Bernie Sanders Proposes Billionaire Tax on Billionaires

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WASHINGTON – Senator Bernie Sanders to unveil Tuesday a proposal to create a new wealth tax for wealthier Americans, including a major tax on billionaires could greatly reduce their fortunes.

With this proposal, Sanders endorses an idea that has been the centerpiece of the campaign of his main progressive rival, Senator Elizabeth Warren. But while Mrs. Warren arrived first, Mr. Sanders became taller. Its wealth tax would apply to a larger number of households, impose a higher maximum rate and raise more money.

Mr. Sanders' plan to tax accumulated wealth, not just income, is particularly aggressive in that it would weaken the lot of billionaires. His tax would have cut in two the The wealth of the typical billionaire after 15 years, according to two economists who worked with the Sanders campaign on the plane. Mr. Sanders will use the money generated by his wealth tax to fund the housing plan that he published last week and an upcoming plan for universal custody, as well as to help pay for " Medicare for all ".

"Let's be very clear: as President of the United States, I am going to reduce the outrageous, grotesque and immoral level of income and wealth inequality," Sanders said in an interview. "What we are trying to do is to demand and implement a policy that drastically reduces income and wealth inequality in America by telling the country 's wealthier families that it' s the best way to save money. they can not have so much wealth. "

When asked if he thought billionaires should exist in the US, Mr. Sanders responded, "I hope the day will come when they will not be." He added, "It will not be for tomorrow."

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"I do not think billionaires should exist," he said, adding that there would always be rich people and other people with less money. "This proposal does not eliminate billionaires, but it eliminates much of the wealth of billionaires, and I think that's exactly what we should be doing."

Mr. Sanders' proposal is the last sign of the Democratic Party's willingness to develop policies aimed at collecting substantially larger incomes from the wealthiest Americans by rethinking the way they are taxed – an initiative that could provide significant amounts that could be used to fund new social programs. And this is a significant development in the competition of ideas between Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Warren, the two leading progressive candidates in the Democratic primary race.

Mr. Sanders, of Vermont, would create an annual tax that would apply to households whose net worth is greater than $ 32 million – about 180,000 households in total, or about 0.1%, according to economists who have worked on the plan.

It would create a 1% net worth tax of over $ 32 million, with marginal marginal rates rising above 8% on net worth over $ 10 billion. For single depositors, the square brackets would be halved, which means the tax would be $ 16 million.

In contrast, Warren's Massachusetts wealth tax would apply to households with net worth in excess of $ 50 million – about 70,000 households in total.

The structure of its plan is simpler: it would apply a 2% net worth tax of $ 50 million to $ 1 billion and a 3% net worth tax of over $ 1 billion. Unlike the Sanders Plan, the tax brackets would be the same for single and married tax filers.

  • Net worth: marginal tax rate of 1% between $ 32 and $ 50 million

  • $ 50 million to $ 250 million: 2%

  • $ 250 million to $ 500 million: 3%

  • $ 500 million to $ 1 billion: 4%

  • $ 1 billion to $ 2.5 billion: 5%

  • $ 2.5 to $ 5 billion: 6%

  • $ 5 to $ 10 billion: 7%

  • More than $ 10 billion: 8%

Note: The brackets indicated for the Sanders proposal concern married declarants; the brackets would be halved for single applicants. The Warren proposal uses the same brackets for married and single filers.

Sanders' tax is expected to yield $ 4.35 billion over 10 years, while Warren's tax is expected to raise $ 2.6 trillion over the same period. These estimates were produced by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two economists from the University of California at Berkeley, with whom the campaigns Sanders and Warren were consulted during the development of their proposals. (The forecast for Warren's plan is slightly different from their original estimate of $ 2.75 billion earlier this year.)

"The Sanders plan is really based on the idea that we do not want billionaires and decabillionaires to be billionaires and decabillionaires for as long as they are right now," Saez said. "This will erode their fortune much faster than Warren's wealth tax."

Mr. Sanders has included several steps in his tax enforcement plan, including the creation of a "National Wealth Register", an increase in Internal Revenue Service funding, and audits of many taxpayers subject to the tax. wealth tax, including all billionaires.

Mr. Saez and Mr. Zucman have calculated how the wealth tax of Warren and Sanders would have affected the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans since 1982. The fortune of Jeff Bezos, the founder of the Amazon, who, According to Forbes, worth $ 160 billion last year, would have accounted for $ 87 billion under the Warren plan and $ 43 billion under the Sanders plan.

In total, economists have found that the cumulative wealth of the 15 richest Americans in 2018 – rising to $ 943 billion – would have been $ 434 billion in the Warren plan and $ 196 billion in the Sanders plan.

Mr. Sanders is He is hardly a newcomer to the idea of ​​a wealth tax. In a 1997 book he wrote that it was "time, high time, to establish a wealth tax similar to that existing in most European countries". In 2017, he included a wealth tax in a list of Medicare financing options for everything.

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