U.S. SENATE MUST PRESERVE MILLIONAIRES SURCHARGE IN HOUSE-PASSED BUILD BACK BETTER PLAN

The surcharge is the only tax increase in the House-passed bill that would specifically tax the ultrarich, which is a priority for voters in poll after poll. [...] In fact, during the first two years of the pandemic, from March 2020 to April 2022, the wealth of the nation’s 740 billionaires rose a staggering 70%, or by $2 trillion, based on ATF’s analysis of Forbes data. [...] While the House-passed high-income surcharge would not entirely solve the problem of tax- free billionaires and multimillionaires (that requires a more fundamental reform like a billionaires income tax), it would reduce the scale of tax avoidance by the very rich. [...] And this low-taxed form of income is highly concentrated among the wealthy: over three-quarters goes to the highest-income 1%, over half to the highest-income 0.1%. [...] CONCLUSION Among the tax increases in the BBBA, the high-income surcharge is the most direct and easy-to- explain effort to ensure the wealthy pay a fairer share of taxes.