Elizabeth Warren's proposed tax on enormous fortunes explained [View all]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to curb spiraling inequality in the United States and make the rich pay, according to a scoop from Jeff Stein and Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post.
They report that the UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman are working with the presidential candidate on designing a proposal to levy a wealth tax on Americans with fortunes worth over $50 million.
Most Americans currently pay property taxes to their local government, a form of a wealth tax. The majority of middle class assets are property. Rich people of course own real estate, but they tend to mostly own shares of stock and other financial assets that largely evade taxation. The French economist Thomas Piketty put wealth taxes back on the intellectual agenda with his influential 2014 book Capital in the 21st Century. Many Democrats have talked about the theme of runaway inequality in recent years, but Warren is the first politician to actually adopt Piketty’s proposed solution.
Saez and Zucman are, not coincidentally, former collaborators of Piketty who have gone on to do their own influential research on the interplay between tax policy and extreme inequality. The basic plan is to levy a 2 percent tax on fortunes worth more than $50 million, and a 3 percent tax on fortunes worth more than $1 billion. According to the post, Saez estimates this tax would hit approximately 75,000 families and raise $2.75 trillion over a 10-year period.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/elizabeth-warrens-proposed-tax-on-enormous-fortunes-explained/ar-BBSHoOX?li=BBnbfcN
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