Overview
- The Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act would levy a 5% annual tax on roughly 938 U.S. billionaires, with no new taxes for anyone worth under $1 billion.
- An analysis by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman estimates the proposal would raise about $4.4 trillion over ten years.
- In the first year, the plan calls for $3,000 payments to each person in households earning $150,000 or less, equal to $12,000 for a family of four.
- Outlined uses include restoring ACA and Medicaid funding, adding dental, vision, and hearing to Medicare, building or preserving over seven million affordable homes, capping childcare costs at 7% of income, setting a $60,000 minimum teacher salary, and expanding Medicaid home care.
- Illustrative tax bills include about $42 billion for Elon Musk and roughly $11 billion each for Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, as supporters acknowledge implementation hurdles and analysts say passage is unlikely in the current Congress.