The team at Forbes adds up all of the lifetime “out-the-door” giving a person has made, and divides that number by the sum of their total current wealth and the total giving amount. The results are categorised into five tiers: less than 1 per cent, between 1 and 5 per cent, 5-10 per cent, 10-20 per cent, and more than 20 per cent.
Private foundations and donor-advised funds don’t count for the Forbes measure, since those “donations” effectively remain under the control of the donor – and also come with generous benefits that enable wealthy people to avoid paying taxes.
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Warren Buffett continued as the list’s most generous giver, having parted with US$4.1 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock in June to bring his lifetime total to US$44 billion. He’s now halfway through his pledge to give away all his Berkshire shares.
The most prolific giver in the Forbes ranking was George Soros, whose US$16.8 billion of giving has outsize his US$8.6 billion net worth.
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Former president Donald Trump was not ranked, since he fell US$400 million shy of making the top 400 list. In fact, Trump did not make Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans for the first time in 25 years.
His net worth was estimated at US$2.5 billion – just about US$400 million shy of making the list this year, according to Forbes. The billionaire has lost about US$600 million since the pandemic started as Covid-19 wreaked havoc on the commercial real-estate market.Since he became president in 2016, Trump’s wealth has continued to decline. From 1997 to 2016, he was ranked among the upper half of Forbes’ 400 wealthiest Americans, but five years later he’s slipped off the list completely.
Earlier this year, Forbes reported that the former president had dropped 298 spots on its billionaire’s list which was released in April – down from No 1,001 to No 1,299. Trump’s commercial real estate assets – which account for about 75 per cent of his income – have taken a significant hit from the pandemic, Bloomberg reported in March. The former president’s hotel and resort lines, as well as his golf club have also seen declined interest due to travel restrictions.Trump donated his US$400,000 salary as president, but made about US$1.6 billion from 2016 to 2020, according to Bloomberg data. During his presidency, Trump chose to hold onto his US$3.5 billion in assets, instead of divesting them to stave off any perception of a conflict of interest. Forbes noted that if the president had sold his assets off his fortune could be worth as much as US$7 billion.
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Trump is one of several billionaires to fall off Forbes’ list. Oprah Winfrey also dropped off the list for the first time since 1995, alongside several entrepreneurs, including Gap co-founder Doris Fisher and Nikola founder Trevor Milton.
This article originally appeared on Insider.
