ProPublica, Ken Griffin Spent $54 Million Fighting a Tax Increase for the Rich. Secret IRS Data Shows It Paid Off for Him.:
For billionaire Ken Griffin, it was well worth spending $54 million to ensure he and other rich Illinoisans wouldn’t have to pay more tax.
By the time Illinois voters streamed into voting booths on Election Day in 2020, Griffin, then Illinois’ wealthiest resident, had made sure they’d heard plenty about why they should not vote to raise taxes on him and the state’s other rich people. His tens of millions paid for an unrelenting stream of ads and flyers against an initiative on that year’s ballot, which would have allowed Illinois lawmakers to join 32 other states in setting higher tax rates for the wealthy than for everyone else.
In the end, Griffin spent about $18 for every one of the 3.1 million votes against the initiative. After initial optimism about its prospects, the measure came up hundreds of thousands of votes short and went down to defeat.
Rarely does the public get a clear view of the payoff for wealthy Americans who put their money down to achieve a political outcome. But in this case, ProPublica’s trove of IRS data can provide crucial context for the ballot fight. For Griffin and many of his fellow ultrawealthy Illinoisans, spending even such a vast amount was well worth it when compared with what a tax hike might have cost them.
Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:
- ProPublica: America’s Richest People Pay Little To Nothing In Federal Income Taxes (June 8, 2021)
- ProPublica: How Peter Thiel Turned $2,000 In A Roth IRA Into $5,000,000,000 (June 28, 2021)
- ProPublica: Why You Can’t Turn Your Roth IRA Into a Billion-Dollar Tax Shelter (July 1, 2021)
- ProPublica: The Billionaire Playbook — How Sports Owners Use Their Teams To Avoid Millions In Taxes (July 12, 2021)
- ProPublica: The Number Of People With IRAs Worth $5 Million Or More Has Tripled, Congress Says (July 29, 2021)
- ProPublica: Secret IRS Files Reveal How Much the Ultrawealthy Gained by Shaping Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Tax Cut” (Aug. 11, 2021)
- ProPublica: How The Trump Tax Law Created A Loophole That Lets Top Executives Net Millions By Slashing Their Own Salaries (Aug. 20, 2021)
- ProPublica: House Bill Would Blow Up The Massive IRAs Of The Superwealthy (Sept. 22, 2021)
- ProPublica: More Than Half Of America’s 100 Richest People Exploit GRATs To Avoid Estate Taxes (Sept. 30, 2021)
- ProPublica: 18 Billionaires Received Taxpayer-Funded Stimulus Checks During The Pandemic (Nov. 4, 2021)
- ProPublica: How These Ultrawealthy Politicians Avoided Paying Taxes (Nov. 5, 2021)
- ProPublica: More Billionaire Tax Games (Dec. 9, 2021)
- ProPublica: How Three Families Shielded Their Fortunes From Taxes For Generations (Dec. 15, 2021)
- Wall Street Journal Editorial, The Internal Revenue Leak Service (Dec. 15, 2021)
- ProPublica: When Billionaires Don’t Pay Taxes, People ‘Lose Faith In Democracy’ (Mar. 4, 2022)
- ProPublica Names The 15 Americans Who Reported The Most Income And Reveals Data For The Top 400 (Apr. 14, 2022)
- ProPublica: If You’re Getting A W-2, You’re A Sucker (Apr. 19, 2022)
- ProPublica: The Tax Scam That Won’t Die (June 22, 2022)
- ProPublica: The Billionaire GOP Mega-Donor Who’s Gaming The Tax System (June 22, 2022)
- ProPublica: Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes On An Epic Scale (June 27, 2022)
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/07/propublica-before-moving-to-fl-citadel-billionaire-founder-ceo-spent-54m-to-defeat-illinois-tax-hike.html
