Bernie Sanders proposes aggressive tax plan targeting 1%

Independent senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has proposed an aggressive tax plan that would raise rates on US corporations if he becomes president.

In the lead-up to the Democratic presidential primary debate in Ohio on Tuesday,  Sanders said corporate tax level should be the same rate it was before President Donald Trump reduced it in 2017 from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Sanders, who said last month that billionaires shouldn't exist, called for changing laws to prevent US companies from using offshore tax havens.

“For more than 40 years … corporations in America have rigged the tax code and our economy to redistribute wealth and income to the richest and most powerful people in this country,” Sanders said, adding, “enough is enough.”

"I don't think that billionaires should exist," Sander said in an interview with media.

Sanders, who has always been a critic of the US tax code, plans to cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years.

My plan “does not eliminate billionaires, but it eliminates a lot of the wealth that billionaires have," he said, "and I think that's exactly what we should be doing."

However, Sanders recognizes that there would always be people who have more money than others.

“Let me be very clear: As president of the United States, I will reduce the outrageous and grotesque and immoral level of income and wealth inequality,” Sanders said. “What we are trying to do is demand and implement a policy which significantly reduces income and wealth inequality in America by telling the wealthiest families in this country they cannot have so much wealth.”

Sanders’s corporate accountability proposal came out just a day before Democratic presidential candidates are expected to highlight their policy plans on the debate stage in Ohio.

“I think you can certainly expect Bernie to continue to raise the urgent issue of corporate greed and corporate power and how he is best qualified to take on that greed and to represent working people in the White House,” Josh Orton, national policy director for the Sanders campaign, told The Hill.

Democratic candidates across the ideological spectrum have blasted Trump’s tax law and have called for increasing taxes on the rich and corporations, but their tax plans have not been a major focus of the other Democratic presidential debates. Progressive groups are hoping that candidates’ positions on taxes can get more attention on Tuesday.

Tax March Executive Director Maura Quint said she’s hopeful that voter interest in plans like the ones put forth will prompt the debate moderators to ask questions about a topic that oftentimes doesn’t generate the same kind of buzz as other political subjects.

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund, said Sanders is the first 2020 Democratic candidate to offer a comprehensive corporate tax–reform plan.

He said it’s exciting to see Sanders’s plan because it’s more challenging for candidates to propose corporate tax changes than higher taxes on wealthy individuals.

“It’s harder to attack the corporate tax system because you’re attacking the corporate power in Washington, D.C.,” Clemente said.

Sanders’s proposals tend to go further than those of other White House hopefuls to hit the rich and corporations.

Ill health

Sanders released his corporate tax proposal after he had a heart attack earlier this month, prompting concerns about his health, age and ability to run against Trump.

PressTV-Sanders to slow US election campaign after heart attack

US Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he plans to “change the nature” of his election campaign after he had a heart attack last week.

The 78-year-old was hospitalized for more than two days after the heart attack.

Sanders acknowledged that his health was something that voters take into account when they judge his candidacy.

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