Economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick say there are about three million private business owners in the U.S. with average wealth of around $25 million, according to Bloomberg.
The pair, who were asked by the Treasury in 2014 to study the tax burden of private business owners, said pass-through businesses and other accounting tricks have made it harder to measure how much auto dealers, contractors and similar owners owe in taxes. Their findings are the basis of their new book, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There.