Democrats have launched a plan to "make billionaires cry" by imposing a tax on the wealthy to support President Joe Biden's huge spending plans.
Around 800 Americans would be subject to the "billionaires income tax," which would require them to fork over roughly a quarter of their stock profits each year.
It would specifically target the world's two wealthiest individuals, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, whose fortunes are heavily invested in their respective businesses. Musk slammed the move to tax his Tesla and SpaceX shares, which are the foundation of his estimated $230 billion fortune, on Wednesday.
Democrats race to provide a plan for Biden's Build Back Better
Per Daily Telegraph, the tax raid would be similar to a concept presented by Senator Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 presidential election campaign, which Biden rejected because it was seen as too extreme by many Democrats at the time.
The additional tax comes as Democrats scramble to come up with a plan to pay for Biden's "Build Back Better" legislation, which is projected to cost between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion.
Biden wanted to settle the matter before leaving for Europe on Thursday to attend the G20 meeting in Rome and the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow. Two conservative Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have spoken out against the president's favored choice of boosting corporate tax and income tax on the rich.
He needs the backing of every Democrat in the Senate, which is divided 50-50 and has Vice President Kamala Harris as a casting vote. For three years, individuals with either $1 billion in assets or $100 million in yearly income would be subject to the new tax.
Billionaires' assets, such as stocks, would be evaluated, and profits would be taxed at a rate of 23.8 percent yearly. Gains on stocks are currently only taxed when they are sold.
Sen. Joe Manchin said he doesn't think the idea of allowing the IRS to monitor on account activities would make it into the Democrats' social spending package because it is "screwed up," as he put it, Daily Mail reported.
At Biden's house in Wilmington, Delaware, Manchin met with the president and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Manchin expressed his dissatisfaction with Democrats' simple increase in the reporting threshold from $600 to $10,000 in annual aggregate transactions.
A spending bill is expected to pass if the price is trimmed down
However, Manchin expressed optimism that Democrats will agree on a final package this week, trimmed down from $3.5 trillion to his preferred amount of $1.5 trillion. At breakfast, he stated that the Democrats' social spending plan and the bipartisan infrastructure measure have a "high possibility of passing in the near future."
On Monday, a group of 99 banks and industry groups sent President Biden a letter encouraging him to reconsider his proposal to pass over transaction data to the IRS, claiming that increasing the criteria had left them disappointed as well.
Organizations claiming to represent business and financial interests encouraged the White House to abandon the bill in favor of "more targeted measures to reduce the tax gap."
Manchin has proposed a minimum 15 percent flat "patriotic tax" to ensure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes. Manchin and another major Democratic holdout, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, met with White House officials at the Capitol.
The smaller, bipartisan roads-and-bridges infrastructure meets a Sunday deadline, or funding for basic transportation projects expires.
However, progressive legislators refuse to accept the $1 trillion plan unless the larger Biden proposal is included. Democrats hope that this is a winning formula for bringing the massive bills to a conclusion after months of debate, as per NY News Daily.
Related Article: Joe Biden's Build Back Better Turns Out to Be More of Renovation; Jen Psaki, Nancy Pelosi Urge Democrats to Support Slimmed Down Plan
