LeBron James, Taylor Swift & George Clooney's Finances Revealed In Secret IRS Records
April 14 2022, Published 2:30 p.m. ET
Newly leaked IRS information shows that LeBron James, Taylor Swift and George Clooney are some of the only celebrities to come near cracking America’s top 400 income earners between the years 2013 and 2018.
The unprecedented information comes not only as actors, musicians, sports stars and other high-profile celebrities face mounting scrutiny regarding how much money they earn, but also as it’s recently been revealed that some of the richest people in the country reportedly pay lower tax rates than some of the less rich individuals throughout the nation.
According to the recently leaked IRS documents obtained by ProPublica, if one were to hope to crack the top 400 earners in America between 2013 and 2018 then they would have had to earn an annual income of at least $110 million – an amount of money that almost no current celebrity successfully made.
But, perhaps not surprisingly, some celebrities came extremely close to crossing that specific threshold.
For instance, LeBron James – who is widely considered not just the highest-paid NBA athlete but also one of the highest paid athletes ever – reportedly averaged a whopping $96 million dollars a year in the six years from 2013 to 2018.
Taylor Swift, one of the highest paid musicians ever, also came close to cracking the top 400 earners in America between 2013 and 2018 with an incredible annual income averaging upwards of $82 million.
Other celebrities who might have been expected to come close to reaching the top 400 but surprisingly did not include the likes of George Clooney, who reportedly only earned an average annual income of $55 million between 2013 and 2018.
In fact, Clooney would have had to double his average annual income between those years if he even wanted to come close to clearing the bar for what would be considered top 400 earners in America.
Still, while celebrities like James, Swift and Clooney don’t make nearly as much annual income as those in the top 400, they still reportedly pay a higher tax rate than those wealthier individuals in the top 400, according to ProPublica and the leaked IRS documents they recently analyzed.
According to the leaked IRS information, those in the top 400 earners in America – such as Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Laurene Powell Jobs and Jeff Bezos – only paid an average of a 22% tax rate on their income from 2013 to 2018.
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This is compared to others who earned between $2-$5 million and were forced to pay a 29% income tax rate, or even those who earned $12-$28 million and were forced to pay a 27% income tax rate between 2013 and 2018.
While the American tax system aims to make the country’s highest earners pay the highest tax rates, this newly leaked information from the IRS would suggest that that was simply not the case between 2013 and 2018 when it came to multi-millionaires and billionaires at the top of 400 highest earners hierarchy.
