not really sure how to fix this, but in the future I think the government needs to cut back on the amount they tax on celebrities. I think this would decrease the amount of celebs who try to hide money and commit other crimes based on their high income tax. For future research, I would definitely look into any celebs who are trying to fight back on these high taxes and if there are people who are trying to lower such taxes. This would be really interesting and I will definitely pay more attention to this in the media.