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But it's very hard to prove such fraud. If you artificially pump the value of an artist by a few well placed public auctions - the art might have been bought by

But it's very hard to prove such fraud. If you artificially pump the value of an artist by a few well placed public auctions - the art might have been bought by a front man for the owner, then the IRS doesn't have a leg to stand on, as a "market value" for the artist has been established (my mother worked on auctions for a time and there were a lot of shady schemes to pump up value of collectibles). The 0.1 have access to the very best tax advisors money can buy (and probably some IRS insider info as well).

radiantswirl 8y ago
Finally someone's dropping real talk in this thread. It's so easy to game the system of charitable giving and make it profitable that it's a joke. Art Auction houses (arguably ) exist primarily to aid rich people's tax evasion. Guaranteed minimums on objects sold, "anonymous" sockpuppet buyers artificially bidding up prices, appraisals done by people with no incentive not to inflate prices -- all of these things make tax evasion easy for the .01%. When you're that rich you hire a former IRS agent who quit to work in the private sector. He helps you evade all the tax laws that he once worked to enforce, because he knows them better than anyone. Rich people can inflate the value of their artworks with trivial ease through the auction house system. All they're doing is avoiding taxes.