John,

Tax Day is fast approaching. Are you filing your taxes this weekend?

While you pay taxes with every paycheck you receive, guess who's not paying their fair share? Millionaires, billionaires, and large, profitable corporations. Why? Because right-wing politicians in Washington made trillion-dollar cuts to essential programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, the ACA, and SNAP in order to give tax cuts to the wealthy in the Big Brutal Bill.

Teachers, nurses, construction workers, small business owners, and families across the country often pay a higher percentage of their earnings toward taxes than the ultra-wealthy. Their tax dollars help fund schools, roads, hospitals, disaster response, and programs that help millions of families stay afloat.

As billionaire wealth has soared into the trillions―increasing by $1.5 trillion last year alone¹ ―working families are struggling with rising housing and food costs, expensive health care, unaffordable child care, and wages that have not kept up.

This is why we need a fairer tax system that taxes millionaire and billionaire wealth, not just earned income. Send a message to Congress telling them it’s time to tax the rich and make life more affordable for the rest of us.

Due to our rigged tax system, billionaires can go years, if not indefinitely, without paying a dime in taxes because wealth is taxed differently than income. This must change in order to create a society that works for everyone. There are four commonsense priorities Congress can implement to make the tax code fairer:

• Make billionaires and ultra-wealthy elites pay their fair share by closing loopholes, strengthening IRS enforcement, and ensuring income from wealth is taxed like income from work.
• Hold big corporations accountable by raising corporate tax rates, ending tax breaks for profit-shifting and stock buybacks, and strengthening rules that prevent profitable corporations from paying little or nothing in federal taxes.
• Reduce the power of oligarchs and dynastic wealth by reforming the estate tax, eliminating loopholes, and taxing massive financial speculation and billionaire wealth gains.
• Invest the revenue raised in programs that make life more affordable for working families, including health care, housing, child care, a fully refundable Child Tax Credit, and restoring funding for critical programs like Medicaid and SNAP.

These priorities are grounded in fairness and fiscal responsibility. They preserve crucial protections for low- and moderate-income families, family farms, and small businesses, while ensuring those who have benefited the most from our economy contribute their fair share.

It’s time for Congress to act so we can have an economy that works for everyday people―and that starts by making the rich pay their fair share.

Send a message to Congress telling them to tax the rich and make life more affordable for the rest of us.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, CHN Action