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tax the rich
Corporations and the Rich Should Pay for Trump's Hideous War—Here's How
How about this for a concept: Those who can most afford to pay for the war be the ones who pay for it.
Mar 27, 2026
At some point, the war against Iran is going to be paid for. The military has expended billions of dollars of very expensive ammunition, jet fuel and other military resources. The Pentagon says it needs over $200 billion to cover its costs. The total price of the war will depend on how it progresses and requests to Congress may come in smaller chunks, or be delayed as long as possible, or rolled into broader funding requests.
Disagreeing with the war, Democrats can resist approving the funding, try to attach conditions related to how the war is waged and how long it lasts, or make other demands but, in the end, the bill will almost certainly be paid. One question then is who is going to pay it.
The answer to that question, and a demand that should be insisted on, is that those who can most afford to pay for the war be the ones who pay for it. Americans of modest incomes have been hit hard enough by tariffs and the fuel prices the war has caused. Let’s have the rich and corporations pay the direct, out-of-pocket, costs.
In the end, the bill will almost certainly be paid.
If the cost is $200 billion, a temporary tax effective for 2026 of 3.5 percent, applied to adjusted gross income in excess of $1,000,000 on the personal income tax, plus the same rate applied to corporate taxable income would cover it. If 3.5 percent is too jarring for some, a 1.7 percent rate applied for two years or a 1.1 percent rate applied through 2028 would cover the bill.
The war is widely unpopular. Whether the cost of the war ends up being $200 billion, more than that amount, or less, let’s at least have it paid for by those who can most afford it.
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'The Current Tax Code Is Rigged,' Plus 6.2 Trillion Other Reasons to Tax America's Ultrarich
"My bill is about basic fairness and making the ultrawealthy pay their fair share," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "It's time for the government to stop listening to the richest of the rich and start working for working people."
Mar 26, 2026
Backed by dozens of lawmakers, advocacy organizations, and labor unions, a trio of congressional Democrats on Thursday reintroduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which would generate an estimated $6.2 trillion in revenue over the next decade by imposing a wealth tax on US fortunes above $50 million.
As the lead sponsors, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), highlighted in a statement, that estimated revenue is "more than double the score of the bill when it was first introduced five years ago, and enough money to pay for investments like universal childcare, free community college, Medicare expansion, and more—without raising taxes on 99.85% of American households."
The reintroduction comes just months away from the midterm elections. Democrats are working to reclaim control of Congress from President Donald Trump's Republican Party, which last year used its slim majorities in both chambers to push through a budget package that gave more tax cuts to the rich while cutting social programs for working families.
"While multimillionaires and billionaires are getting richer and richer, families are getting squeezed by a rigged economy," said Warren. "My bill is about basic fairness and making the ultrawealthy pay their fair share. It's time for the government to stop listening to the richest of the rich and start working for working people."
Under the bill, the country's wealthiest 260,000 households would pay a 2% annual tax on fortunes valued at over $50 million and an additional 1% on the net worth of households and trusts above $1 billion. The legislation would also impose a 40% "exit tax" on ultrarich individuals who renounce their citizenship for evasion purposes and would give the Internal Revenue Service $100 million in new funding.
"As millions of families are struggling under the weight of inflation, tariffs, and rising gas prices, the richest billionaires continue to see their net worth grow. We live in the richest country in the world, but that wealth is incredibly concentrated in a tiny group of people. It's time to tax the rich and level the playing field to ensure that every American has a chance to succeed," said Jayapal.
"The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act is a major step toward making sure the wealthy finally pay their fair share," she continued. "With this legislation, we can narrow the racial wealth gap and invest trillions of dollars in healthcare, schools, clean energy, housing, and more to improve lives in communities across America."
At the beginning of 2026, an Institute for Policy Studies analysis found that the total wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion last year—and the country's top 15 billionaires saw their collective fortune grow from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion, more than double the S&P 500's 16% increase in 2025.
In the months since, even a columnist at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal acknowledged that "billionaires' low taxes are becoming a problem for the economy," and Peter Mallouk, the CEO of wealth management firm Creative Planning, suggested that US wealth inequality "is 100% completely unsustainable as a society."
Boyle declared Thursday that "a secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than the CEO. The current tax code is rigged against working people and the middle class. Our proposal finally changes this and makes billionaires pay their fair share."
Today, I'm introducing my wealth tax — and more than 50 members of Congress are joining me. It’s time for the government to start working for American families, not just the ultra-rich.
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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 26, 2026 at 1:54 PM
Unions backing the bill include the American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of Teachers; American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Communications Workers of America; Service Employees International Union; and United Steelworkers.
"Anti-worker extremists in Congress and their billionaire backers are slashing safety net programs and rigging the tax code to make the ultrawealthy richer as working families are pushed closer to the brink," said AFSCME president Lee Saunders. "The working people who keep this country running shouldn't be the ones carrying a heavier tax burden than the richest 0.1%."
"It's past time billionaires paid their fair share, so we can invest in the public services that working people need—from childcare to healthcare to food support," he argued. "Congress must pass Sen. Warren and Rep. Jayapal's Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act now."
Other organizations behind the bill include Americans for Tax Fairness, Climate Hawks Vote, Groundwork Collaborative, Indivisible, MomsRising, Oxfam America, Patriotic Millionaires, People's Action Institute, Public Citizen, the Sunrise Movement, and more.
“The United States is capable of sustaining the rich, stable, and free economy and country the vast majority of Americans—regardless of political party—actually want. The only way to ensure we get there, though, is by building a tax system that puts a check on the extreme inequality that threatens our economy and our democracy," said Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl.
"Millionaires like me want less inequality because we and our families will be better off in a society with less economic disparity. And it's not because I'm good or altruistic. I am not any more altruistic than the next person, I'm just greedy for a different kind of country than some other rich people in America," he continued. "I'm willing to pay more in taxes if it means helping us become the kind of country I know we can be. The Patriotic Millionaires are proud to support the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, and we urge Congress to act quickly to make this law."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced another bill to tax the rich—the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act—earlier this month, but neither proposal is likely to advance in the GOP-controlled Congress.
However, as historian Lawrence Wittner highlighted in a Thursday opinion piece for Common Dreams, "campaigns for state tax-the-rich legislation are flourishing in California, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, and Virginia, and have already succeeded in getting such legislation adopted in Massachusetts and Washington."
"Most Americans support proposals to raise taxes on the rich," he noted, citing a January poll that found 80% of Americans saw wealth inequality as a problem, 80% said the rich had too much political power, and 78% said taxes on billionaires were too low. Wittner concluded that "it's time to tax the rich."
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Yes, It's Time to Tax the Rich
A recent poll found that 80% of American respondents viewed wealth inequality as a problem, 80% said the rich had too much political power, and 78% said taxes on billionaires were too low.Social Scheduling
Mar 26, 2026
With the deadline for paying federal income taxes fast approaching, the thoughts of American taxpayers turn naturally toward the age-old question: Why isn’t there a fairer tax system?
Currently, in fact, campaigns for state tax-the-rich legislation are flourishing in California, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, and Virginia, and have already succeeded in getting such legislation adopted in Massachusetts and Washington. Similarly, in Congress, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) have introduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Wash.) are sponsoring the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act. The tax-the-rich proposals range from increasing the tax rate for the very highest annual income earners, to instituting an annual wealth tax on the very richest Americans, to a combination of both.
Although the most affluent Americans, like other Americans, have always paid taxes to fund public services, the dispute has been over how much they should pay. Sales taxes and property taxes place a heavy burden on people of modest means, but a much lighter burden on the wealthy. Therefore, the wealthy have tended to favor these generators of public revenue and to oppose a progressive income tax, under which the rich would pay at a higher rate than the poor. A lengthy political battle for a tax system based upon ability to pay led to passage of the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, which empowered Congress to levy an income tax.
Initially, the new income tax, though progressive, was rather small-scale. But as the federal government took on new and costly tasks―particularly funding US participation in two world wars and the Cold War―the federal income tax grew accordingly. By 1944, the official tax rate for the highest income earners stood at 94%―although, thanks to deductions, loopholes, and the rate’s confinement to the top increment of their income, the richest Americans actually paid at a much lower rate.
Increasingly, in politics, big money talks―and on behalf of Republicans.
Like their well-heeled predecessors, many wealthy Americans were outraged at funding public services that benefited people whom they often regarded as their inferiors. Why, they wondered, was their money being “wasted” on things like public schools, public housing, and public healthcare, when “the best people” went to private schools, lived in private mansions or gated communities, and employed private “concierge doctors”? While chatting with their friends over lunch on their yachts or at their tennis clubs, they complained of “welfare queens” and the “ungrateful poor.”
Consequently, Congress―badgered by the wealthy, their corporations, and conservative ideologues―cut the progressivity of the federal income tax. In 1964, the top marginal tax rate was reduced from 91% to 70%, in 1981 to 50%, and in 2018 to 37%.
Given these dramatic cuts in the federal income tax rate, plus preferential tax treatment for dividends and appreciation in the value of stock, bonds, and other investments―the wealthiest Americans managed to secure a much lower tax rate than most Americans. According to a ProPublica investigation, the 25 richest Americans, who had $401 billion in income from 2014 to 2018, paid taxes on it at a rate of just 3.4%. Indeed, during some years, the world’s top billionaires―including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Carl Icahn―paid no federal income taxes at all.
When it came to corporate income, the federal government slashed the corporate tax rate from 53% to 21% between 1969 and 2025. And this, too, produced enormous benefits for very affluent Americans, who own most stock market wealth. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 23 of the largest and most profitable US companies paid no federal corporate income taxes at all from 2018 to 2022. And 109 corporations paid no federal tax in at least one of those years.
The Trump administration’s tax policies lifted the fortunes of the wealthy to unprecedented heights. According to a September 2025 report by Americans for Tax Fairness, the wealth of the 15 richest US billionaires increased by over 300% after the passage of the first Trump-GOP tax cut in December 2017. The wealth of the very richest of them, Elon Musk, grew 20-fold. In the first year of Trump’s second term, marked by another huge tax cut for the rich, US billionaire wealth jumped from $6.7 trillion to $8.2 trillion.
Not surprisingly, government taxation policy―coming on top of low-wage rates, corporate outsourcing, assaults on unions, and government subsidies for big business―has resulted in rising economic inequality in the United States. By late 2025, the richest 1% of Americans possessed some $55 trillion in assets―roughly equal to the wealth held by the bottom 90%. “Household wealth is highly concentrated and becoming steadily more concentrated,” reported the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a major financial research firm.
This rising economic inequality enhances the growing power of the wealthy in public affairs. Increasingly, in politics, big money talks―and on behalf of Republicans. Federal election contributions from the nation’s 100 richest Americans averaged $21 million between 2000 and 2010, but rose beyond $1 billion in 2024. In that year, contributions to Republicans surged from roughly $300 million to just under $1 billion, while donations to Democrats dropped from roughly $300 million to less than $200 million. A right-wing political party, led by a demagogic billionaire promising more tax cuts, proved irresistible.
By contrast, most Americans support proposals to raise taxes on the rich. According to a March 2025 Pew Research Center poll, large majorities of Americans surveyed favored increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations. In January 2026, an Economist/YouGov poll reported that 80% of American respondents viewed wealth inequality as a problem, 80% said the rich had too much political power, and 78% said taxes on billionaires were too low.
It’s time to tax the rich. Or, as Pete Seeger used to sing, “Take it easy, but take it.”
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