Bill Gates Remains No. 1 Richest American

Bill Gates remains the richest American based on The Forbes 400 list.

For the 23rd year in a row, the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, remains the richest American as shown at The Forbes 400 list.

According to the Forbes list that was released Tuesday, Gates’ net worth rose to $81 billion, and this is $5 billion more than in 2015.

The list shows that Gates’ has $14 billion more than the next richest American.

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The No. 2 spot was garnered by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with $67 billion net worth. Bezos displaced Warren Buffett, on the third rank, who held the runner-up spot for 15 years. Buffett is chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway. He has $65.5 billion net worth, up from $62 billion.

Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, moved up $20 billion from 2015, due to Amazon shares surging 56 percent.

On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is at No. 4, having a net worth $55.5 billion. This is the first time that Zuckerberg made it into the top 5. Last year he was at $40.3 billion.

Fifth on the list is Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who is worth $49.3 billion, up $1.8 billion from last year. Ellison lost his No. 3 ranking for the first time since 2007.

In sixth is Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and owner of Bloomberg News, at $45 billion, up $6.4 billion from last year.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump fell 35 spots to No. 156 this year. Trump is worth $3.7 billion, down $800 million from last year. According to Forbes, Trump’s fall is mainly because of a decrease in New York real estate prices and new information about his holdings.

Out of 28 assets of Trump scrutinized by the magazine, 18 decreased in value.

Trump has claimed he is worth $10 billion but he has not payed taxes.

On Saturday night, the New York Times reported that a $916 million loss that Donald Trump declared on his 1995 New York state income tax returns may have allowed him to legally avoid paying any personal income tax for nearly 20 years.

The 400 people on the Forbes list has a total net worth of $2.4 trillion, up from $2.34 trillion last year. The average net worth is also, at a record $6 billion, up from $5.8 billion last year. The minimum net worth to make this year’s list remains at $1.7 billion, unchanged from 2015.

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