March 4, 2021
5 min read
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The billionaire Americans would have jointly paid $ 114 billion by 2020 under an “ultra-million dollar” tax proposed by the senator Monday. Elizabeth Warren Massachusetts, according to two tax groups.
The bill rang Ultra Million Tax Code, would apply an annual tax of 2% to individual net worth of between $ 50 million and $ 1 billion. Individuals must meet a 3% annual tax on net worth in excess of $ 1 billion.
Warren said the tax would only affect about 100,000 American families and the country’s billionaires would pay about half of the total amount of the tax.
The country’s approximately 650 billionaires have a combined net worth of more than $ 4.2 trillion, said Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Project on Inequality, basing their estimates on Forbes data. Their fortunes are up about 44% since March 2020, when pandemic closures started in the United States, the groups said.
Based on the wealth of U.S. billionaires at the end of 2020, for more than a decade, the wealth tax resting on them alone would fund about three-quarters of President Joe Biden’s 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, officials said.
And about a third of the estate tax would be paid by the 15 richest Americans, who together have assets of more than $ 2.1 trillion.
A separate analysis from the University of California at Berkeley cited by Warren estimated that the tax would generate $ 3 trillion in revenue over a 10-year period.
Warren suggested investing the new federal money in programs such as childcare, education, and infrastructure.
This is what Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, the country’s four richest people in late 2020, according to Forbes data, would have paid for 2020 under the wealth tax proposal, according to ATF calculations. and IPS.
Jeff Bezos: $ 5.7 billion
Image: Alex Wong / Getty Images
The outgoing Amazon CEO is said to have paid $ 5.7 billion in wealth tax by 2020, the ATF and IPS said. At the end of 2020, he was worth $ 191.2 billion, according to Forbes data.
Washington lawmakers have also proposed a tax on the state’s billionaires. Bezos would pay nearly $ 2 billion a year in this tax.
Elon Musk: $ 4.6 billion
Image: Maja Hitij / Getty Images
Musk, the tech billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company, is said to have paid $ 4.6 billion for 2020 under Warren’s proposal, ATF and IPS said.
At the end of 2020, Musk’s real-time value stood at 153.5 billion, after his net worth had multiplied by more than six in 10 months, according to data from Forbes
Bill Gates: $ 3.6 billion
Image: Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
Gates, who had $ 120 billion in assets in December, according to Forbes, would have paid $ 3.6 billion in estate taxes over the course of the year, ATF and IPS said.
Mark Zuckerberg: $ 3 billion
Image: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images
Facebook’s CEO would have paid about $ 3 billion in wealth tax by 2020, the ATF and IPS said. At the end of 2020 it was according to Forbes
Momentum for a wealth tax has increased during the pandemic
According to an Oxfam report, billionaires’ wealth grew by $ 3.9 trillion worldwide between March and December. The raise for the world’s 10 richest billionaires could pay anyone to get vaccinated and stay out of poverty, Oxfam said. Meanwhile, in the second half of 2020, 8 million Americans fell into poverty.
Oxfam suggested that wealth tax could be a good option to reverse this. In December, academics published a 50-year study of tax cuts for the wealthy, which suggested that the “trickle-down” economy exacerbated inequality and was not conducive to economic growth or employment.
“Increasing the wealth of billionaires amid a health and economic crisis that is weighing millions of Americans is one of the best reasons to enact the Ultra Millionaire Tax Act,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness .
“This legislation will narrow the nation’s destabilizing wealth gap while raising billions of dollars from billionaires and other super-rich.”
Argentina became the first country to respond to the pandemic with a single “millionaire tax”. Less than one in 100 recipients will pay the tax, which the government hopes will raise $ 3.78 billion to help pay for its response to the pandemic.