Former Missouri Congressman Billy Long, the guy that Donald Trump wants to head up the IRS, took nearly a quarter of a million dollars in political donations from companies at the top of a list of tax-avoiders.
This is from the government watchdog Accountable.US, citing a corporate tax avoidance report from the Institute on Taxation And Economic Policy.
Long is, to say the least, an interesting choice to lead the IRS. The guy has a high school degree, is a former auctioneer, and since leaving Congress in 2023 has begun a third career as a self-styled tax adviser.
You won’t be surprised to learn there that his work in that area concentrated on helping businesses use the Employee Retention Tax Credit, which the IRS has cited for its high rate of fraud.
According to the Accountable.US review, Long, during his six terms in Congress, took $248,500 in donations from 17 top tax-avoiding corporations, who cumulatively paid an average effective tax rate of negative 0.4 percent on over $289 billion in collective profits they made in the first five years of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which Long voted for.
“There’s no mystery why big corporations that pay relatively nothing under the Trump tax giveaway despite boasting astronomical profits have been so generous to Billy Long,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk.
“Long dedicated his time in Congress trying to help tax-dodging corporations pay even less of their fair share while they price-gouged consumers and shipped U.S. jobs overseas. Billy Long personifies the looming Trump agenda: giving greedy corporations a free ride while working people get taken for one,” Carrk said.
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Chris Graham
