CEO-Worker Pay Resource Guide

Join the emerging efforts to crack down on corporations that reward top executives at worker expense.

Since 2018, U.S. publicly held corporations have had to annually report the ratio between their CEO and median worker compensation. Corporate lobby groups and allied Republicans fought hard to repeal, delay, or water down this disclosure mandate, a measure initially enacted as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. But institutional investors weighed in heavily to defend pay ratio disclosure, as did hundreds of thousands of individuals outraged about the extreme pay gaps at the vast majority of large U.S. corporations.

CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure has boosted momentum behind efforts to use tax, contracting, and subsidy policy to narrow our compensation divides. In 2016, the city of Portland, Oregon, adopted the world’s first tax penalty on corporations that pay their CEO more than 100 times their median worker pay. In November 2020, voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly approved a similar tax.

These landmark precedents have the potential to turn every level of government into a battleground over corporate pay policies that fuel inequality. Lawmakers in at least nine U.S. states and in the U.S. Congress have also introduced pay ratio taxes. India and the UK are also now requiring pay ratio disclosure.

General Resources on CEO-Worker Pay Ratios

- AFL-CIO Paywatch (includes searchable database)
- Bloomberg pay ratio tracker
- Executive Excess 2022 (IPS report finding the CEOs at America’s largest low-wage employers are grabbing huge raises while workers and consumers struggle with rising costs)
- Sarah Anderson, Testimony Before the Senate Budget Committee, March 17, 2021
- Executive Excess 2021: Pandemic Pay Plunder (IPS report on low-wage corporations that rigged their own rules to inflate CEO pay while their workers lost hours, jobs, and lives.)
- Executive Excess 2019: Making Corporations Pay for Big Pay Gaps (IPS report finding that 50 US publicly held corporations had CEO-median worker pay gaps of more than 1,000 to 1 in 2018)
- Fact Sheet: CEO Pay Reform is a Transpartisan Issue
- How Taxpayers Subsidize Giant Corporate Pay Gaps (IPS report analyzing pay gaps at the federal government’s top 50 contractors and top 50 subsidy recipients)
Resources on the Portland CEO Pay Tax:
- Article in the Oregonian with revenue figures through 2020 and a listing of top companies paying the tax.
- Article in The Nation with Portland surtax 1st year revenue figures
- Institute for Policy Studies Backgrounder on the Portland CEO-worker Pay Ratio Surtax
- Text of the Portland legislation
- City of Portland Bureau of Revenue assessment of the legislation
- List of the more than 500 publicly traded businesses that “do business” in Portland that may be subject to the surtax.
Resources on the San Francisco CEO Pay Tax:
- Tax revenue from the first 1.5 years higher than expected and more resilient than other local revenue sources
- Institute for Policy Studies Backgrounder, including comparison of San Francisco and Portland models
- City of San Francisco revenue assessment of the legislation
- San Franciscans Vote Overwhelmingly to Rein in Overpaid CEOs
Federal Proposals Related to CEO-Worker Pay Ratios:
- Rep. Jan Schakowsky introduced the Patriotic Corporations of America Act (H.R. 4186) in 2021 to extend tax breaks and federal contracting preferences to companies that meet good behavior benchmarks, including CEO-worker pay ratios of 100-1 or less.
- Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden floated the idea of an excise tax on corporations with big gaps between CEO and worker pay during the Build Back Better negotiations. It was modeled on the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
- The Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would apply graduated tax increases on corporations with large CEO-median worker pay gaps, beginning with 0.5 percentage points on corporations with pay ratios of 50 to 1 and rising to 5 percentage points on firms with ratios above 500 to 1. In the 117th Congress: (S.794/HR 1979) Support materials.
- Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) introduced a similar bill, the CEO Accountability and Responsibility Act (H.R. 3301). This bill would also offer preferential treatment in federal contracts to companies with pay ratios below 50:1.
- Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) authored a bill in the 116th Congress (S. 3640) that would prohibit stock buybacks where CEO pay exceeds 150 times the compensation that goes to a company’s median pay.
- Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-OR) introduced a bill in the 116th Congress, the Equity in Compensation Act (S. 2312), which would apply graduated surtaxes on corporate income tax liabilities, beginning with 2% on corporations with pay ratios of 30 to 1 and rising to 10% on firms with with ratios above 1,000 to 1.
- Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) introduced a bill, the Greater Accountability in Pay Act (H.R. 4242), which would require publicly held corporations to annually disclose the ratio between pay raises for top executives and median employees.
State Legislative Proposals Related to CEO-Worker Pay Ratios:
- California (SB 37)
- Connecticut (HB 6373) (A separate state general assembly bill, HB 6747, would disqualify companies with CEO-worker pay ratios of more than 100 to 1 for state subsidies and grants.)
- Hawaii (SB 747)
- Illinois (HB 3335)
- Massachusetts (S.3369/S. 286)
- Minnesota (HF 65)
- New York (S.1659 and A.7454)
- Rhode Island (H. 5141 and S. 0318) (A separate RI state senate bill, S. 0211, would give preferential treatment in state contracting to corporations that pay their CEOs no more than 25 times their median worker pay)
- Washington (HB 1681)
Letters to the SEC in Support of CEO-Worker Pay Ratio Disclosure:

A wide range of institutional investors, policymakers, and academics have pressed the SEC for clear and strong federal regulations on CEO pay ratio disclosure. For a full list, see 2017 submissions and 2013/2015 submissions.