Sanders, Schakowsky Introduce Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky on Wednesday introduced a bill that aims to close tax loopholes for corporations, end tax breaks for businesses that move jobs abroad, and stop companies from hiding profits in tax havens.

"At a time of massive wealth and income inequality and soaring corporate profits, it is an outrage that many large, profitable corporations continue to pay little to nothing in federal income taxes," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "As working people struggle to pay rent and put food on the table, we have a corrupt and rigged tax code that is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of working families."

"Meanwhile, Republicans would make a bad situation even worse by providing even more tax breaks to their corporate campaign contributors and the billionaire class while proposing massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," he noted, nodding to GOP budget plans for fiscal year 2025, which begins in October.

"That is unacceptable. We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%," Sanders asserted. "And, one of the ways we can begin to do that is by making sure that large corporations pay their fair share of taxes. American workers should not be paying more in federal income taxes, in a given year, than profitable companies like Target, Amazon, and T-Mobile."

"We need to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the top 1%."

The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act, unveiled as Americans prepare for the federal income tax deadline on Monday, could raise over $1 trillion in revenue over a decade with the tax haven provision alone, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

"Thanks to President Joe Biden, we are growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, but we must go even further by passing the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act to help put the interests of everyday Americans ahead of billionaires and transnational corporations," said Schakowsky. "I thank Sen. Sanders for devoting his career to tackling income inequality and am proud to partner with him on this important measure."

Biden's budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, released last month, includes proposals to hike taxes for corporations and ultrarich individuals—whose wealth is soaring to record heights. Such policies are not expected to pass the divided Congress, but they serve as a clear statement of the Democratic president's position just months away from the November election.

When then-President Donald Trump—now the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden—signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, he infamously declared that "corporations are literally going wild over this, I think even beyond my expectations."

Many of that law's cuts are set to expire at the end of next year. During an exclusive Florida fundraiser at the home of a billionaire investor over the weekend, the former president urged his supporters to help him "turn our country around" by taking steps including "extending the Trump tax cuts."