Sen. Bernie Sanders' Next Progressive Frontier: Reshaping A 'Rigged' Tax System
March 25, 2021
5:00 AM ET
Excerpt:
Sanders will introduce a pair of bills on Thursday to restore the corporate tax rate to 35% and add a new progressive tax on the estates of the wealthiest Americans.
Sanders is introducing the bills, both of which face long odds in the closely divided Senate, as part of a broader push to walk back tax cuts that were enacted under President Trump and to go further in redistributing the tax burden to corporations and the wealthy.
The first bill would restore the corporate tax rate to 35%, undoing a cornerstone of former President Trump's 2017 tax overhaul. Republicans cut the corporate rate to 21% in that bill, a move that Joint Committee on Taxation valued at $1.3 trillion over 10 years. The bill would also end rules that allow companies to further reduce their tax bill by shifting operations offshore.
A second bill would add a new way to tax the wealthiest estates in the country. Sanders says the bill is aimed at the fortunes of the top 0.5%. It would exempt the first $3.5 million of an individual's estate from the estate tax, $7 million for married couples. Those with estates between $3.5 million and $10 million would be taxed at 45%, the rate would jump to 50% between $10 million and $50 million, 55% for estates over $50 million and 65% for estates valued at over $1 billion.
"What we need to do, in the midst of massive income and wealth inequality, when the rich are becoming much richer, while the middle class struggles, we need a tax system, which says to the wealthy and large corporations that they're finally going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes," he said. "At the end of the day, we need massive tax reform in this country, so that we end the tax loopholes and the giveaways that the wealthy and large corporations."
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/25/980778465/sen-bernie-sanders-next-progressive-frontier-reshaping-a-rigged-tax-system
