Sanders Proposes Tax on Billionaires to Reduce Wealth Inequality

Press Release

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today introduced legislation to increase estate tax rates on the top three-tenths of one percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million, while eliminating loopholes that have allowed the wealthiest Americans to avoid billions in taxes. Sanders said the legislation was needed to reduce the massive gap between the very rich and working class Americans.

The announcement was the latest tax reform proposal from Sanders, who has made the issue of reducing skyrocketing income and wealth inequality one of his central goals since becoming ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.

"Our nation cannot survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little. We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America," Sanders said.

His plan has already won praise from tax advocates and some of the leading progressive voices in the country and around the world, including Robert Reich who was labor secretary for President Clinton, and Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

"The fairest way to reduce wealth inequality, rebuild the disappearing middle class, and preserve our democracy is to enact a progressive estate tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires," Sanders said.

Only the very wealthiest millionaires and billionaires would be effected by the Sanders plan; 99.75 percent of Americans would not pay a penny more in estate taxes.

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