In this strange and disturbing year known as 2020, Wednesday, July 15 is the deadline for filing 2019 tax returns in the U.S. And while most people strive to minimize their tax bill, there’s one group that wants its taxes to markedly increase.
“Millionaires for Humanity,” a coalition of 83 men and women worth at least seven figures from the U.S., U.K., Germany, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands, have signed a letter urging their governments to tax them more to pay for the coronavirus crisis.
“Today, we, the undersigned millionaires, ask our governments to raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently,” the group said in an open letter published July 13.
“We can ensure we adequately fund our health systems, schools, and security through a permanent tax increase on the wealthiest people on the planet, people like us,” the letter says.
Most of the signees are from the U.S., including former BlackRock managing director Morris Pearl, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream co-founder Jerry Greenfield and Abigail Disney (and her son Tim Disney), the heiress to the Walt Disney Company who has been an outspoken proponent of a federal wealth tax on the richest Americans.
The group calls on lawmakers to “address global inequality and acknowledge that tax increases on the wealthy and greater international tax transparency are essential for a viable long-term solution.”
The Millionaires for Humanity letter was a collaboration between groups including Oxfam, Tax Justice UK and the Patriotic Millionaires of high net-worth U.S. individuals.
“So please. Tax us. Tax us. Tax us. It is the right choice. It is the only choice. Humanity is more important than our money,” the open letter concludes.
As The Guardian notes, there have been repeated calls this year for the super-rich to contribute more as the Covid-19 crisis lingers on. The number of super-rich people continues to grow despite the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis and global lockdowns.
Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person and the founder of Amazon, has seen his fortune swell by $75 billion so far this year to a record $189 billion. Critics have pointed out that while Bezos has donated $100 million, it represents less than 0.1% of his estimated fortune.
In June 2019, 18 U.S. billionaires (among 607 in the U.S.) including George Soros and Abigail Disney posted a letter to 2020 presidential candidates calling for “a moderate wealth tax on the fortunes of the richest one-tenth of the richest 1% of Americans—on us.” The “straightforward” proposal would put in place “a tax of 2 cents on the dollar on assets after a $50 million exemption and an additional tax of 1 cent on the dollar on assets over $1 billion. If you have $49.9 million or less you are not paying the tax. It is estimated to generate nearly $3 trillion in tax revenue over ten years.”
Before the pandemic back in December 2019, the Q4 CNBC Millionaire Survey found 59% of U.S. millionaires said they would support a new federal tax on wealth over $50 million, a question in response to then-Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposed Ultra-Millionaire Tax plan that included a wealth tax of 2% on wealth over $50 million and 6% over $1 billion.
The poll found 88% of Democratic millionaires said they supported a tax on wealth over $50 million, compared with just a third of Republican millionaires.
Bernie Sanders, who said during his 2020 presidential campaign that “billionaires should not exist,” proposed an even more aggressive wealth tax than Warren’s that claimed “the wealth of billionaires would be cut in half over 15 years” relative to a situation with no wealth tax, and would have been much more punitive to the “richest of the rich” than Warren’s tax.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, meanwhile, recently said he would impose “common-sense tax reforms that finally make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share,” but has shied away from a straightforward wealth tax similar to the proposals from Sanders and Warren.
Biden has said repeatedly during his campaign that he would end most of President Donald Trump’s $2 trillion dollar tax cuts, and has said he “will close loopholes like capital gains and stepped-up basis.”
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