Bernie Sanders: An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward

[rogerashton]

5. Let's go still further.

1) A tax on net wealth over, say, about five million for a family. That's wealth, not income -- stocks, bonds, businesses, real estate, partnerships, hoards of gold, anything with an asset value, minus indebtedness. Of course, to make that work we would have to find where the wealth is hidden, but that will be a matter of criminal law enforcement.

2) A tax on corporate value added, minus income payments to American residents, up to some maximum. Value added -- revenue minus payments to other businesses -- is collected at the point of sale and thus much easier to compute and collect than a tax on "profits." Of course, payments to branches of the corporation in other countries would NOT be deducted against value added.

3) Create a sovereign wealth fund with the proceeds of the above two taxes. The sovereign wealth fund would buy up the stock of corporations, thus transferring them to public property.