The Blubber

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia and the 10th-richest person in the United States, has an estimated net worth of $127 billion. By law, when he dies, his estate would theoretically owe 40% of that wealth in taxes to the federal government.

However, Huang, 61, known for his engineering brilliance and leadership of Nvidia—a company powering much of the AI revolution—has implemented a series of tax strategies that allow him to transfer a significant portion of his fortune tax-free. According to a review of securities and tax filings by The New York Times, these maneuvers could save his family roughly $8 billion in taxes, making it one of the largest individual tax avoidance cases in the country.

Huang is far from alone in deploying such strategies. High-profile figures like Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and executives from Google, Coinbase, and Eli Lilly have used similar methods to shield billions from the federal estate tax, a levy that applies to only a tiny fraction of the nation's multimillionaires. A Times analysis suggests that these practices have become so widespread that the estate tax has been significantly eroded.

Revenue from the estate tax has stagnated since 2000, even though the collective wealth of the richest Americans has quadrupled. If the tax had kept pace with this growth, it could have raised approximately $120 billion in 2022; instead, it generated only a quarter of that amount.

This shortfall has profound implications. The lost revenue could have doubled the Department of Justice’s budget and tripled federal funding for cancer and Alzheimer’s research. Instead, the tax system is undermined by loopholes crafted by innovative lawyers, obscure federal rulings, and a declining enforcement apparatus at the IRS.

“You have an army of well-trained, brilliant people who sit there all day long, charging $1,000 an hour, thinking up ways to beat this tax,” said Jack Bogdanski, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. “Don’t expect anyone in Congress to stop this.”

Tax law expert Daniel Hemel estimates that ultrawealthy Americans bypass the estate tax on about $200 billion annually through sophisticated trusts and other avoidance tactics. Enforcement has also weakened: the IRS audited over 20% of estate tax returns in the 1990s, but by 2020, that figure had fallen to around 3%.

This decline in oversight has coincided with decades of Republican efforts to defund the IRS and dismantle the estate tax, often branding it as a burden on family farms and small businesses. With Republicans poised to control the White House and Congress, the push to gut the tax entirely is expected to intensify.

Huang’s methods, detailed in SEC filings and foundation disclosures, illustrate just how effective these strategies can be. Estate planning expert Jonathan Blattmachr praised Huang’s approach, calling it “a grand slam” from a tax-planning perspective.

An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of Huang’s tax arrangements. However, the case underscores how the estate tax, designed to curb wealth concentration, has been hollowed out—leaving the nation’s richest families freer than ever to pass their fortunes to future generations virtually untaxed.