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Will the rich ever pay taxes again?

There is almost nothing to like about Project 2025’s dystopian vision for America. Whether it’s eliminating abortion rights or eliminating the Department of Education, it’s all horrifying. Here is just one of the many appalling statements in Project 2025: “Our Constitution gives each of us the freedom not to do what we want, but what we must do.”

Given the overall radical thrust of Project 2025, it is easy to lose sight of its more mundane content, such as its fiscal agenda. But Project 2025’s tax proposals, if ever enacted, would be no less dangerous to our happiness and well-being than restrictions on individual liberty. They would virtually guarantee the concentration of the country’s wealth in the hands of a group of billionaires and trillionaires who would be insulated from significant federal taxation. The resulting concentration of political power would destroy what remains of our democracy, paving the way for the imposition of Project 2025’s extreme social agenda.

Project 2025’s most discussed tax proposals—reducing the corporate tax rate to 18 percent or less, the personal income tax rate to 30 percent, the dividend and capital gains tax rate to 15 percent, and the property tax caps at 20%—all obviously move us in that direction.

But a Project 2025 proposal that receives far less public attention, Universal Savings Accounts (USA), could do far more damage.

On the surface, the US Project 2025 proposal just seems like a misguided retirement savings incentive that favors the rich. It would allow any taxpayer to contribute up to $15,000 of after-tax income to the US.

Functionally, US would be similar to Roth IRA. A US contribution, like a contribution to a Roth IRA, would not by itself reduce a person’s tax liability. And, as is the case with a Roth IRA, all earnings to a US would escape tax.

But US wouldn’t just work like larger Roth IRAs. Their potential for tax avoidance would be infinitely greater. They would have the potential to exempt multi-billion dollar earnings, even trillion dollar earnings, from taxation.

Investigative journalists have revealed that some of America’s richest billionaires have gigantic Roth IRAs. But these big names grew their Roth IRA fortunes, at least technically, through smart investing. And here the potential for US tax avoidance will be much greater. Project 2025’s white paper calls for the US to be “very flexible and for taxpayers to be able to invest their US as they see fit, including, for example, in a closely held business.” The current rules applicable to Roth IRAs make investing in a closely held business virtually impossible except as a purely passive investor.

That’s a huge difference. If US holders are able to invest in their own closely held businesses, as Project 2025 provides, the potential for income tax avoidance is limitless. After all, while $15,000 is not a lot of money, it is enough, and certainly a few years of $15,000 in US deposits is enough to start a business in one’s garage. This means that the growth of a garage-based business could be shielded entirely from federal income tax.

The list of businesses that started in the founder’s garage includes, to name a few, Disney, Mattel, Microsoft, Amazon, Dell and Google. Subway started as a single small store and has grown to its current size of approximately 37,000 locations. If the US had been available to the founders of those now enormous companies, many of which now have market capitalizations in the trillions of dollars, most of their lifetime earnings would be completely exempt from federal income tax.

Here’s how it would work: When the next Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos come up with an idea for a business, they’ll create a corporation by simply filing paperwork with a state government office. The value of the corporation will initially be zero. Then our future billionaire (or trillionaire) will get the corporation to issue tax-free US stock in exchange for the modest seed capital needed to start the business. The corporation can borrow money, issue more stock to outside investors, and hire employees. Finally, our future mogul will have a staggering fortune, all owned in a US and all completely exempt from income tax.

The bottom line here is that Project 2025 would have the founders of future mega-businesses that start small — and almost every business starts small — pay little or no tax on what could be a trillion dollars or more in income per during a lifetime. . The resulting concentration of the country’s wealth will surpass even the Gilded Age-like level of wealth concentration that exists today.

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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