Taxes, Billionaire | featured news

Facebook's stock market debut left founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a paper fortune currently valued at $13 billion -- and a 2012 tax bill of around $1.1 billion.vZuckerberg's whopping tax hit stems from his move last May to increase his stake in Facebook. On the day of Facebook's initial public offering, Zuckerberg exercised a stock option and purchased 60 million Facebook shares at a "strike price" of 6 cents each.

Last year, about $450 million belonging to top executives at billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson’s New York firm took a quick round trip to Bermuda. In April, the executives sent the money to a reinsurance company that they’d set up on the island 650 miles off the North Carolina coast. By June, the Bermuda company, which has no employees and sells far less reinsurance than the industry norm, had sent all the cash back to New York, to be invested in Paulson & Co. funds.

A court in Milan Friday convicted former Premier Silvio Berlusconi of tax fraud and sentenced the media mogul to four years in prison, his first prison sentence in years of criminal probes. The 76-year-old billionaire businessman -- who just two days ago said he would not run in Italy's spring election -- is expected to remain free until the appeals process is exhausted. In Italy, cases must pass two levels of appeal before verdicts are final.

Billionaire William Koch imprisoned and interrogated one of his executives at a secluded Aspen ranch, under a sheriff's guard, because the executive suspected Koch's companies of tax evasion, the employee claims in Federal Court.