|
|
Dear Friend,
Today is Tax Day (did you remember to file your taxes?? You have until midnight tonight) and we want to send a very loud, strong, and powerful message to the U.S. Congress that today is the day to take action to make sure wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share in taxes once and for all so we can pay for the care programs all our families need!
All of us will need to care for ourselves or a loved one at some point in our lives. Care work is the work upon which all other work depends, and which holds up our economy. But care costs too much for families to afford, even as care workers – overwhelmingly women and disproportionately women of color – are not paid enough to support themselves and their own families. Individuals and families can’t solve the care crisis on their own. We need to treat care as a public good, which requires public investments passed by our leaders in Congress.
It's wrong to ask families caring for loved ones and struggling to meet caregiving needs to pay for tax breaks for wealthy corporations and the wealthiest one percent. We should not give huge tax breaks to wealthy corporations that exploit loopholes and avoid taxes by stashing profits offshore, while working families are forced to solve the care crisis on their own.
The solutions are easy—and bills already exist in Congress supporting these ideas, along with the strong support of President Biden– we need to rewrite our tax code to make wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share in taxes in order to invest in care policies like a paid leave guarantee and funding for child care and care for the aging and people with disabilities.
It’s amazing what wealthy individuals and mega-corporations are getting away with while our families are living paycheck to paycheck and paying taxes to contribute to the rich getting richer. A new study by Americans for Tax Fairness found that billionaire wealth has nearly doubled—up $2.9 trillion—since enactment in late 2017 of a new tax law that favors billionaires and wealthy corporations. Under current rules, none of that nearly $3 trillion in wealth gain–the main form of income for the ultra-wealthy–may ever be taxed. [1] But if we were to pass the newly introduced Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, for example, the wealthiest 100,000 households in America (or the top 0.05%) would have to pay a minimum tax that would bring in at least $3 trillion in revenue for 10 years. Imagine what we could do with that money!? We could help make investments in programs that all of our families and economy needs like child care, paid family and medical leave, the expanded Child Tax Credit, and aging and disability care.
Other opportunities exist as well. Next year, many pieces of the 2017 tax law will be set to expire. We should let those failed policies expire and replace them with laws that lift up all of us–not just the lucky few. We can pass tax policies that make the wealthy pay their fair share AND help working families and our economy, like making the expansion of the Child Tax Credit permanent.
Help us make our voices heard this Tax Day on Capitol Hill by signing our letter now!
Don’t forget to file your taxes today….and don’t forget to sign our letter either!
-Elyssa, Donna, Kristin, Hanna, and the whole MomsRising.org & MamásConPoder Team
P.S. Check out the results of a new poll MomsRising conducted with National Women’s Law Center and Lake Research Partners on the popularity of taxing the wealthy and corporations in order to fund care programs that help all families!References:
Register to vote! / ¡Regístrese para votar!
Join our Spanish language community, MamásConPoder.org
What should MomsRising tackle next? Tell us!
You can unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time.