Bernie Sanders’ tax plan would impose annual tax rates of well over 100% on the richest 400 Americans, according to his economic advisers, mostly through his new wealth tax.
The idea that the federal government should take more from the very wealthy than they earn in a year is a policy innovation, one the Democratic candidate has advanced as part of a sweeping anti-inequality platform.
Critics, however, argue that it’s unrealistic and would harm the economy by reversing billionaires’ incentives to innovate and invest.
Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the Berkeley economists who’ve advised Sanders on his wealth tax plan and the authors of a new book on inequality, calculate on their website that Sanders’ tax proposals would result in a 97.5% tax rate for the richest 400 Americans, who have pre-tax incomes above $456.5 million — and that rate would rise above 100%, depending on how the specifics of Sanders’ plan were spelled out.