Billionaires’ wealth has soared 70% in the pandemic. That’s one reason why Democrats wanted to tax them.
The skyrocketing stock market has helped push billionaires’ net worth up by more than $2 trillion since the start of the pandemic through mid-October, according to a recent report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality, which analyzed Forbes data.
Their windfall came at the same time as Covid-19 wreaked financial havoc on tens of millions of Americans, particularly those in the lower-income tiers.
“And they’d be as rich as they were beforehand,” he said.
The number of US billionaires also rose during the pandemic to 745, up from 614 in March 2020, according to the review of Forbes data by the left-leaning groups.
Next up is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with a net worth of $197 billion, up more than 74% since the start of the pandemic.
And rounding out the top 3 is Microsoft founder Bill Gates with a $38 billion fortune that has increased 39%.
Taxing billionaires
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, released on Wednesday the details of the complicated and controversial plan that he’s been working on for at least two years.
The tax would have only hit roughly 700 people — those with more than $1 billion in assets or with reported income of more than $100 million for three consecutive years.
For tradable assets, such as stocks, billionaires would have paid capital gains tax, currently 23.8%, on the increase in value and taken deductions for losses annually.
Non-tradable assets, such as real estate and interest in businesses, would not have been taxed annually. Instead, billionaires would have paid capital gains tax, plus an interest charge, when they sold the holding.
