Throughout her adult life, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been known to tell tall tales. Lest you forgot, Warren purported to be a Native American for decades, earning her the nickname Pocahontas.
Warren is at it again. However, this time she is not peddling white lies about her heritage. Now she is spouting falsehoods about America’s tax system.
On March 1, Warren introduced the Ultra Millionaire Tax Act, which would levy a “2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion” and a “1% annual surtax (3% tax overall) on the net worth of households and trusts above $1 billion.”
According to Warren, “The ultra-rich and powerful have rigged the rules in their favor so much that the top 0.1% pay a lower effective tax rate than the bottom 99% … A wealth tax is popular among voters on both sides for good reason: because they understand the system is rigged to benefit the wealthy and large corporations.”
Rep.Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a co-sponsor of the bill, said, “The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act will help level the playing field, narrow the racial wealth gap, ensure the wealthiest finally begin to pay their fair share.”
Is this true? Are Warren and Jayapal correct in asserting that the ultra-wealthy are not paying their “fair share?” In one word: No.
According to the most recent available tax data, in 2017, “the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent.”
Moreover, “The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (38.5 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.9 percent).”
And, “The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 26.8 percent average individual income tax rate, which is more than six times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (4.0 percent).”
It sure seems like the so-called wealthy are paying their fair share of the nation’s income taxes, despite Warren’s less-than-honest rhetoric.
The top 1 percent is paying 40 percent of the country’s total income taxes, after all. If that does not meet the “fair share” benchmark, what does?
So, what gives? Why is Warren telling tall tales again? Simple. Because Warren knows that tax the rich bombast works. Never mind that the rich already pay the vast majority of the nation’s tax burden.
Recent polling confirms that Americans have bought the left’s lie that the wealthy are nothing more than tax scofflaws, which, for the record is false. A 2020 Reuters poll found that 64 percent of Americans agree with the statement: “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs.”
I have a sneaking suspicion that Americans’ agreeableness to such a statement is at least partially due to the cavalcade of lies repeated by leftists like Warren that the rich don’t pay their fair share.
And on the notion of fair share, I have yet to hear a progressive define what this fair share figure would look like. How much of their income, or wealth for that matter, should the so-called wealthy be forced to relinquish to the federal government?
Wealth taxes, like the one Warren advocates, are not about holding the wealthy accountable when it comes to paying their fair share of taxes. Rather, wealth taxes are about producing another revenue stream so that big government acolytes like Warren have trillions more to spend on social engineering projects that are doomed to fail. If only she could be honest about it.
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