Google co-founder Sergey Brin is setting up a new half-billion-dollar nonprofit focused on health and climate change, and filings show the majority of funding so far comes from Tesla Inc. shares. Catalyst4, the new organization, is a 501(c)(4), which allows Brin to exploit a powerful new philanthropic strategy giving billionaire donors tax breaks alongside unique levels of flexibility, secrecy and political influence. The Tesla shares were sold by Catalyst4 for $366 million over four days...

The Biden administration’s first-ever analysis of tax return data by race and ethnicity shows a discrepancy in those who gain from lower rates on capital gains and dividends. The US Treasury Department’s first-ever analysis of tax return data by race and ethnicity shows White Americans disproportionately benefiting from a variety of tax breaks, including those aimed at investors. Non-Hispanic White Americans, who make up two-thirds of US families, receive 92% of the benefit from the lower tax...

New research from Raj Chetty pinpoints a lasting economic scar from the pandemic: Low-wage workers in high-cost areas aren’t returning to the labor force. Behind the five-decade low US unemployment rate of 3.5% lies a 2.6 million-person mystery. That’s roughly how many more Americans should be working or looking for jobs if the economy’s labor force participation rate was the same as before the Covid-19 pandemic. But something’s still off, leaving everyone from mom-and-pop businesses to...

Some of the biggest US foundations held concentrated positions that have plunged even more than the stock market, at a time when nonprofits are concerned giving will slow. When Elon Musk transferred $5.7 billion of Tesla shares into his personal foundation at the end of 2021, he reduced a massive tax bill while also giving himself philanthropic firepower — in the form of a $9.4 billion endowment — that only a handful of billionaires possess. The often-boisterous owner of Twitter has shed...

The median American born in the 1980s -- the cradle of millennials -- had family wealth that was 34 percent below what earlier generations held at the same age, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported last month. While it’s perfectly normal for people just starting out to have less in the bank, the longest expansion in decades has barely helped the generation. So how does the cohort rise above a statistically grim financial future? One means is by harnessing their numbers ... at the...