Fact-check: “billionaires pay less taxes than your plumber pays”
Verdict: Partly True (62% confidence)
Documented analyses and leaked-return reporting indicated that some ultra-wealthy individuals can pay very low or even zero federal income tax in particular years, which could be lower than the taxes paid by many wage-earning workers (including plumbers). However, broader research using administrative data has reported that when "all taxes" are counted and "economic income" is defined to include unrealized gains, the effective tax rate for the very wealthiest group can be below the population a…
This fact-check was conducted by SpinkillerAI, a non-partisan AI-powered accountability platform.
Related fact-checks
- Donald Trump Jr accepted a gift from a Russian oligearch — True
- European Union plans 200 million Euro investment in Greenland as a response to Trump's posturing — Mostly True
- Approximately 45% of the current Canadian population is made up of immigrants and the children of immigrants — Mostly True
- Recent job numbers increased faster than had been expected and are ahead of most analysts expectations — Partly True
- Medicare for all would cost trillions a year that Americans would pay through higher income taxes — Partly True