By loosening trust laws for more than 20 years, Ohio has established itself as an 'emerging enabler' of billionaires and wealth inequality, a new report from Washington think tank The Institute for Policy Studies said.
COLUMBUS — The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Since the start of the U.S. COVID-19 crisis in March 2020, known billionaire wealth has increased by more than 50%, to nearly $5 trillion, the Institute wrote. It pointed to the October 2021 publication of the Pandora Papers, a trove of documents that highlight how the world’s wealthy elites use trusts to evade taxation and hide often-illicit wealth from the public.
What makes a state subservient to the trust industry? The enabling of illicit wealth hiding and tax avoidance, the Institute asserts. Trust deregulation is often bipartisan, the report emphasizes. Trust and estate lawyers regularly lobby state legislatures and sometimes work in official capacities with states to write legislation favorable to the industry, it says.The report says Ohio has at least $17 billion in trust assets spread across six companies. It ranks Ohio as the 13th worst state in the nation for tax inequality.
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