Progressives Unveil OLIGARCH Act to Combat 'Existential Threat' of Extreme Wealth Inequality
www.commondreams.org
"American oligarchs have used their wealth to accumulate an unprecedented level of political power, which they've used to amass even greater wealth. We must stop this cycle."

According to a summary of the bill released by the Patriotic Millionaires—an advocacy group that helped craft the measure—the wealth tax would have four brackets:

  • 2% for all wealth between 1,000 and 10,000 times median household wealth;
  • 4% for all wealth between 10,000 and 100,000 times median household wealth;
  • 6% for all wealth between 100,000 and 1,000,000 times median household wealth; and
  • 8% for all wealth over 1,000,000 times median household wealth;

"In the unlikely event median household wealth fell below $50,000 from its current level of about $120,000, the thresholds would be fixed at $50 million, $500 million, $5 billion, and $50 billion respectively.”

The legislation would also require at least a 30% IRS audit rate on households affected by the new wealth tax.

  • extant@lemmy.world
    284·
    1 year ago

    Isn’t the issue that they are currently hiding and obfuscating their income? Increasing the percentage is a great idea and all but 1% or 8% of zero is still zero.

    • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
      37·
      1 year ago

      It literally says “all wealth” and doesn’t talk about income at all.

      This is exactly the kind of tax we need. I think its a very interesting idea to tie it to median wealth, though using household as opposed to individual wealth I’m not sold on.

      • extant@lemmy.world
        23·
        1 year ago

        The same point still stands regardless of it’s income tax or any other arbitrary constraint, if they hide their assets how do you apply this policy to that?

    • neeeeDanke@feddit.de
      15·
      1 year ago

      The legislation would also require at least a 30% IRS audit rate on households affected by the new wealth tax, according to the summary.

      • extant@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I don’t understand what this statement says. The it’s has to pick 30% of all households that make more than a thousand times the medium income? Is that lower than standard or higher? Why 30% and not 100%?

        • neeeeDanke@feddit.de
          5·
          1 year ago

          since they took the effort to include it in the proposal, I would assume it is significantly higher. Where I live the standard often varies from state so state, because some states use a low enforcement rate to attract buissnesses (“as in yeah, our federal taxes aren’t cheaper here, but we if you cheat it’s not like we are gonna catch you…”).

          I assume not a 100% because that would be a herculean effort and at a certain point if your chances of getting caught are high enough -and there are significant fines- you won’t need 100% because the risk is high enough to make most people not cheat out of fear of getting caught.