Business
Millionaires Sign Petition To Voluntarily Increase Their Own Taxes
A group of millionaires has signed a petition asking for the government to force them to pay higher taxes. They did so in an effort to help the global recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
The group, which includes the likes of Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield, Walt Disney Co. heiress Abigail Disney and former BlackRock managing director Morris Pearl, call themselves “Millionaires For Humanity.” Their sole objective is to encourage governments to increase taxes on the world’s wealthiest individuals to help pay for the billions of dollars needed to support health care, schools and security.
The letter states: “As Covid-19 strikes the world, millionaires like us have a critical role to play in healing our world. No, we are not the ones caring for the sick in intensive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances that will bring the ill to hospitals. We are not restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door. But we do have money, lots of it. Money that is desperately needed now and will continue to be needed in the years ahead, as our world recovers from this crisis.”
Millionaires Call for Higher Taxes
The letter continues by asking governments to raise taxes on “people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently.”
The group warned that the impact of the crisis will last for decades. They also mentioned that it could push 500 million people into poverty. Hundreds of millions of people are at risk of losing their jobs, many permanently, the group said. Nearly 1 billion children are out of school due to the pandemic. They also mentioned that many of these kids lack any resources to continue their education.
The petition adds, “Unlike tens of millions of people around the world, we do not have to worry about losing our jobs, our homes, or our ability to support our families. We are not fighting on the frontlines of this emergency and we are much less likely to be its victims.”
“So please. Tax us. Tax us. Tax us. It is the right choice. It is the only choice.”
This petition serves as Pearl’s second attempt to make millionaires – himself included – pay higher taxes.
A Similar Call
He wrote a letter last year supporting the “millionaire’s surtax” introduced in Congress. In it, he said any new tax plan has to be “relatively easy to enact and relatively hard to avoid.”
“Rich people like me are good at dodging taxes. We can lobby to stop new taxes from ever becoming law, or if they do get enacted, find loopholes to get around them.”
“Any plan to tax me and my fellow wealthy Americans needs to be relatively easy to enact and relatively hard to avoid,” Pearl also said.
The millionaire’s surtax, as Pearl points out, would only affect married couples making more than $2 million per year. Alternatively, it also affects a single tax filer making more than $1 million.
“This tax would simply add 10 percentage points to the existing tax rates paid by couples making over $2 million a year and singles making over a million. Though it would only apply to the wealthiest 0.2 percent of taxpayers like me (or about 330,000 taxpayers) the millionaires surtax would raise an estimated $635 billion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center.”
Pearl's Motivation
Pearl, undoubtedly knowing that many will doubt his motives, says he’d rather pay higher taxes than see his country falter economically.
“You may well ask: Why would anyone push to pay higher taxes, like I’m doing by supporting the millionaires surtax? It’s because I know it’s not actually in my long-term economic interests for the United States to become more and more like a developing nation, with a tiny elite at the top of the mountain and everybody else struggling for a foothold.”
Thus far, 80 individuals have signed the Millionaires For Humanity petition.
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