This might sound strange, but I’ve always been fascinated by tax policy.
Besides the need for general operating money, the tax code serves as a mechanism to encourage or discourage individual and corporate behavior.
So it’s no surprise that two of the democratic presidential aspirants are reaching beyond taxing wealth but now promoting new tax proposals to change behavior they deem harmful or corrupt.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has released his “inequality tax” to punish companies where CEOs earn far more than workers.
would apply to all companies – public or private – with more than $100 million in annual revenue.
Furthermore this would increase a firm’s corporate tax rate if its highest-paid employee earns more than 50 times that of its average worker — an attempt to encourage companies to distribute their profits more equally.
Corporations, where the chief executive makes more than 500 times the amount of a median worker, would see a five percentage point hike in its corporate rate, ratcheting down to a 0.5 percentage point bump for corporations where the pay disparity is between 50 and 100 times.
And what is undoubtedly a coincidence, the liberal Institute for Policy Studies released on the same day a study on CEO pay gaps entitled:
Among the findings: S&P 500 corporations could have owed as much as $17.2 billion extra in federal taxes in 2018 if they had faced a Sanders-style pay gap tax. They also note that among S&P 500 firms, nearly 80 percent paid their CEO more than 100 times their median worker pay in 2018, and nearly 10 percent had median pay below the poverty line for a family of four.
Another plan was rolled out by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to increase taxes on companies and other groups that spend more than $500,000 a year on lobbying. Her plan is progressive and includes a 35 percent tax on lobbying spending between $500,000 and $1 million. The rate would rise to 60 percent for lobbying spending between $1 million and $5 million and 75 percent for spending above $5 million. Considering the fact that the First Amendment gives you the right to “petition the government,” it might have to pass a constitutional test similar to her wealth tax proposals.
and the proposed
While many of you might be unfamiliar with Mr. Yang, a tech entrepreneur turned presidential aspirant, he raised over $10 million this reporting period and has qualified for the next Democratic debate (to put that in perspective, former Vice President Joe Biden raised $15 million this quarter).