Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise capital gains taxes on the rich, pass a Billionaire’s Minimum Income Tax, raise Medicare taxes on income over $400,000, and pass the Stock Buyback Accountability Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy breaks down all the tax provisions President Biden has proposed in his budget, and they’re pretty good – the worst I can say about them is they don’t go far enough, but that’s still a lot better than, say, the positively poisonous “FAIR” Tax. One especially worthy item in the Biden budget is the proposal that would tax capital gains as income for folks making over $1 million annually. That would protect small homeowners while going after rich tax cheats, and if you can do both at once, it’s a good idea. You can call your Congressfolk and tell them to enact that, or to pass the Biden budget as a whole (which Americans for Tax Fairness also helps you do); either action would do us all good.
Care2 helps you tell Congress to pass President Biden’s proposal for a Billionaire’s Minimum Income Tax. I’ve suggested that his proposal would resemble Sen. Warren’s, which imposed a very small wealth tax on large estates, but actually our President’s proposal would impose a minimum 25% tax on households worth over $100 million, and would include unrealized assets (i.e., stocks and properties those households haven’t sold yet) in that calculation. And by demanding such a tax during a time of debt-limit hostage-taking, we’ll tell our Representatives that we won’t stand for more austerity drama. Personal to pedants stuck on the “$100 million” figure: you’re not one of them, either, so maybe don’t defend them?
Patriotic Millionaires helps you tell your Congressfolk to support President Biden’s proposal to raise Medicare taxes on income over $400,000. Currently rich folks pay 3.8 percent in Medicare taxes on their income, but President Biden would raise that to 5 percent, again, only on income over $400,000, which, again, almost certainly ain’t you or I. In fact, that number represents only one out of every 50 taxpayers – go to most parties and you won’t see literally anyone there who’d pay more money (and again, only on that part of their income over $400,000) in Medicare taxes. And it would help keep Medicare solvent, so let’s do it.
Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Stock Buyback Accountability Act. Stock buybacks used to be illegal, because they concentrated corporate power in a few hands, rather than dispersing it among a multitude of shareholders, and if you’ve watched corporations ruin America over the last few decades, you know that “corporation” and “concentrated power” are two terms you should never read in the same sentence. This bill would quadruple the tax on stock buybacks, which would help discourage stock buybacks and thus help break this concentration. So let’s help do that.
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