Many taxpayers don’t realize they invest in Bill Gates every time they pay their taxes.

The tax burden is placed on the middle classes to help fund tax cuts for the super-rich, said David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the New York Times, in a speech he gave in the College of Law Friday morning to an audience comprised of law students and interested members of the public, many of them lawyers themselves.

‘Right- and left-wing advocates both agree that our tax system does not benefit taxpayers,’ Johnston said. ‘The middle and upper-middle class now subsidizes the super rich.’

Johnston went on to explain that the top 1 percent in America, which is composed of a wide range of incomes, actually pay less per dollar than the average American. He also used several illustrations, historical, and statistical facts to back up allegations that the tax system is fundamentally flawed, receiving many nods of approval and agreement from his audience.

‘I’m about to tell you something that would completely shock many Americans, if they knew about it,’ he said. ‘If you or one of your dependents is deathly ill, and you live off more than 7 percent of your income, your income taxes are going to substantially rise. Our current tax system is dangerous, and violates the fundamental values of conservative democracy.’

Johnston also touched on many other points made in his best-selling book, ‘Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everybody Else,’ which he referred back to several times throughout his hour-long lecture. Investigative Reporters and Editors distinguished the book as Investigative Book of the Year.

‘This is a moral issue,’ he stated. ‘The burdens of society are placed on us, not the benefits. The tax system in America is much different than what politicians and the government tell us. Our current society is gradually giving up democracy. Our slipping voter participation is proof of that.’

Johnston, who says he writes about the U.S. tax system ‘as it is, not as the politicians present it,’ often mentioned the government, politics, and their ties to taxes, criticizing Republicans and Democrats alike.

Johnston spent the last quarter of his lecture answering questions from the audience.

A second-year law student asked why so many taxpayers support the Bush tax cuts for the rich and believe they can actually benefit from it.

‘People believe they can benefit from something that I can prove will be bad for them,’ Johnston answered. ‘They hold many unrealistic, misinformed ideas that, in part, the government, politicians, and the media are responsible for putting into our heads.’

The lecture ended inconclusively. When asked by a lawyer to describe his ideal tax system for the United States, Johnston simply shook his head.

‘I can’t formulate a ‘perfect’ system, because there really isn’t one,’ he replied. ‘We’ll figure out the solutions to our own problems.’

After the lecture, Johnston held a book signing and got a chance to talk to some of the members of his audience.

‘I really enjoyed the lecture,’ Husna Lapidus, a first-year law student, remarked. ‘[Johnston] had an excellent way of backing up his statements with pure fact. I agreed fully with everything he said.’

Johnston, who has been a reporter since age 19, started writing for the New York Times in 1995. Before that, he had worked for such newspapers as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Los Angeles Times.

In 2001, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on America’s tax system.

Published on September 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm