|
Dear Friend,
In a year and a half, Elon Musk has increased his wealth from $25 billion to nearly $300 billion—more money than ten million people making $15 an hour could make in a year.1
A wealth tax won't stop him from being staggeringly rich.—but it could fund universal pre-K, Medicare expansion, and more programs that would change the lives of working families.
The House has passed the Build Back Better Act, and the Senate could add a billionaire’s tax to it. We need to speak up now, so Congress knows that the American people want billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes.
Will you chip in $10 to Demand Progress and help call on Congress to pass a wealth tax?
If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
The reason why these billionaires are causing a ruckus over the tax is because it came back in a big way during the Build Back Better negotiations in recent weeks.
Senator Ron Wyden’s proposal would apply to taxpayers with more than $1 billion in assets or who show more than $100 million in income for three years in a row.2 Kyrsten Sinema even backed it. There is no reason for it not to be in Build Back Better.
And contrary to what people like Elon Musk, Leon Cooperman, and Jeff Bezos would like us to believe, the billionaire’s tax wouldn't bankrupt them. It would stop the ultra-wealthy from using loopholes to avoid paying any taxes at all.3
Last summer, ProPublica published an exposé describing how Jeff Bezos didn’t pay any income taxes at all for several years over the last decade, a feat also pulled off by Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg.4
These are people who are profiting off America’s business-friendly laws, our labor force, and our infrastructure, and they need to pay their fair share.
With the financial resources of a billionaire tax, we can tackle climate change, our understaffed public schools, and other problems that are in desperate need of solutions. In just the past week, tens of thousands of Demand Progress members sent messages to Congress urging them to tax the rich. We have Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Ron Wyden, most congressional Democrats, and—most important—a huge majority of the American people on board. We need to make sure the billionaire tax happens.
Will you donate $10 to Demand Progress today?
Thanks for standing with us.
Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress
PS: Your contributions are what keep us nimble and prepared to take on important fights like these as they happen. Will you become a monthly donor to keep our work going?
Sources:
1. Tweet by Elon Musk October 25, 2021
2. U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, "Wyden Unveils Billionaires Income Tax
," October 27, 2021
3. Ibid.
4. ProPublica, "The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax," June 8, 2021
PAID FOR BY DEMAND PROGRESS (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Join our online community on Facebook or Twitter.
You can unsubscribe from this list at any time.