Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, is the 10th-richest person in the United States, worth $127 billion. In theory, when he dies, his estate should pay 40 percent of his net worth to the government in taxes.

英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋身家1270亿美元，在美国富豪榜中排名第10。理论上，如果他去世，其遗产净值的40%应用于缴税。

But Mr. Huang, 61, is not only an engineering genius and Silicon Valley icon whose company, the world’s second-most valuable, makes the chips that power much artificial intelligence. He is also the beneficiary of a series of tax dodges that will enable him to pass on much of his fortune tax free, according to securities and tax filings reviewed by The New York Times.

但现年61岁的黄仁勋不只是一位工程天才和硅谷标杆人物，执掌世界第二高市值公司，生产许多人工智能运转所需的芯片。根据《纽约时报》查阅的证券和税务报备文件，他还是一系列避税措施的受益人，让他可以将自己的相当一部分财富免税传给后人。

The savings for his family are on a pace to be roughly $8 billion. It likely ranks among the largest tax dodges in the United States.

他的家人可以省下的税金将达到大约80亿美元。这可能将成为美国最大规模的避税操作之一。

The types of strategies Mr. Huang has deployed to shield his wealth have become ubiquitous among the ultrawealthy. Blackstone Group’s Stephen A. Schwarzman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and top executives at Google, Coinbase, Eli Lilly, Mastercard and Advanced Micro Devices have collectively shifted billions of dollars into financial vehicles in order to avoid the federal estate tax, according to a Times analysis of securities disclosures.

黄仁勋所采用的财富遮蔽策略在最富有的群体中已经无处不在。据时报对证券披露文件的分析，黑石集团的苏世民(Stephen A. Schwarzman)、Meta的马克·扎克伯格以及谷歌、Coinbase、礼来、万事达、AMD等企业的高管都在将亿万财富转化成金融工具，以规避联邦遗产税。

It is just one sign of how the estate tax — imposed solely on a sliver of the country’s multimillionaires — has been eviscerated.

这是遗产税——仅针对美国的亿万富翁中的一小部分征收——已经成为一具空壳的表现之一。

Revenue from the tax has barely changed since 2000, even as the wealth of the richest Americans has roughly quadrupled. If the estate tax had simply kept pace, it would have raised around $120 billion last year. Instead it brought in about a quarter of that.

美国的税收自2000年以来几乎没有改变过，尽管美国的极富阶层的财富大约增长了三倍。按照这样的增幅，去年可征得的遗产税本应在大约1200亿美元。然而实际所得只是这个数字的约四分之一。

2007年，黄仁勋、妻子洛丽和他们的孩子。

That missing revenue would be enough to simultaneously double the budget of the Justice Department and triple federal funding for cancer and Alzheimer’s research.

这些未能征得的税款将足以让司法部的预算加倍，同时将联邦对癌症和阿兹海默症研究的拨款增加至原来的三倍。

The story of Mr. Huang’s tax avoidance is a case study in how the ultrarich bend the U.S. tax system for their benefit. His strategies were not explicitly authorized by Congress. Instead, they were cooked up by creative lawyers who have exploited a combination of obscure federal regulations, narrow findings by courts and rulings that the Internal Revenue Service issues in individual cases that then served as models for future tax shelters. As such strategies became widespread, they effectively became the law.

透过黄仁勋的避税，我们可以了解极富阶层如何操控美国税收系统，令其符合自己的利益。他的策略并没有得到国会的明确授权，只是由一些别出心裁的律师谋划而成，他们利用了鲜有人知的联邦监管规则、有狭窄界定的法庭判决，以及国税局就个别案例发布的裁定——但随即成为未来避税措施的典范。随着这类策略的普及，它们实际已经成为法律。

“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 and the author of a widely cited treatise on the estate tax. “Don’t expect anyone in Congress to stop this.”

“你拥有一支训练有素、聪明绝顶的团队，他们整天坐在那里，一小时收费1000美元，就负责想出挡掉这笔税的办法，”路易斯克拉克法学院教授、著有一篇被广泛引用的遗产税论文的杰克·博格丹斯基说。“就别指望国会里的什么人能拦住他们了。”

The richest Americans are able to pass down approximately $200 billion each year without paying estate tax on it, thanks to the use of complex trusts and other avoidance strategies, estimated Daniel Hemel, a tax law professor at New York University.

纽约大学税法教授丹尼尔·亨梅尔说，通过使用复杂的信托和其它避税策略，最富有的美国人能在不交遗产税的情况下每年传下大约2000亿美元。

Enforcement of the rules governing the estate tax has eased in part because the I.R.S. has been decimated by years of budget cuts. In the early 1990s, the agency audited more than 20 percent of all estate tax returns. By 2020, the rate had fallen to about 3 percent.

遗产税规则执行上的松懈一定程度上是因为国税局在连年的预算裁减之下受到重创。上世纪90年代初，该局对超过20%的遗产税申报进行了审计。到了2020年，这个比例已经跌至大约3%。

税收减少，审计减少：尽管美国最富有的人所拥有的财富激增，但遗产税收入几乎没有变化。原因之一可能是美国国税局对遗产税申报的审计已降至几十年来的最低水平。

The trend is likely to accelerate with Republicans controlling both the White House and Capitol Hill. They are already slashing funding for law enforcement by the I.R.S. The incoming Senate majority leader, John Thune, and other congressional Republicans for years have been trying to kill the estate tax, branding it as a penalty on family farms and small businesses.

随着共和党控制白宫和两院，这一趋势可能加剧。他们已经在大幅削减国税局的执法经费。即将上任的参议院多数党领袖约翰·图恩和其他国会共和党人多年来一直试图除掉遗产税，他们称之为对家庭农场和小型商企的惩罚。

Yet Mr. Huang’s multibillion-dollar maneuver — detailed in the fine print of his filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and his foundation’s disclosures to the I.R.S. — shows the extent to which the estate tax has already been hollowed out.

然而黄仁勋的这种关乎数十亿美元的操作——其细节隐藏在他的美国证券交易委员会报备文件，以及他的基金会的国税局披露文件的角角落落——展现了遗产税在多大程度上已经被掏空。

“From an estate-tax-planning perspective, it’s a grand slam,” said Jonathan Blattmachr, a prominent trusts and estates lawyer who reviewed Mr. Huang’s disclosures for The Times. “He’s done a magnificent job.”

“从遗产税规划的角度看，这就是赢了个大满贯，”为时报查阅了黄的披露文件的知名信托和遗产律师乔纳森·布拉特马赫说。“他做得非常漂亮。”

An Nvidia spokeswoman, Stephanie Matthew, declined to discuss details of the Huangs’ tax strategies.

英伟达发言人斯蒂芬妮·马修拒绝就黄的税务策略细节置评。

黄仁勋今年在加利福尼亚州圣何塞。他的财富遮蔽策略在超级富豪中很常见。

‘Only Morons’

 “傻子才交”

The United States adopted the modern estate tax in 1916. In recent decades, congressional Republicans have successfully watered it down, cutting the rate and increasing the amount that is exempt from the tax. Today, a married couple can pass on about $27 million tax free; anything more than that is generally supposed to be taxed at a 40 percent rate.

美国在1916年引入了现代遗产税。过去几十年里，国会共和党人已经成功地削弱这一税项，降低税率，增加免税额。在今天，一对夫妇可以留下大约2700万美元的免税遗产；超出部分一般需要缴纳40%的税。

Billionaires have made a sport out of trying to avoid the tax. Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was President-elect Donald J. Trump’s chief economic adviser during his first administration, once quipped that “only morons pay the estate tax.”

亿万富翁把避税当成一种乐趣。前高盛银行高管、候任总统特朗普的上一个任期的首席经济顾问盖里·科恩曾打趣说，“傻子才交遗产税。”

天文数字般的增长：英伟达的股价一直是股市中表现最好的股票之一，自2022年以来飙升了800%以上。

In 2012, Mr. Huang and his wife, Lori, took one of their first steps to shield their fortune from the estate tax.

2012年，黄和他的妻子洛丽首次开始了为规避遗产税而进行的财富遮蔽操作。

They set up a financial vehicle known as an irrevocable trust and moved 584,000 Nvidia shares into it, according to a securities disclosure that Mr. Huang filed. The shares at the time were worth about $7 million, but they would eventually generate tax savings many times greater.

从黄仁勋的证券披露文件可以看到，他们开设了一种名为“不可撤销信托”的金融工具，将584000股英伟达股票转入其中。这笔股份价值大约700万美元，但最终能规避的税金将是这个数字的几倍。

The Huangs were taking advantage of a precedent set nearly two decades earlier, in 1995, when the I.R.S. blessed a transaction that tax professionals affectionately nicknamed “I Dig It.” (The moniker was a play on the name of the type of financial vehicle involved: an intentionally defective grantor trust.)

黄氏夫妇是在利用近20年前的1995年立下的一项先例，当时国税局认可了一项操作，该操作被税务专业人士亲切地称为“我中意”（I Dig It。这个别称是从其中所涉金融工具类型的名称变化而来，即“故意缺陷授予人信托”。）（Intentionally defective grantor trust的首字母缩写为IDGT，音近I Dig It。——译注）

One of the beauties of I Dig It was that it had the potential to largely circumvent not only the estate tax but also the federal gift tax. That tax applies to assets that multimillionaires give to their heirs while they’re alive and essentially serves as a backstop to the estate tax; otherwise, rich people could give away all their money before they die in order to avoid the estate tax.

“我中意”的妙处之一是不但可以规避遗产税，还可以大幅规避联邦馈赠税。该税项适用于亿万富翁在世时赠予继承人的资产，本质上起到为遗产税补漏的作用，否则富人就可以在活着的时候把钱全给出去，从而避开遗产税。

“I’ve always called it the gift that keeps on giving,” said Michael D. Mulligan, a veteran trusts and estates lawyer in St. Louis who helped create the strategy.

“我总说这就是一件能不断给予回报的礼物，”圣路易斯资深信托和遗产律师、参与建立该避税策略的迈克尔·D·穆里根说。

In Mr. Huang’s case, the details in securities filings are limited. But multiple experts, including Mr. Mulligan, said it was almost certainly a classic I Dig It gift, loan and sale transaction.

具体在黄仁勋这一例中，从证券报备文件看不到多少细节。但包括穆里根在内的多位专家说，这几乎肯定是一次经典的“我中意”式馈赠、出借和出售交易。

The $7 million of shares that Mr. Huang moved into his trust in 2012 are today worth more than $3 billion. If those shares were directly passed on to Mr. Huang’s heirs, they would be taxed at 40 percent — or well over $1 billion.

黄仁勋2012年转入他信托基金的股票价值700万美元，如今价值超过30亿美元。如果这些股份直接传给黄仁勋的继承人，他们将被征收40%的税——远超10亿美元。

Instead, the tax bill will probably be no more than a few hundred thousand dollars.

然而现在的税款可能最多就几十万美元。

First-Name Basis

家喻户晓

The Huangs soon took another big step toward reducing their estate-tax bill.

很快，黄家在减少遗产税方面又迈出了一大步。

Nvidia was emerging as the main provider of chips for artificial intelligence technology, eventually capturing more than 90 percent of the market. Mr. Huang was becoming a Silicon Valley celebrity. He adopted an all-black dress code. Such was his renown that he was known in tech circles simply by his first name, along with luminaries like Tesla’s Elon, Meta’s Mark and Google’s Sergey and Larry.

英伟达开始成为人工智能技术芯片的主要供应商，最终占据了90%以上的市场份额。黄仁勋成了硅谷名人，穿上了一身全黑的装束。他的名气如此之大，以至于在科技圈，他和特斯拉的埃隆、Meta的马克、谷歌的谢尔盖和拉里等名人一样，只提一个名字就能知道他是谁。

In 2016, the Huangs set up several vehicles known as grantor retained annuity trusts, or GRATs, securities filings show.

证券报备文件显示，2016年，黄家设立了几家被称为授予人保留年金信托（简称GRAT）的投资工具。

In 2016, Mr. Huang and his wife put just over three million Nvidia shares into their four new GRATs. The shares were worth about $100 million. If their value rose, the increase would be a tax-free windfall for their two adult children, who both work at Nvidia.

2016年，黄仁勋和妻子将300多万股英伟达股票投入了他们的四个新GRAT之中。这些股票价值约1亿美元。如果这些资产的价值上升，他们的两个成年子女将获得一笔免税的横财，两人都在英伟达工作。

That is precisely what happened. The shares are now worth more than $15 billion, according to data from securities filings compiled for The Times by Equilar, a data firm. That means that the Huang family is poised to avoid roughly $6 billion in estate taxes.

事情果然就是这样发展的。数据公司Equilar为时报整理的证券文件显示，这些股票目前价值超过150亿美元。这意味着黄家可以避免缴纳大约60亿美元的遗产税。

If the Huangs’ trusts sell their shares, that will generate a hefty capital gains tax bill — more than $4 billion, based on Nvidia’s current stock price. Mr. and Mrs. Huang can pay that bill on behalf of the trusts, without it counting as a taxable gift to their heirs.

如果黄家的信托公司出售他们的股票，那将产生一笔巨额的资本利得税——根据英伟达目前的股价计算，将超过40亿美元。黄氏夫妇可以代表信托基金支付这笔费用，而不会将其计入对继承人的应税赠与。

A Charitable Tax Dodge

慈善避税

Starting in 2007, Mr. Huang deployed another technique that will further reduce his family’s estate taxes. This strategy involved taking advantage of his and his wife’s charitable foundation.

从2007年开始，黄仁勋采用了另一种方法，可以进一步减少家族的遗产税。这一策略包括利用他和他妻子的慈善基金会。

Mr. Huang has given the Jen Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation shares of Nvidia that were worth about $330 million at the time of the donations. Such donations are tax-deductible, meaning they reduced the Huangs’ income tax bills in the years that the gifts took place.

黄仁勋和他的“仁勋与洛丽·黄基金会”捐赠的英伟达股票在捐赠时价值约3.3亿美元。这样的捐赠是免税的，这意味着它们减少了黄氏夫妇在捐赠当年的所得税账单。

2008年，媒体大亨梅尔·卡马津。他的家人使用“我中意”策略来逃税。2005年，前底特律活塞队老板比尔·戴维森。他的财富保护也受益于“我中意”策略。

Foundations are required to make annual donations to charities equal to at least 5 percent of their total assets. But the Huangs’ foundation, like those of many billionaires, is satisfying that requirement by giving heavily to what is known as a donor-advised fund.

基金会每年必须向慈善机构捐出其总资产的至少5%。但黄家的基金会和许多亿万富翁的基金会一样，通过向所谓的捐赠者建议基金大量捐款来满足这一要求。

Such funds are pools of money that the donor controls. There are limitations on how the money can be spent. Buying cars or vacation homes or the like is off limits. But a fund could, say, invest money in a business run by the donor’s friend or donate enough money to name a building at a university that the donor’s children hope to attend.

这些基金是捐助者控制的资金池，其用途是有限的。购买汽车或度假屋之类是不允许的。但是，一个基金可以投资捐赠者的朋友经营的企业，或者捐出足够的资金，为捐赠人子女希望就读的大学建造一座命名大楼。

There is a gaping loophole in the tax laws: Donor-advised funds are not required to actually give any money to charitable organizations.

税法中有一个漏洞：捐赠者建议基金无需向慈善组织实际捐赠任何资金。

When the donor dies, control of the fund can pass to his heirs — without incurring any estate taxes.

当捐赠人去世时，基金的控制权可以传给他的继承人，而不会产生任何遗产税。

In recent years, 84 percent of the Huang foundation’s donations have gone to their donor-advised fund, named GeForce, an apparent nod to the name of an Nvidia videogame chip. The Nvidia shares that the Huangs have donated are today worth about $2 billion.

近年来，黄仁勋的基金84%的捐款都捐给了他们的捐赠者建议基金，基金名为GeForce，显然是向英伟达游戏芯片的名字致敬。黄仁勋夫妇捐赠的英伟达股票如今价值约20亿美元。

The fund is not required to disclose how its money is spent, though the foundation has said the assets will be used for charitable purposes. The Nvidia spokeswoman, Ms. Matthew, said those causes included higher education and public health.

该基金不需要披露其资金的使用情况，但基金会表示，这些资产将用于慈善目的。英伟达发言人马修说，用途包括高等教育和公共卫生。

But there is another benefit. Based on Nvidia’s current stock price, the donations to the fund have reduced Mr. Huang’s eventual estate-tax bill by about $800 million.

但是该基金还会带来一个好处。按照英伟达目前的股价计算，对该基金的捐赠，使得黄仁勋最终的遗产税减少了约8亿美元。