Tell Congress: Tax & Regulate Bill Gates

You may have heard that Bill Gates is so rich that his investments make money faster than he can donate it.

But, the cash that appears to stack up, even as it's given away, is actually a sleight of hand.

Gates’ trick is self-dealing; he donates to the companies he invests in.

As revealed by investigative journalist Tim Schwab in his articles “Bill Gates Gives to the Rich (Including Himself)” and “While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer,” Gates has pioneered “a new model of charity in which the most direct beneficiaries are sometimes not the world’s poor but the world’s wealthiest, in which the goal is not to help the needy but to help the rich help the needy.”

This is supposed to be illegal. Under the tax code, foundations that use charity for personal gain lose their tax-exempt status. What we need now is for the government to enforce the law.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Tax and Regulate Bill Gates

Nobody elected Bill Gates to make decisions about pesticides, genetic modification and gene drives, or climate change and geoengineering, or vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet his influence in these areas is undeniable.

He has used the power of his more than $100 billion fortune to become a global dictator, manipulating Congress, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the media to shape agriculture and public health policy in ways that impact us all.

Whenever he’s been asked to pay more taxes or stop stifling competition or to disclose his conflicts of interests and investments—or to stay away from sex offenders like Jeffrey Epstein—he’s shown disregard for the laws, rules and social norms that govern the rest of us.

That doesn’t mean he can’t be regulated—if there’s the political will to do so.

As Schwab points out, one hundred years ago, oil baron John D. Rockefeller’s attempt to start a private foundation was rejected by Congress as an anti-democratic power grab. In 2018, Donald Trump’s private foundation was shut down amid allegations that it was used as “a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”

We can all help stop the Gates Foundation, too.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Tax and Regulate Bill Gates

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Members of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives,

Tax laws were intended to prevent foundations from using charity for personal gain. But in the last five years, the Gates Foundation has earned $28.5 billion while giving away only $23.5 billion.

As investigative journalist Tim Schwab explains in two recent exposes in the Nation magazine, “Bill Gates Gives to the Rich (Including Himself)” and “While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer,” Gates has pioneered “a new model of charity in which the most direct beneficiaries are sometimes not the world’s poor but the world’s wealthiest, in which the goal is not to help the needy but to help the rich help the needy.”

What Gates does is classic self-dealing. His foundation contributes to the same companies it is invested in. Just to name one example, its “strategic investment fund,” has a $7 million equity stake in pesticide company AgBiome, whose other investors include Monsanto and Syngenta—it has also given this company $20 million in charitable grants.

Compounding the problem, Gates is notoriously secretive about his personal investments, preventing regulators from knowing whether he stands to gain financially from his foundation’s activities.

The law must be changed to stop the Internal Revenue Service from allowing charitable donations to for-profit companies.

The other way Gates uses his foundation for personal gain is to avoid paying taxes.

At Microsoft, he was notorious for, as Schwab says, “creating lucrative, tax-reducing barriers around corporate profits.” Microsoft has filed 402 appeals to avoid paying its property taxes.

For Gates personally, under the current tax code, paying taxes is a choice. Avoiding estate taxes alone will take at least $40 billion from public coffers.

Congress should cap tax deductions.

Making sure that Gates pays taxes and obeys the law like the rest of us will require political courage, especially with all the money he’s devoted to political contributions and lobbying.

But it is not without precedent. One hundred years ago, when oil baron John D. Rockefeller sought a federal charter for a foundation, Congress passed a series of amendments to:

• Limit the foundation to $100 million and forbid it from accumulating additional wealth.
• Give Congress the power to require the dissolution of the foundation after a century.
• Make appointments to its board subject to review by a committee consisting of the President of the United States, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the presidents of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago.
• “[M]ake this munificent gift directly to the whole American people, and forever subject to the control of their elected representatives.”

Rockefeller representatives agreed to all the amendments, but in the end, even these concessions were insufficient to overcome congressional opposition.

More recently, in 2018, Donald Trump’s private foundation was shut down amid allegations that he used it as “a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”

Money shouldn’t be able to buy power, but without enforcement of the laws, rules and social norms that govern the rest of us, Gates has been able to act as an unelected head of state, in other words, a kind or a dictator.

Our democracy is at stake. Please take action.

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