Senator Ron Wyden heads the chamber’s finance committee.
Washington:
A top Democrat in the US Senate on Wednesday unveiled a plan to tax the richest Americans to fund a massive spending plan backed by President Joe Biden.
According to Senator Ron Wyden, the proposed billionaire income tax would apply to about 700 people who would either have a net worth of $1 billion or $100 million in annual income for three years, and would raise “hundreds of billions of dollars”, who lead Chamber’s Finance Committee.
The tax is the latest effort by Biden’s Democratic Party to raise revenue for its massive social spending proposal that would cost nearly $2 trillion and could see Washington enact policies such as universal pre-kindergarten and childcare subsidies.
It would also target Washington’s taxation powers on the country’s billionaires, who have seen their wealth swell amid the pain of the Covid-19 pandemic, fueling criticism that they are not contributing enough to the country.
“Working Americans like nurses and firefighters pay taxes with every paycheck, while billionaires pay taxes for decades, if not indefinitely,” Wyden said.
“The wealthiest few who avoid taxes by holding assets indefinitely are able to borrow against those assets to fund their lifestyles. This means they choose to pay taxes and its instead pay only low interest rates on loans from Wall Street banks.”
If enacted, billionaires’ assets such as stocks would be assessed each year and taxed if they increase in value. If they fall short, taxpayers will take it as a write-off, potentially for up to three years, according to the proposal.
This would be a change from current US law, where taxes are usually paid on the value of the stock only when it is sold.
Another new tax would be levied on the sale of non-traditional assets such as real estate or business interests and that person would have to account for interest on unpaid taxes during the years.
To address concerns that the tax could force the wealthy to sell controlling stakes in companies, the proposal allowed an individual to designate up to $1 billion of stock in a business as “nontraditional assets.” gives.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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