Billionaires could soon face more taxing times

Billionaires, beware: thousands of your compatriots are concentrated hard on the reintegration of your wealth. All, including a large number of millionaires, want you to pay higher taxes. They want a 21st century America with less income inequality and more tax equity.

Something like America of decades, before laws begin to look towards taxpayers with high income. (And they always look at this way: see the gifts Shot in the rich in the Bill Bill insufficient by the GOP earlier this year).

Opponents of billionaires include tax experts, academics, investigative journalists, democratic legislators and two groups devoted specially to tax reform. One is patriotic millionaires, self-defined Like “a collection of rich Americans fighting against the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in the United States”. The other has one name This does not require any definition, tax gourmet billionaires. The representative Greg Casar sums up his mission in eight words: “Tax billionaires instead of finance the billionaires”.

Here are some glimpse of what they all see – and what they would like to see instead.

Patriotic millionaires emphasize The growing inequality of the country and a tax code which deserves most of the blame: “Those who are already rich can make money In the manner that is subject to income taxes at lower rates or that do not count at all like “income” “. As a result, “billionaires are now paying lower Effective tax rate that all other income groups. For this reason, “the American tax system has enabled a concentration of wealth so extreme that it threatens our economy, our democracy and the planet”.

Tax gourmet billionaires seem just as noisy alarm. “The inequality of America’s riches has reached a dangerous shift point. The richest Americans have captured our government, rushing down the rules in their favor and having unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power…. The American dream cannot survive in a system where unlimited wealth for the few chances of destroying for all. ”

Kimberly real estate multimillionaire Vacuum cleaner will benefit a lot from the only large insufficient invoice, but it is not happy. “At one point, it is starting to feel bad. It is starting to feel inappropriate in some way….

The independent propublica editorial room has appointed names and detailed details in a bomb piece“How the billionaires have bypassed a tax targeting the rich.” One of the names named was Jeff Yass, a republican megadoneur “which is at the top of one of the most profitable negotiation companies in the world”.

Yass has particularly succeeded in playing on net placement income tax (NIT), a tax designed to target traders like him. But that was not all; In 2013 and 2014, he also erased “hundreds of millions of interests and dividend income”.

Ron Wyden is the classification member of the Senate finance committee. He spoke for all reformers in a statement This included these words: “For the nurse or the concierge whose taxes are straight out of their pay checks, it is ridiculous to see these examples of fabulously rich people enjoying enormous finesse and continuing to avoid paying a good part.”

Professor Brian Galle thinks he has a best idea To tax the rich that minimum income tax proposed by the Biden administration. It would adjust the tax rate of capital gains so that it increases more than an asset is maintained. Galle quickly calls it or a tax on the part. He thinks it could be designed to generate as much income as any other option, and would also be easier to implement. (Currently, of course, the tax on long -term capital gains is less than the wage tax – another example of a tax law promoting the rich).

Gabriel Zecman is one of the main champions of the taxation of the rich to reduce inequalities. He is a professor here and abroad, at Paris School of Economics and at the University of California in Berkeley. Zucman easily recognizes the failure of previous attempts, such as former President Biden, to make the rich pay more. At the same time, “the chances [for success] are good even if the timing is uncertain…. Tax history is full of U. »»

Finally, a few months ago, lawyer and tax reformer Bob Lord Gave us a revealing perspective: “The first 3 American oligarchs are now sitting at $ 992 billion. The age of the trillionaries is upon us. For a context, 1 billion of dollars is more than $ 1 million a day since the death of Jesus. ”

In summary, future congresses will have to choose between increases on super-rich taxes or continue to make them even richer. To put it emotionally, thousands of reformers end up crying – crying either tears of joy or tears of sorrow.

Scorse writes on taxes.