Progressives Unveil OLIGARCH Act to Combat 'Existential Threat' of Extreme Wealth Inequality
www.commondreams.org
"American oligarchs have used their wealth to accumulate an unprecedented level of political power, which they've used to amass even greater wealth. We must stop this cycle."

According to a summary of the bill released by the Patriotic Millionaires—an advocacy group that helped craft the measure—the wealth tax would have four brackets:

  • 2% for all wealth between 1,000 and 10,000 times median household wealth;
  • 4% for all wealth between 10,000 and 100,000 times median household wealth;
  • 6% for all wealth between 100,000 and 1,000,000 times median household wealth; and
  • 8% for all wealth over 1,000,000 times median household wealth;

"In the unlikely event median household wealth fell below $50,000 from its current level of about $120,000, the thresholds would be fixed at $50 million, $500 million, $5 billion, and $50 billion respectively.”

The legislation would also require at least a 30% IRS audit rate on households affected by the new wealth tax.

  • drphungky
    2•1 year ago

    I really love the floating design of the tax pegged to household income, but I’d probably oppose it due to exactly what you say: it opens the door to wealth taxes, which are by and large a bad idea.

    We’ve proven time and time again that congress can’t properly tax the wealthy, and will always eventually default to squeezing revenue out of the middle class. 50 million as a minimum sounds nice and high until they add a bracket at 25 million, then 10, then before you know it there’s a non-inflation adjusted tax at 1 million or 500k. All that serves to do is hurt savers and the elderly (who will naturally have higher nest eggs being closer to retirement). This will 100% eventually come to pass, because taxing wealth is a further nudge towards a consumption (and therefore growth) based economy that publicly traded companies need to continue extracting wealth from consumers, so it will be lobbied for by all monied interests, both the rich and industry.

    There are tons of other issues with a wealth tax like creating a new bureaucracy to measure wealth (not impossible, as some people say, just expensive), the fact that people are taxed for gains they may not have realized or just for leaving money in the bank or stock market, something that is actually good for the economy, and other complaints. It’s also just inferior to a better income tax, and expanding income taxes to eliminate the loopholes the megarich use, chief among them borrowing against collateralized debt. If someone gets a loan but puts up stock or properties as collateral, that loan should count as income. There are tons of other loopholes, and the fact that we’re ignoring low-hanging fruit and talking about wealth taxes shows me this is about scoring political points, not actually trying to reform how our government gets money.