Q1. Most all candidates for the White House agree that the rich should pay their “fair share” at tax time. In your mind, what top marginal tax rate for the federal income tax would rate as “fair”?
⚪ The 91 percent top rate in effect during the Eisenhower years of the 1950s.
⚪ The 70 percent top rate in effect most of the years from the mid-1960s through 1980.
⚪ The 50 percent top rate in effect after the 1981 Reagan tax cut.
⚪ The 28 percent top rate enacted in 1986.
⚪ The 37 percent top rate now in effect.
⚫ Other.
_______________
Q2. The majority of Americans support higher taxes for the rich. But policy analysts differ on who exactly rates as “rich.” At what level should the highest federal income tax rate kick in?
⚪ At the threshold for entry into the nation’s top 10 percent. In 2017, the most recent year with IRS data, this threshold stood at $130,060.
⚪ At the threshold for entry into the top 1 percent, income over $463,320.
⚪ At the threshold for entry into the top 0.1 percent, income over $2,099,400.
⚪ At the threshold for entry into the top 0.01 percent, income over $11,218,000.
⚪ Other.
As the campaign progresses, Bernie will release a comprehensive tax plan.
_______________
Q3. Inequality in household wealth — the difference between what families own versus what they owe — runs even greater in the United States than inequality in income. How much wealth in the pockets of its richest 1 percent do you believe a healthy democratic society can accept?
⚪ No more than the 42 percent wealth share our wealthiest 1 percent has held in recent years.
⚪ No more than the 23 percent the U.S. wealthiest 1 percent held in 1978.
⚪ No more than the 11 percent the wealthiest 1 percent holds today in Japan.
⚪ Other.
As the campaign progresses, Bernie will release a comprehensive tax plan.
_______________
Q4. Average Americans pay an annual property tax on their homes, the asset that makes up the bulk of the household wealth most Americans hold. But wealthy Americans pay no annual tax on the assets that make up the bulk of their wealth, everything from stocks and bonds to fine art and yachts. Would your administration support an annual wealth tax on the assets of America’s wealthy?
⚫Yes
⚪No
If yes: Above what level of wealth should this wealth tax apply? $32 million
In order to reduce the outrageous level of inequality that exists in America today and to rebuild the disappearing middle class, Bernie has proposed to establish an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1 percent of U.S. households.
This wealth tax would only apply to net worth of over $32 million and would raise an estimated $4.35 trillion over the next decade. Anyone who has a net worth of less than $32 million would not see their taxes go up at all under this plan.
This tax on extreme wealth would have a progressive rate structure that would only apply to the wealthiest 180,000 households in America who are in the top 0.1 percent.
It would start with a 1 percent tax on net worth above $32 million for a married couple. That means a married couple with $32.5 million would pay a wealth tax of just $5,000.
The tax rate would increase to 2 percent on net worth from $50 to $250 million, 3 percent from $250 to $500 million, 4 percent from $500 million to $1 billion, 5 percent from $1 to $2.5 billion, 6 percent from $2.5 to $5 billion, 7 percent from $5 to $10 billion, and 8 percent on wealth over $10 billion. These brackets are halved for singles.
Under this plan, the wealth of billionaires would be cut in half over 15 years and it would substantially break up the concentration of wealth and power of this small privileged class.
_______________
Q5. Back in 1980, top corporate CEOs in the United States took home about 40 times the pay of the nation’s average workers. That gap now averages over 300 times. In 2018, 50 U.S. corporations paid their CEOs over 1,000 times their median worker pay. What do you see as the appropriate ratio for the pay that goes to CEOs and their own company’s workers?
⚪ 6:1, the ratio average Americans cite as most appropriate in polling research.
⚪ 20:1, the widest CEO-worker pay gap that Peter Drucker, the father of modern American management science, considered acceptable.
⚪ 100:1, the standard that Portland, Oregon — the first political jurisdiction in the world to tax excessive executive compensation — has set to define where excess begins.
⚪ 150:1, the average CEO-worker pay gap in the UK, the world’s second most generous nation — after the United States — for top corporate executive compensation.
⚫ Other. Less than 50:1
Under the new Sanders plan, companies with large gaps between their CEO and median worker pay would see progressively higher corporate tax rates with the most unequal companies paying five percentage points more in corporate taxes.
Specifically, this plan would impose tax rate increases on companies with CEO to median worker ratios above 50 to 1. If the CEO did not receive the largest paycheck in the firm, the ratio will be based on the highest-paid employee. The tax penalties would begin at 0.5 percentage points for companies that pay their top executives between 50 and 100 times more than their typical workers. The highest penalty would kick in for companies that pay top executives over 500 times worker pay. These rates, if current corporate pay patterns continue, would raise around $150 billion over 10 years.
How companies’ corporate taxes would increase if their compensation ratio is:
- Between 50 and 100: +0.5%
- Between 100 and 200: +1%
- Between 200 and 300: +2%
- Between 300 and 400: +3%
- Between 400 and 500: +4%
- More than 500: +5%
If this plan had been in effect last year:
- McDonald’s would have paid up to $110.9 million more in taxes.
- Walmart would have paid up to $793.8 million more in taxes.
- JPMorganChase would have paid up to $991.6 million more in taxes.
- The Home Depot would have paid up to $538.2 million more in taxes.
- American Airlines would have paid up to $18.8 million more in taxes.
This plan would apply to all private and publicly held corporations with annual revenue of more than $100 million. The Treasury Department will be required to issue regulations to prevent tax avoidance, including by changing the composition of a firm’s workforce. In addition, the pay ratio data for privately held corporations will be made public in the same manner that it is currently disclosed for publicly held corporations.
The revenue generated from this income inequality tax will be used to pay for Bernie’s plan to eliminate medical debt. But the goal of this income inequality tax is not just to raise more revenue. It is to send a message to corporate America: stop paying your workers inadequate wages while CEOs make outrageous compensation packages.
The American people want corporations to invest in their workers, not just dividends, stock buybacks and outrageous compensation packages to their executives. That’s what this plan is all about.
_______________
Q6. A century ago, Congress enacted an estate tax, to put a brake on concentrations of inherited wealth and power and raise substantial revenue from our nation’s richest. Since 2000, Congress has subverted that original intent. Lawmakers have lowered the estate tax rate and exempted millions in personal wealth from any tax. Fortunes worth up to $22.8 million can now face no estate tax at all. Which of these steps to limiting intergenerational transfers of wealth do you support?
☑ Exempting fewer millions from estate taxation. The estate tax threshold for couples should drop from the current $22.8 million to: $3.5 million.
☑ Taxing the nation’s wealthiest estates on a graduated basis, an approach that would subject estates worth $1 billion to a higher tax than an estate worth $50 million. All large bequests currently face the same tax rate.
☑ Eliminating the “step up in basis” loophole, a giveaway to the affluent that lets appreciated stock and other assets transfer to heirs without ever incurring a capital gains tax.
☐ Treating inheritances as income instead of taxing the estates the wealthy leave behind. Standard income tax rates should apply on all inherited income over:
☐ Other: _______________
_______________
Q7. To effectively reduce inequality, many tax analysts agree, we need multiple new approaches to taxing the wealthy and the sources of their wealth. Which of these proposed approaches would you advance once in the White House?
☑ A tax on Wall Street financial transactions designed to discourage the speculation that undercuts the economic security of average Americans.
☑ An end to preferential tax rates that privilege income from dividends and buying and selling stocks, real estate, and other assets over income from wages and salaries.
☐ A 10 percent surtax on all income over $2 million.
☐ Other:
_______________
Q8. Robust tax rates on the incomes and estates of America’s wealthiest helped forge a much more equal America in the middle of the 20th century. Robust protections for workers and their right to organize into trade unions played an equally pivotal role. Which of these initiatives would your administration work to enact into law?
☑ A requirement that all corporate boards of directors include elected worker representatives.
☑ Labor law reforms that require employers to bargain collectively once a majority of a company’s workers have signed cards indicating they want union representation.
☑ Stiffer penalties on employers who retaliate against workers organizing unions.
☐ Legislation that requires large corporations to transfer up to 10 percent of their shares into “Inclusive Ownership Funds” that give employees “a stake and a say” in corporate dividend distribution and other enterprise decisions.
☑ Bernie will will require large corporations to issue at least 2 percent of stock to their workers every year until the company is at least 20 percent owned by employees
☑ A national fair workweek act, along the lines of similar legislation passed in several U.S. cities and states, that ensures all workers stable and predictable hours.
Bernie will pass his Workplace Accountability and Democracy Plan to fundamentally shift the wealth of the economy back into the hands of the workers who create it. Bernie will require large corporations to issue at least 2 percent of stock to their workers every year until the company is at least 20 percent owned by employees. He will also require that workers comprise at least 45 percent of the boards of directors of large corporations. And he will require large corporations to obtain a federal corporate stakeholder charter to put the interests of workers, the community, the environment, and others on par with shareholders.
_______________
Q9. Over a century ago, the famed newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer urged Americans to beware both “predatory plutocracy” and “predatory poverty.” The United States has made little appreciable progress against poverty over recent decades, and that failure has had a disproportionate impact on women and people of color. Which of these policies to “lift the floor” and expand the U.S. social safety net will your administration promote?
☑ A national $15 minimum wage.
☑ The elimination of the federal subminimum wage for tipped workers, currently $2.13 per hour.
☑ A guaranteed two weeks of annual paid family and medical leave for every worker.
☑ Universal, single-payer health insurance.
☑ Free tuition at public colleges and universities.
☑ A federal jobs guarantee.
_______________
Q10. Today, over a half-century since the classic triumphs of the civil rights movement, the United States still suffers from a staggering racial wealth divide, with median white families holding over 40 times more household wealth than black families — and over 20 times more than Latinx families. Which of these policies to narrow the racial wealth divide would your administration advance?
☐ “Baby bonds” that would be awarded at birth to every American child and held in trust until each child turns 18, with the federal contributions to each bond keyed to parental income.
Bernie is open to this and any other proposal that furthers the fight for racial and economic justice.
☐ Federal down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers living in formerly redlined or segregated areas.
-
- As President, Bernie will not create programs that have the potential to worsen our gentrification crisis. Instead, he will invest an additional $2 billion at USDA and an additional $6 billion at HUD to create a first-time homebuyer assistance program that will increase home ownership. And he will expand pre-purchase housing counseling to all prospective homebuyers.
- He will invest $50 billion over 10 years to provide grants to start and expand community land trusts and other shared equity homeownership models. This funding will enable over 1 million households to purchase affordable homes over the next 25 years. He’ll invest an additional $15 billion to enact a 21st Century Homestead Act, based on the work of Mehrsa Baradaran, to purchase and revitalize abandoned properties to create community and individual wealth and assets for historically disadvantaged communities. And he will instruct HUD to assist communities establishing shared equity homeownership by ensuring they can access existing federal housing programs, and help new organizations build the necessary capacity to succeed.
- As President, he will also create a commission to establish a financial relief program to the victims of predatory lending, mortgage fraud, redlining and those who are still underwater on their mortgages as a result of the 2008 Wall Street crash. This program shall include down payment assistance, mortgage relief, or rental assistance. This program must include protections to ensure that the financial relief it provides goes to the people who need it and not the Wall Street speculators who caused the crisis.
☑ A postal banking system that gives the “unbanked” ready access to non-predatory check-cashing and small-loan services.
☑ The convening of a federal commission to explore options for structuring reparations that address the economic legacy left by slavery and generations of racist public policy.
☐ Other.
_______________
Q11. Women in the United States now earn the majority of college degrees awarded. Yet women continue to be underrepresented in high-level, highly paid positions and overrepresented in low- paying jobs. Which of these steps to narrow the gender divide will your administration support?
☑ Adopting the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
☑ Requiring companies to disclose gender pay gaps, the current practice in the UK.
☑ Mandating gender quotas on corporate boards, the current practice in Norway.
☐ Fining companies with gender pay divides, a move France is now implementing.
Bernie is open to this and any other proposal that furthers economic, gender, and racial justice.
☐ Using gender-responsive budgeting — as many nations worldwide are now doing — to identify how fiscal policy impacts gender gaps and then funding initiatives to bridge these gaps.
Bernie is open to this and any other proposal that furthers economic, gender, and racial justice.
☐ Other.
_______________
Q12. American children born in 1940, research shows, had above a 90 percent chance of earning more than their parents. Children born in the 1980s have had a 50 percent chance. Many of the proposals identified in previous questions would help restore much greater social mobility to American life. Which of these additional steps would your White House support?
☑ Mitigating the consequences of adverse personal shocks, as OECD analysts suggest, by protecting individuals against income loss after unemployment, divorce, and childbirth.
☑ Disaggregating current federal quarterly and annual GDP growth stats, as proposed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s “Measuring Real Income Growth Act,” to show how low-, middle-, and high-income Americans are actually experiencing the nation’s economic growth.
☐ Establishing an official “Social Justice Commission,” as recently proposed by the UK Labour Party, to publish periodic “impact statements” that would assess whether particular government policies are growing mobility throughout communities of modest means — or only advancing the life chances of a select few.
Bernie is open to this and any other proposal that furthers the fight for racial, economic, environmental, social, gender, and disability justice.
☐ Other.