Class traitor Warren Buffett says
the rich should pay more.
The House of Representatives will kill it, but the "Buffett Rule" will get a vote in the Senate on "tax day," April 15, according to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The so-called rule is named after billionaire Warren Buffett because he has said the mega-wealthy should pay more taxes.
“You should, if you are very wealthy, God bless you, you made a lot of money, we love you in America, but let’s be fair. You should pay more than your secretary, and that will be on the floor April 15, Tax Day,” Schumer said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” [on Sunday].
President Obama pushed the idea in his State of the Union address, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
introduced it as the
Paying a Fair Share Act in the Senate in February. The bill would require people making at least $2 million a year to pay a minimum of 30 percent of their income and would phase in for people making at least $1 million.
The hall monitors of the 1 percenters are saying the wealthy will get around the tax by changing their behavior. Since one of the reasons the wealthy pay such low overall rates is because so much of their income comes from capital gains, which are taxed less than income earned from wages and salaries.
So, goes the reasoning, they will reduce their stock sales and other transactions that generate those capital gains. In short, they will make less money so they won't have to pay more taxes.
Consequently, according to a report by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the Fair Act would only generate $47 billion in federal revenue over the next decade. Only?
That's hardly an argument for not passing the bill. Or rather, it wouldn't be an argument if the Republicans were truly serious with their claims about wanting to reduce the deficit. As we know from Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal, they aren't serious. The only things they really want to cut are taxes on the affluent and programs for the less so.
The Paying a Fair Share Act won't raise a huge amount of money. To do that, other proposals are needed, such as a stock transaction tax. But the White House's and Sen. Whitehouse's proposal would make for a good start. The rich are, as we get reminded nearly every day, getting richer, richer, richer. And one very big reason for it is a tax code skewed to help make them so.
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Join our call to action urging Senators to approve the "Buffett Rule" as contained in the Paying a Fair Share Act.