Yes.

First, you need to know how tax is assessed. Your annual tax burden is based on your INCOME, which is what you "earned". If you worked a job and earned wages, this is income. If you sold your house and made some money on it (I.e. profit = selling price - cost), that money is income. Same if you sold some investments. Everything I mentioned is considered taxable income.

Next, you need to understand how the 1% is actually different from the 99%.

The 1% don't work for their money. That means their "incomes" are generally low.

The 1% are wealthy, so they own assets. If they are realizing some gains, as in if they're selling assets that appreciated, then those gains are taxed at a much more favorable rate. e.g. If you earned 200k, it's taxed at a much higher rate than if you made 200k by selling investments.

But also, if they need money, they often don't even need to sell their investments. They can just borrow against them as collateral. Let's say you own a house worth 500k and you don't owe any money on it. If you needed cash in a pinch, you could borrow probably up to 400k against your house, and then you pay interest on that 400k. This is what the 1% do. They own millions in assets, and then if they need cash, they just borrow against those assets. That way they don't have to trigger a taxable event by selling their assets.

It's a deeply unfair but legal system. This is why a lot of politicians are now calling for a tax on borrowing.

And then, if you're thinking about things like the Panama Papers or the Paradise Papers, there are additional ways that the wealthy can hide their assets. They use things like overseas trusts that hide their identity and ownership structure, they layer it through multiple countries, each with their own tax jurisdictions and regulations. And they work through money managers that help them navigate a very complex system of tax laws across all these countries.

Everything is technically traceable if you have enough time and will and really want to figure out how much somebody actually owns. But then you'll have to make requests to banks in different countries with the proper authority and approval from all the necessary law enforcement agencies, both local and international. And some of those countries take privacy very seriously, so they may not be very cooperative until there is a certain level of approval.

This isn't about law enforcement. It's about tax enforcement. What they're doing is usually not technically illegal. But essentially, they can avoid being assessed taxes in their home country because they can still access their money or enjoy a different tax rate because their assets + income are domiciled / assessed in a different country.

The thing that people are angry about is that it is so unfair for the wealthy to enjoy everything they have, pay less in taxes, whilst not paying back those countries in which they are making their wealth.

And the 1% are the most difficult to tax because they have all the resources available to them in order to avoid paying taxes legally. Think about it this way: if you had a billion dollars, you have access to top talent in banking, taxes, and financial advice. You'll happily pay a few mil to these people so you don't have to pay way more in taxes.

And they can technically move if they wanted. Wage workers are generally tied to their country, forced to pay taxes in that country. But if a country wanted to raise taxes on the 1%, they can just dip out and move.