NYTimes Reports on Tax Loopholes Handcrafted for the 400 Wealthiest Americans

The very richest are able to quietly shape tax policy that will allow them to shield billions in income.  They have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. It includes tax loopholes quietly slipped into law by their bought-and-paid-for politicians.  It also involves a phalanx of high-priced lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers not available to taxpayers of more modest means.  Result: The effective tax rate of the 400 richest Americans is the same as the tax rate for a middle-class family of 4.