Has one of the planet's richest people died without anyone noticing? The question has been raised after a US Treasury Department filing revealed a staggering $7 billion (£5.66 billion) flowed into its coffers on a single day.
The deposit was filed in the category of “estate and gift” taxes and was the highest collection of its kind of tax since at least 2005.
Due to strict privacy laws, the filer’s identity cannot be revealed.
Still, it would mean it was collected from someone worth a minimum of $17.5 billion (£14.14 billion) when they died or if they transferred a colossal gift of the same sum.
The payer would be in the top 100 of the world’s wealthiest people, above the likes of British billionaire James Ratcliffe, who is attempting to buy Manchester United.
Experts point out that if the money came from just one person, they would likely be worth almost double that amount.
They point to how billionaires adopt complex financial planning to shield their wealth from the treasury.
The only caveat to the amount is that more than one enormous tax bill could be processed on that day. Still, experts have said this is highly unlikely.
The massive transfer was first spotted by John Ricco, an economist at the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania, which tracks the impact of economic policy changes.
He first believed it must have been a mistake.
But a Treasury Department spokesman confirmed it did not make a reporting error.
Ricco has been tracking estate tax deposits as part of an experiment.
Though inheritance levies were reduced in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s tax overhaul, collections have soared in recent years, likely due to excess deaths of the elderly during the pandemic.
Respected American business magazine Forbes publishes a list each year of the world’s richest people; it is not believed any who appear on it has died in recent years.
Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of Berkeley, says there were a few reasons why such a payment could be made to the US treasury without anyone knowing.
He argued it could be “a very rich person who was missed by Forbes, a large gift, (or) a delayed payment by some billionaire who died several years ago (perhaps a result of enforcement efforts).”
Because of the enormous filing, the US government has now collected more than $9 billion in estate and gift taxes in the fiscal year that began in October than it did in all of 2022.
Experts have said it is rare for wealthy people to pay such high estate taxes because they can be significantly reduced through strategic planning.
According to calculations by the Tax Policy Centre, a think tank based in Washington DC, whoever deposited the funds must have had an estate of at least $35 billion.
Meanwhile, Ray Madoff, a tax law professor at Boston College, suggested someone may have made a taxable gift now to avoid future estate taxes on their entire net worth.
