The president of the United States, Joe Biden, seeks to create a 20% wealth tax aimed at those who earn more than 100 million dollars a year.
The new proposal would force the wealthiest people to pay the tax on their “whole income,” this includes traditional income, as well as unrealized income, such as the increase in the value of shares.
In the United States, Income Tax (ISR) is charged for the sale of shares, however there is no legislation that imposes the rate to be charged on the increase in the value of the shares.
“Income from dividends and the sale of shares are taxed at a maximum of 20% (…) much lower than the maximum ordinary rate of 37% that is applied to other income,” said an analysis of the Casa White.
In addition, there are “tax loopholes” in the US Tax Code, for example very wealthy people can choose when to show their capital gains on their tax returns and even prevent them from appearing.
Similarly, if an investor never sells the shares, the profits obtained are canceled from ISR when they are transferred to their heirs.
President Biden has repeatedly said that the wealthiest people in his country should pay their fair share of taxes.
According to the civil organization ProPublica, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffet paid 1,500 million dollars in Income Tax from 2014 to 2018; With the proposal they would pay at least 111,000 million dollars in income tax over the next nine years, this is 100 times more.
“With this tax, only the 10 billionaires would pay at least $215 billion over the next 10 years,” Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, posted on Twitter.
Tax would reduce deficit
The US government estimates that the minimum tax would reduce the fiscal deficit by about $360 billion over the next 10 years.
Estimated federal spending in that country is more than 1 trillion dollars for this decade with which Biden seeks new sources of financing.
The document, which was revealed by The Washington Post, states that the levy will ensure that the wealthiest Americans no longer pay less in taxes than teachers or firefighters.
According to the study carried out by the White House, some 400 multimillionaire families paid, on average, an ISR rate of 8.2% between 2010 and 2018, despite having generated income of 1.8 billion dollars in that period.
