March 4, 2021
5 min reading
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the multimillionaires Americans would have paid $ 114 billion combined for 2020 under a “ultramillionaire” tax proposed by the senator on Monday Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, according to two tax groups.
The bill, called Ultramillionaire Tax Law, Would apply an annual levy of 2% on individual net worth of between $ 50 million and $ 1 billion. People should comply with an annual tax of 3% on net worth in excess of $ 1 billion.
Warren said the tax would affect only about 100,000 American families and that the country’s billionaires would pay about half the total amount of the tax.
The country’s approximately 650 billionaires have a collective wealth of more than $ 4.2 trillion, Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Project on Inequality said, basing their calculations on Forbes data. Their fortunes have increased by about 44% since March 2020, when pandemic closures began in the United States, the groups said.
According to the wealth of American billionaires by the end of 2020, for more than a decade, the wealth tax on them alone would fund about three-quarters of the 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package of President Joe Biden, the two groups said.
And about a third of the wealth tax would be paid by the 15 richest Americans, who together have a fortune 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 10 years.
Warren proposed that the new federal money be invested in programs such as child care, education and infrastructure.
That’s what Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, the four richest people in the country at the end of 2020, according to Forbes data, would have paid for 2020 under the wealth tax proposal, according to the ATF and IPS calculations.
Jeff Bezos: $ 5.7 million
Image: Alex Wong / Getty Images
The outgoing CEO of Amazon would have paid 5.7 billion in wealth taxes by 2020, the ATF and IPS said. By the end of 2020, it had a fortune of $ 191.2 billion, according to Forbes data.
Washington lawmakers have also proposed a tax on state billionaires. Bezos would pay nearly $ 2 billion a year under this tax.
Elon Musk: $ 4.6 million
Image: Maja Hitij / Getty Images
Musk, the technology billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company, would have paid $ 4.6 billion by 2020 according to Warren’s proposal, the ATF and IPS said.
By the end of 2020, Musk’s real-time value was 153.5 billion, after its wealth multiplied by more than six in 10 months, according to data from Forbes.
Bill Gates: $ 3.6 million
Image: Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
Gates, who had a $ 120 billion fortune in December, according to Forbes, would have paid $ 3.6 billion in wealth taxes during the year, the ATF and IPS said.
Mark Zuckerberg: $ 3 million
Image: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images
The Facebook CEO is said to have paid about $ 3 billion in wealth taxes by 2020, the ATF and IPS said. By the end of 2020, it was worth $ 99.9 million, according to Forbes.
The momentum of a wealth tax has increased during the pandemic
An Oxfam report found that the wealth of billionaires increased by $ 3.9 trillion from last March to December worldwide. The increase for the world’s 10 richest billionaires could pay for everyone to be vaccinated and kept out of poverty, Oxfam said. Meanwhile, in the second half of 2020, 8 million Americans fell into poverty.
Oxfam suggested that wealth taxes could be a good option to reverse this. In December, academics published a 50-year study of tax cuts for the rich that suggested the “drip” economy worsened inequality and did not lead to economic growth or employment.
“Increasing the wealth of billionaires in the midst of a health and economic crisis that weighs on 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 reduce 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 expects to raise $ 3.78 million to help pay for its response to the pandemic.