Tax Them Now

IF WE TAX THEM NOW

WE WON'T HAVE TO EAT THEM LATER

A billionaire backlash — and an opening for a wealth tax

Signs of extreme wealth are nearly everywhere you look. Elon Musk’s wealth recently soared beyond $1 trillion after SpaceX went public. Ultra-wealthy couples are taking over large swaths of major cities for their weddings. And even President Donald Trump’s wealth while in office grew on a scale without precedent in modern presidential history.

All of this has some progressives convinced that the political appetite for a national wealth tax on the ultra-rich is stronger than it has been in years.

Enter “Tax the Greedy Billionaires,” a progressive national advocacy campaign trying to seize this moment by pushing members of Congress to run on a wealth tax ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Igor Volsky, the organization’s campaign director, was blunt when asked whether this kind of project would have been possible even five years ago: “No.”

“What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is the kind of blatant exercise of billionaire power that so many folks have been warning us about over the past couple of decades,” said Volsky. “That’s why the issue is in the zeitgeist.”

Their proposal is relatively simple. The group is pushing Democrats to run on what is known as a Five & Dime tax plan that would impose a 5 percent tax on household net wealth over $50 million and 10 percent on net wealth over $250 million. The Tax Policy Center, a joint research project between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, has found that such a plan would raise $6.8 trillion in the first 10 years.

But wealth taxes have long faced practical and legal objections, including how to value hard-to-price assets, how to prevent avoidance and whether a national tax on net wealth would survive constitutional challenge.

Liberal members of Congress, like Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pennsylvania), argue the need for this kind of tax has never been higher because the way the ultra-wealthy generate wealth — through return on investments and taking loans against their assets — has led those families to pay “historically low taxes at a time when the share of wealth held by the richest Americans has really soared.”

“Generating revenue for our government by breaking some of that power and impacting these folks is the fiscally responsible thing to do,” Deluzio told us. “When you have people making a paycheck who are school teachers or firefighters or nurses who have a higher effective tax rate than a millionaire, that’s some crazy stuff.”

The idea of taxing the rich is not necessarily new in American politics. Democrats have long argued that the wealthy should have to “pay their fair share,” and in 2024, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris would often tie the rise of the wealthy to the need to protect democracy, homing in on the way billionaires like Musk were spending in elections.

But in a sign of how the proverbial Overton window has shifted in the past two years, Tax the Greedy Billionaires’ argument centers far less on protecting democracy and far more on how that wealth is making life harder for others, from raising rents in American cities to driving up health care costs.

And Volsky, who says the “pay your fair share” talking point is “outdated,” argued that is why a key goal for the group is showing members of Congress — even skeptics — that the public is likely “far ahead of them on this issue.”

A 2026 poll by the Pew Research Center backs this up.

The poll found that roughly 6 in 10 adults say the feeling that wealthy people and corporations don’t pay their fair share “bothers them a lot.” Among Democrats, 81 percent said that about wealthy people, compared with 41 percent of Republicans.

Musk has become one of the clearest symbols of this shift. He played a major role in Trump’s 2024 campaign and the first year of his administration, slashing government spending and jobs as his personal wealth continued to soar.

“At a time when Elon Musk is set to become a trillionaire after wreaking havoc on our government, it’s clear we need to rein in the unprecedented power of the ultra-wealthy,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in support of a wealth tax.

So where does this issue go from here?

Volsky’s goal is to thrust this issue into the conversation this year, with the hope of a wealth tax becoming a key issue in Democrats’ 2028 presidential nominating process. Many Republicans have firmly opposed a wealth tax. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) said during a speech on the House floor this year that Democrats are telling “half truths” about how the wealthy pay their taxes.

And some Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have opposed a wealth tax in his state, arguing that the wealthy will just leave the state or shift their wealth. Newsom says he supports a national wealth tax.

Volsky called Newsom’s positioning on the issue “incredibly disappointing” and argued it suggests he feels he needs wealthy individuals to support his future political aspirations. But he added that his belief is that Newsom is the Democratic exception, not the rule.

“The public is really far ahead on this issue,” Volsky said. “This old playbook of asking the ultra-rich or billionaires to just pay your fair share so that we could raise enough revenue to pay for a particular program simply isn’t meeting the scope of the crisis that we’re in or the challenge that we face.”

Tax Them Out Of Existence

Break The Glass

Wealth disparity has always spelled trouble.

The kind of massive wealth gap we're seeing here in USAmerica Inc gets people killed.

AI billionaires brace for pitchforks

America's billionaires are developing their own prescriptions for AI-fueled inequality, anxious to defuse a populist revolt aimed at their ballooning fortunes.

Why it matters:

The AI boom has dramatically raised the stakes of the wealth-tax debate, unleashing a technology that could wipe out millions of jobs while minting the world's first trillionaires.

Populist politicians, particularly on the left, have cast this as capitalism's next great reckoning: an even deeper concentration of wealth and power in an economy already rigged for the elite.
Zoom in: Some of the richest men in tech have warned for years AI could destabilize the economy. Many suggest the answer is not deceleration or wealth taxes, but shared abundance.

• Jeff Bezos, the world's fourth-richest man, said on CNBC last week that the bottom 50% of earners should pay zero federal income tax. "You could double the taxes I pay and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens," the Amazon founder argued.
• Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and a longtime proponent of universal basic income, now favors "universal basic compute" — giving people access to AI's productive power instead of a fixed cash payment. OpenAI went further in April with a New Deal-style social contract that proposed a public wealth fund, taxes on AI-driven returns and automated labor, and a four-day workweek.
• Elon Musk, whose SpaceX IPO could help make him the world's first trillionaire, has called for "universal HIGH INCOME" checks from the federal government — arguing robots will drive so much growth that inflation won't follow.

Between the lines:

The billionaires and AI leaders floating these ideas are keenly aware that the politics of extreme wealth could turn dangerous fast.

In a January essay, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made what he called "a pragmatic argument" for billionaires to support higher taxes on AI wealth. "If they don't support a good version," Amodei wrote, "they'll inevitably get a bad version designed by a mob."

OpenAI named the same risk in its April policy blueprint, warning that AI could leave "power and wealth becoming more concentrated instead of more widely shared." Its foundation put money behind that anxiety Wednesday, committing $250 million to help workers and communities weather the disruption — and to test new ways to share AI's gains before the backlash hardens.

The big picture:

Anti-billionaire politics has become an organizing principle for the Democratic Party, which remains in search of a durable post-Trump identity.

In Congress, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called Wednesday for overhauling the tax code, including new taxes on wealth and data centers, to ensure Americans share in the economic gains of AI. Warren — who is being courted by potential 2028 presidential candidates — cited Silicon Valley's own warnings about a "permanent underclass" displaced by AI.

In New York City, state lawmakers this week passed Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes above $5 million — a measure he controversially promoted in a video outside hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin's $238 million Manhattan penthouse.

In Maine, Democratic Senate frontrunner Graham Platner launched his campaign by declaring that "the enemy is the oligarchy." He's backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who are more than a year into their nationwide "Fighting Oligarchy" tour.

In California, unions say they have gathered more than 1.5 million signatures to put a one-time 5% billionaire wealth tax on the November ballot, aiming to fund health care, education and food assistance programs.

The intrigue:

Former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, who is running for governor as a progressive, has endorsed the measure, casting himself as "the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate, opposes the measure — but has urged Democrats not to ignore the populist forces it represents.

"The pitchforks [are] here, they're not just coming," Newsom said last week, warning that resentment toward billionaires and AI-driven automation will dominate the 2026 and 2028 elections.

The bottom line:

The billionaire tax fight is becoming a test of whether AI creates shared prosperity — or a level of wealth concentration that Amodei warns could "break society."

A Little History

The screachingly annoying habit of wealthy Americans constantly bitchin' about paying their taxes is baked in.

I'll take small issue with the assertion that Americans were "represented" by their governors. One of the gripes in the Declaration is that the governors were too cozy with the king.

But anyway,

Today's Belle

Politicians are telling us not to trust politicians because politicians took our money and lost it, so let's just take a politician's word for it that the politicians want to do what's best for us.

Removing the Social Security Tax Cap

closes future deficits by more than 70%.

Making it progressive

funds the system

FOREVER

So Much Winning

Trump's tax cuts give the richest 5% big breaks — while everyone else pays more. The numbers tell a very different story than the White House

U.S. President Donald Trump has lauded the most recent tax season as a win for average Americans. His administration, too, attributes the "greater than ever before" (1) refunds to the "Working Family Tax Cuts" (2) and "the great, big, beautiful bill" (3).

Indeed, some of the changes the administration introduced promised "no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security." Spokesman Kush Desai even said in a statement to NBC (4), "[The] vast majority of working-class seniors" and the "vast majority of everyday workers" will not pay any taxes on Social Security, tipped or overtime income. In theory this should raise tax refunds.

But while Trump has said "[People] are getting so much more money than they thought," the picture he paints gets more complicated when income enters the picture.

The latest IRS update (5) shows 77.8 million returns had been processed as of March 20, 2026, with an average refund increasing from $3,284 to $3,561 — a $277 bump from a year ago. But the portion of those reaping the greatest benefits from Trump's tax changes are those earning the most, not the working class families Trump's administration is targeting in its messaging.

Here's why the catch is in the details.

The 2026 filing season changes

The Tax Foundation (6) found Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" reduced individual taxes by roughly $129 billion for 2025, noting refunds "will undoubtedly rise for millions of taxpayers."

The reality, according to the Tax Policy Center (7), is that 60% of those tax savings from Trump's sweeping changes will benefit the richest 20% of households — those earning over $217,000.

And the savings are progressively greater the higher up the income ladder you go: A recent report by the progressive-leaning Institute On Taxation and Economic Policy (8) shows that those tax cuts disproportionately benefit the richest 5%, with the top 1% receiving $117 billion in tax cuts in 2026 — part of a $1 trillion reduction over the next 10 years.

The other catch is that with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (9), Trump has also eliminated more than $40 billion over 10 years in funding for IRS tax enforcement that was earmarked specifically for investigating tax evasion by the wealthy, reports the organization.

This effectively removes disincentives and oversight for prospective tax cheats, who are also some of the wealthiest. This matters because the ROI on investigating the richest 10% (10) is $12 for every dollar spent (with some estimates going as high as $26 dollars for every dollar spent).

"We have the richest Americans who control massive amounts of the country's wealth, who are literally able to opt out of the tax system entirely. Meanwhile, anybody who earns a salary is paying a lot of taxes," Ray Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School who studies tax policy, told NBC (4).

Similarly, many corporations will see little or no corporate income tax and tax cuts for foreign investors in U.S. businesses by $32 billion in 2026.

That leaves the bottom 95% of taxpayers, who will see tax increases on average, "driven by expanded tariffs and income tax changes." Additionally, while the OBBBA extends earlier Trump tax provisions, it also enabled the termination of Biden's health tax credit, which aimed to reduce health insurance coverage costs for Americans.

What this means is that though the average filer's return may be up by $277, this average includes high-income earners and those who see greatest tax reductions, skewing the widely-publicized angle that Trump's tax changes favor "working Americans."

The reality for the remaining 95% of Americans

Instead, middle-income Americans will see a rise in taxes by an average of $900 in 2026, the ITEP report says. And depending on where you live, this average may be higher: The middle 60% of Americans who reside in Wyoming, Nebraska and Florida will pay most (between $1,430 and $1,240 on average, respectively).

And while the "no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security" does exist, it exists with considerable caveats that aren't as well publicized. This comes down to the way the taxes are structured and that they are only partial exemptions.

"We were disappointed," Sherie Cummings, a casino cocktail waitress on the Las Vegas strip, told NBC (4). "I feel like a lot of the servers, bartenders, waitresses, tip earners were gaslit by the 'no tax on tips.'" Filing with her husband, a bartender, she expected that she'd be able to write off the entirety of the $60,000 in tips the two brought in — a sizable portion of their joint wages. Instead they discovered the "no tax on tips" was capped at $25,000.

The tax cuts also exclude large groups such as railroad workers and truck drivers from overtime tax savings, while Social Security deductions include both low and higher earners.

"There's no hiding the fact that the last year of tax policy has driven up costs for most Americans [while] slashing them for the wealthy," said Michael Ettlinger, ITEP Senior Fellow and author of the report (11). "Tariffs and other federal tax increases have blindsided middle- and low-income taxpayers while the wealthy and corporations have received a hugely disproportionate share of the enacted tax cuts."

The shadow side of Trump's tax cuts

There is a cost to the tax cuts — it's not just free money in your pocket. ITEP (8) puts this in perspective: Tax cuts are services lost for the very Americans that would benefit most from them.

The $117 billion that is staying in the hands of the top 1% in 2026 is more than the combined budgets of the Department of Education, Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, the State Department, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The cumulative deductions from the OBBBA are projected to add $4.6 trillion to the federal government's debt over the coming decade (part of a cumulative $22 trillion projected from 2025 to 2034). To offset the lost federal revenue from the tax cuts, the White House is also spending $1.2 trillion less — with the majority of the cuts coming from health care.

This has "shifted the responsibility for funding for government toward working Americans while delivering substantial benefits to wealthy individuals, corporations and foreign investors, with long-term consequences for inequality and the federal budget," the report said (11).

This ongoing debt can hit the economy through rising interest rates, high inflation and other direct cost of living consequences to many Americans. Many others are at risk of losing food assistance and health insurance benefits.

"In short, this was not the time to add $4.6 trillion in debt by cutting taxes for people and companies that don't need it," writes ITEP (8).

Read More: Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan ‘works every single time’ to kill debt, get rich in America — and that ‘anyone’ can do it

The net impact of Trump tax cuts

The latest changes will only exacerbate income inequality in 2026, says the report (11).

Tariffs still impact the highest-earning Americans, but they take up a much smaller portion of their income. Similarly, with the latest tax changes favoring high-income households, any costs attributed to tariffs are offset by the tax cuts favoring (8) this group.

What this looks like:

• The top 1 percent gets a net tax cut equal to 0.4% of their income
• The middle 20 percent sees a net tax increase equal to 1.2% of their income
• The poorest 20 percent sees a net tax increase equal to 3.1% of their income

The 2026 ITEP report (11) found that the Trump administration's most recent tax changes have "shifted the responsibility for funding for government toward working Americans while delivering substantial benefits to wealthy individuals, corporations and foreign investors, with long-term consequences for inequality and the federal budget."

While Trump urged (1) Americans not to "spend all of this money in one place!" for many Americans, the economic reality is far bleaker, leaving them with less discretionary income this tax season — and for an increasing majority, even necessities are drifting further beyond reach.

Article sources

Truth Social (1)

U.S. Congress (2)

The New York Times (3)

NBC News (4)

Internal Revenue Service (5)

Internal Revenue Service (9)

Tax Foundation (6)

Tax Policy Center (7)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (8)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, (10)

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, (11)

The Tyranny Of Percentages

The "average" American is getting about $350 more than last year in their tax refunds.

Yay for that. This is a good thing.

Problem:

The cost of gas, and groceries, and other goods is increasing (inflation is up around 3.3% now), and that means we're going to pay more in sales taxes.

That's kinda how percentage works.

At a total Sales Tax Rate of 6% (a low-ish average nationwide), my usual $110 in groceries costs $116.60.

Inflation pushes the cost of my groceries to $113.63, which is $120.45 with tax.

If that new total of $116.60 is what I spend every 5 or 6 days, then the $6.40 in extra tax means I'll spend almost $390.00 more this year than I did last year, and - obviously - that eliminates any gain in my tax refund, and equates to a hit on my $65,000 average income of almost a full percent.

So a "tax cut", (minus inflation, minus tariffs) means my annual income goes down - and that's just looking at the food that I can't not buy. Wanna talk about clothing? Wanna talk about having a child or two? How 'bout maintenance on your car and your house?

Meanwhile, people making over the magic threshold of $400,000 will likely not see any discernible change at all.

And don't get me started on Parasite Billionaires.

Oops

We all have to know that the Doordash Grandma thing was just a stunt, intended to show off Trump's "genius idea to get Americans out from under their horrendous tax burden" - and it flopped.

It flopped in large part because, like I said, it was recognized as a stunt, but also because we found out the lady has to drive Doordash to pay the mortgage and the ridiculous healthcare bills that are piling up from her husband's cancer treatments.

Anyway, speaking of tax burdens, we were told that everybody's tax refunds this year would be nice and plump, and they'd all be rollin' in dough that they could use to buy that new car, or put the kids through college, or take that special vacation, and blah blah blah.

Well - no - not so much.

Tax season was supposed to bring big refunds. So far they're less than expected

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Early spring means the return of warm weather and … taxes. On a recent weekend, Dan and Glynna Courter were enjoying the sun with friends over a picnic of blueberries and Cheez-Its at Birmingham's Railroad Park.

When the topic moved to how they're feeling about their tax refunds, nearly everyone at the gathering responded with a chorus of lukewarm just fines.

The lack of enthusiasm was surprising considering everyone on the picnic blanket received sizable refunds, including about $10,000 for the Courters combined. But Glynna thinks their refund wasn't that much different from last year. The couple withhold the maximum taxes from their paychecks, which helps them avoid the risk of owing taxes and leads to a bigger refund.

"We might go to a nice restaurant," Dan added, after Glynna said they'd use the refund for savings.

This is not the vibe Republican lawmakers were planning for this tax season. The White House had already declared this the "largest tax refund season in U.S. history," and so far it's on track to be, due to the Republicans' signature tax and spending law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The White House projected the average refund "to rise by $1,000 or more this year."

But that extra refund bump has fallen short of that projection.

So far, the average refund has totaled about $350 more than last year. By early April, the average tax refund sat at $3,462, which is 11.1% higher than the same point last year, according to the IRS.

And Americans appear to be shrugging their shoulders at the tax changes. A recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank advising on federal policy, found 62% of respondents either thought the tax changes harmed them or made no difference. Even among Republicans, only 35% said the changes favored them.

"There's a bit of a disappointment in how much those refunds are," said Tom O'Saben, the director of tax content and government relations at the National Association of Tax Professionals. "People are quietly, perhaps, happy but not to the extent where I would call it significant."

Americans who owe taxes could be seeing a bigger slice of the savings

One possible explanation for the lower refunds is that the benefits from the tax law changes could be showing up more for Americans who don't receive refunds, but owe taxes. The IRS data on tax refunds this season does not factor in how much less Americans owed compared to last year.

"The evidence is stronger that more tax relief is relatively flowing to those who otherwise would owe when they file," said Don Schneider, deputy head of U.S. policy at the investment bank Piper Sandler.

But Schneider points out that owing less money is harder to notice than getting cash in hand.

"Getting it in a refund is probably more impactful, more easy to understand than having a reduction in what you otherwise would owe," Schneider said.

Higher-income procrastinators still have to file

Wealthier filers so far seem to have received larger benefits from the tax changes.

"Higher income taxpayers are much more likely than lower income taxpayers to report significantly higher refunds this year," said Andrew Lautz, director of tax policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

That's due in part to the increase in the SALT, or state and local tax, deduction cap raised by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Filers can now deduct up to $40,000 for property, sales and income taxes paid to state and local governments. The deduction primarily goes to wealthier Americans who own homes with big mortgage payments.

Since they traditionally are more likely to procrastinate sending in their returns, that could cause this year's average tax refund to grow later on, but likely still fall short of the additional $1,000 mark, Lautz said. "It is unlikely that we will see that kind of boost by the end of this."

Refunds are getting eaten up by higher gas prices

Part of the tepid response to refunds could be related to the extra cash Americans are spending at the pump.

The war with Iran has brought the average price for a gallon of regular in the U.S. well above $4. Data from the Bank of America Institute and PNC shows consumers have continued spending on gas, and depending on how long gas prices stay elevated, all of the benefits Americans received from the 2025 tax and spending bill could go solely to staying fueled up.

"The tax refund season might be very good, but it's also being offset by this price in gasoline," said Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

Bob Jones, a retiree in Birmingham, is satisfied with his refund. He benefited from an extra deduction of $6,000 for a lot of seniors 65 and up. But the war with Iran has him worried about what that means for the price of gas, so he's put it all in savings.

"You need the savings simply for gas," Jones said.

About Those Tariffs

via google:

A Kiel Institute for the World Economy study found that American importers and consumers bear nearly all (96%) of the costs from recent U.S. tariffs, contradicting claims that foreign producers pay, with foreign firms absorbing only about 4% through price cuts. Analyzing $4 trillion in trade, the research showed these tariffs act as a consumption tax on Americans, boosting U.S. revenue but increasing domestic prices and reducing trade volumes rather than forcing foreign price concessions. The study highlights that while generating revenue, tariffs primarily shift costs to U.S. businesses and households, hurting the U.S. economy most.

Key Findings from the Kiel Institute Study

• Cost Burden: U.S. importers and consumers pay 96% of the tariff cost, while foreign exporters absorb only 4%
• Mechanism: Tariffs function as a domestic consumption tax, with higher prices passed on to American buyers
• Trade Impact: Instead of price cuts, targeted foreign exporters reduced trade volumes, choosing to maintain margins on fewer sales
• Counter to Policy Claims: The findings challenge the narrative that tariffs are a cost borne by trading partners, demonstrating they extract revenue from the U.S. economy.

Broader Economic Effects

• U.S. Economy Harmed: The Kiel Institute's KITE model projects significant harm to the U.S., with potential drops in output, higher consumer prices, and reduced exports
• Global Impact: Tariffs affect all countries, though to varying degrees, with the EU also experiencing negative impacts

In essence, the Kiel Institute study concludes that US tariffs largely function as a tax on Americans, increasing costs for consumers and businesses rather than extracting concessions from foreign entities.

Today's Aaron

Labor first, then capital.

Today's Belle

Republicans know they've got a real turkey on their hands, so they're thinking about changing the name to something they can use to scam the rubes with - again.

The Working Family Tax Cuts Law

Belle has several suggestions for alternate names, and I'm going to send them mine too.

• The Big Bamboozle Bill
• The Grandma Lives With You Now Bill
• The Boosting American Poverty and Crime Act
• The Yacht-Buyer Benefits Package
• The Busting Hospitals Act
• The Fuck The Farmers Initiative
• The Billionaires Win Again Bill
• The Dead Americans Non-Prevention Act

Tell 'Em No

These assholes just can't help it.



Conservatives are asking Trump for another big tax cut

Fresh off passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” some anti-tax advocates hope to push the administration to change how taxable capital gains are calculated.

Fresh off passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” several conservative organizations and Republican lawmakers are preparing to ask President Donald Trump for another major tax cut — this time, potentially without congressional approval.

Trump’s tax and immigration law is projected to add more than $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, broadly reducing tax rates while cutting spending on Medicaid and clean energy subsidies. The legislation is the culmination of years of advocacy on the right, making permanent many of the 2017 tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, and it represents one of the most expensive new laws in decades.

With that victory newly secured, conservative groups — including Americans for Tax Reform, led by anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist — are already asking the Trump administration to get behind another cut, which would drastically reduce what investors pay on their capital gains.

The plan rests on changing how the Treasury Department calculates those taxes.

Currently, an investor who bought stock for $1,000 in 1980 and sold it for $10,000 today would owe capital gains taxes on the increase in value of $9,000. But under the proposal pitched by Norquist and others, the calculation would start by adjusting up the value of the original purchase to account for inflation — which would reduce the amount of gain that’s taxable after selling the stock.

Although a 1992 Justice Department opinion found that such a change would require an act of Congress, Norquist and other conservatives want the Treasury Department to execute such a policy unilaterally if necessary, providing a major windfall for people selling stocks, art, businesses, homes and other assets.

One GOP senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said he had spoken with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about reviving the idea. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has also been pitched on supporting such a plan in recent weeks, as advocates try to build congressional support, said two other people familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The Trump administration weighed unilaterally implementing the change during the president’s first term but backed off after Steven Mnuchin, then treasury secretary, suggested Congress should lead on the matter. Conservative groups are also asking congressional Republicans to include the measure in a second tax legislative package, possibly later this year or next year. (Johnson has said the GOP plans to pass a second party-line legislative package in the fall and a third in the spring of next year.) But if that does not emerge, they are also optimistic that Bessent may prove more sympathetic than Mnuchin to their case for Trump to act by executive order.

In an interview, Norquist said he directly recommended to Trump in a recent phone call that he should implement the change by executive order after passage of the tax bill, reminding the president that he had explored this option during his first term. Norquist, who argues that the new policy will help open up the housing market, said he has also talked to Bessent about the proposal.

Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and White House declined to comment.

“I said something like, ‘Mr. President, after we do the bill, we will need more economic growth. The Big Beautiful Bill is very pro-growth, but with this, we can have even more growth,’” Norquist said. “The bureaucracy stopped him the first time, but they can’t this time.”

It is unclear if the administration is currently considering such a plan. The GOP tax measure was only signed into law on Friday, and Trump’s economic team will be busy both implementing the tax overhaul and negotiating numerous trade deals ahead of a new Aug. 1 deadline before tariffs take effect.

Nonpartisan economists are sharply critical of the proposed change to the tax code. During Trump’s first term, the Tax Policy Center and Penn Wharton Budget Model found that indexing capital gains to inflation would add roughly $100 billion to $200 billion to the federal deficit over 10 years.

The affluent would disproportionately benefit from the change, those nonpartisan estimates have found. The highest-earning 1 percent of Americans would receive 86 percent of the benefits from indexing capital gains to inflation, while the bottom 80 percent of income earners would get just 1 percent of the benefits, Penn Wharton projected in 2018.

Meanwhile, the tax law Trump signed last week delivers more than $1 trillion in benefits to the top 1 percent while steeply cutting Medicaid and food stamps, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank.

“They just got a massive tax bill that is overwhelmingly tilted for the wealthy, and to hide the ball, they’re trying to unilaterally deliver additional tax cuts for the wealthy,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, another left-leaning think tank. “Why don’t they think the wealthy got enough in the tax bill they just passed?”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, also a left-leaning think tank, has warned that indexing capital gains to inflation without adjusting other parts of the tax code would open up new tax-avoidance strategies. And the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, has said that it is “unlikely that indexing capital gains for inflation would provide the economy a meaningful boost,” while stressing the complexity of implementing the proposal.

The proposal faces major legal obstacles, as well.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 1992 concluded that the Treasury Department did not have the authority for the unilateral cut. The change, if implemented unilaterally, would almost certainly face an immediate court challenge.

But conservatives have said they are optimistic they can persuade Trump. They are pitching the shift as providing relief from the inflation that occurred during the Biden administration, which Trump has frequently railed against. Trump also said in 2019 that it would be “very easy to do” and that a majority of his White House economic advisers supported it.

Stephen Moore, who has served as an economic adviser to Trump, said the proposal should be characterized as providing benefits to seniors, since it would lower their taxes on sales of stocks and potentially homes, though the first $500,000 in capital gains from home sales are already protected from taxes.

“Indexing capital gains is a layup — it’s something that would be hard for Democrats to argue against. It would be a big win for seniors, and it would unlock a lot of capital,” said Moore, who is also senior economic adviser for the America First Policy Institute and chair of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, two conservative groups. “This something we’re really pushing, and the White House has been interested.”

The Independent Women’s Voice, another conservative group, is expected to join the push. Heather R. Higgins, chair of the Independent Women’s Forum, said in a statement that “this is one of those good ideas that should be a no-brainer and nonpartisan. … Keeping these dollars matters to women, families, and small businesses.” Higgins added that the administration should make the change via executive order if passing legislation was not feasible. Americans for Tax Reform also pointed to IRS data showing 30 million returns had capital gains filings of some amount, and that 22 million of those were in households with $200,000 or less in gross income.

Some GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and Ted Cruz (Texas), have endorsed legislation to enact the change. House and Senate Democrats are expected to overwhelmingly oppose the measure.

This Will Not Be Fun

It seems unclear when we'll start to feel the crunch, but we're very much in line to expect increases in the cost of just about everything we buy. Duh.

And part of that problem is that some companies whose stuff isn't imported - or are selling stuff that's impacted just a little - will see the tariffs as an opportunity to jack up their prices right along with everybody else.

And I'll go out on the limb here and say there are politicians just itchin' to use the potentially backbreaking effects of the tariffs as leverage to kill taxes altogether (some have talked about this for a long time, and we're getting it from Trump now too). We may start to hear about attempts to re-animate some variation on the stupid idea that a flat tax is the fairest way to do things.

Also - there have been proposals floated that we should ditch income tax and go with a universal sales tax, or a value-added tax. This is all regressive as fuck and pushes what's left of the middle class down - and keeps everybody down - while benefiting only people who're making more than 3 or 4 hundred K.

I hate this shit. When we had a graduating, progressive tax schedule, it helped drive the societal machinery that made for a strong and stable middle class, which build up the best overall system ever.

Fake lord knows it wasn't perfect - far from it - but by the middle 60s it seemed like everybody was going to have a shot at the dream. And we'd begun to understand that when everybody has a shot, and everybody understands that everybody deserves it, then we're making the whole thing better for ourselves.

I sound like a sad old man waxing nostalgic, so back to the point:

This latest bullshit feels like more coercion. If they make us miserable enough, we'll bend to their will and sign on for whatever might ease the pressure.

So here's a look at what WaPo thinks is headed our way.

Here’s where prices could rise the most and least under Trump’s tariffs

Shoppers will see uneven price increases on goods.

The global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump this week will cause prices to rise on a broad array of food, household items and electronics, economists warn.

But the increases won’t be applied equally — some items are likely to see much higher price hikes than others. Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on imports from nearly every country and imposed higher rates on goods coming from about 60 specific countries.

Consumer goods will be more exposed to higher tariffs than food and drinks

That means products that the United States commonly gets from Vietnam, such as clothing and shoes, would be subject to a new 46 percent tax, whereas goods from Colombia, like flowers, would see a lower new 10 percent levy. Imports from Mexico, such as avocados, will have no new tax. In any case, shopping is about to get more expensive for Americans.

“There’s no way this is going to be absorbed by firms alone,” said Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “This will be felt by consumers.”

The vast majority of consumer goods — almost 80 percent — brought into United States will be subject to tariffs of at least 20 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis of international trade data from the Census Bureau.

Canada and Mexico weren’t included in the latest round of tariffs, though a 25 percent tax was placed earlier this year on some of the goods they export to the United States.

“I think Mexico is breathing a sigh of relief,” said Michael Camuñez, president and CEO of Monarch Global Strategies, which advises businesses in international trade.

Mexico and Canada are the United States’ largest trading partners for food, and imports can avoid tariffs entirely if they are compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement. Still, experts expect food prices to rise somewhat with the new tariffs.

“The bottom line is, it does mean more inflation,” said Tom Bailey, a senior consumer foods analyst at Rabobank.

The prices of food products from other parts of the world, such as tea from Vietnam, could increase much more sharply with the high tax rates.

“Some retailers might just hang up a sign to consumers in shops and say, ‘price plus tariff,’” said Judy Ganes, president of J Ganes Consulting, which works with food and agricultural industries.

Bailey cautioned that prices will not rise exactly in line with the percentage of tariffs — a 46 percent tariff does not mean the final product will cost 46 percent more. Actual increases on finished goods are expected to be much less because some of the cost of the product comes from distribution and operations in the United States.

Countries in Asia are facing some of the highest rates, including goods from China, with tariffs of at least 54 percent, and goods from Vietnam, with a new 46 percent tax. That’s sure to mean higher prices for electronics such as phones, computers and video game consoles, which are often imported from the continent. The tariff imposed on goods from China could add roughly $250 or more to the cost of a $1,000 iPhone, though it’s not clear yet how much of the tariff costs would show up in consumer sticker prices.

The United States Fashion Industry Association said in a statement it was “disappointed” that the Trump administration imposed tariffs on the industry’s trading partners.

Most of the clothing sold in the U.S. is imported from abroad, and even clothing made domestically often relies on fabrics and yarn that are brought in from other countries, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

Apart from paying the new tariffs, clothing companies could also face a pullback from consumers, as people grow increasingly wary about their personal finances.

“If consumers do not feel safe about their financial outlook, they may stop buying clothing,” Lu said.

Ready For A Showdown?

Random-ish thoughts:

• We have to tax the rich now, so we don't have to eat them later
• Double the Social Security cap, and the system is good for generations. Remove it, and the surplus takes care of practically everything seniors will ever need
• Tell Elon to keep his grubby mitts off my stuff
• Republicans aren't trying to eliminate waste fraud and abuse - they're trying to install it. If you're impressed with the way the Russian military is working, you're gonna love privatized schools and Social Security

IF WE TAX THE RICH NOW

WE WON'T HAVE TO EAT THEM LATER

Reminder

Taxing rich people now

means we won't have

to eat them later

What's Coming

In anticipation of the probable push for another round of tax cuts for billionaires and corporations that keep posting record profits:

Today's Vic

About that tariff thingie.

IMHO, Republicans want tariffs for possibly two reasons.

1. To kill off the normal income tax schedules
2. To petty fog their schemes to smash dissent by stripping resources from potential opposition, and keep people so busy just trying to stay afloat that they don't dare make waves

When dealing with "conservatives" on any issue, the one thing you can always count on is that they're angling for control. Minority rule (aka: The Daddy State) doesn't work if people feel free to confront and challenge the privilege and sense of entitlement of snobbish effete plutocrats.

That's why they want to kill women's rights, and cut back voting rights, and squash labor rights, and eliminate Queerfolk rights, and and and.

Tax 'Em Or Eat 'Em

Last year, Walmart posted a profit of almost $150B.

They could've raised the salaries of every one of their US employees by $20K, and still netted over $112B.

$112,000,000,000.00

PROFIT

And BTW - Walmart employees are still among the largest groups that have to tap Medicaid and Food Stamps to make ends meet.

And Walmart (out of the goodness of their hearts I'm sure) maintains a permanent discount schedule for SNAP recipients.

You pay taxes to help the poor, and a shitload of that money goes into the pockets of the Walmart gang.

What was that shit you were talkin' about Welfare Queens?

I Will Stop You

I think Trump has been worried that he might not get the old money Republicans to go along with his hare-brained schemes, so he's emphasizing his intentions to serve the plutocracy by telling us straight out that he's all for shit-canning every progressive policy that's been put in place since FDR.

• Privatize Social Security
• Voucherize Medicare
• Kill Obamacare outright
• Eliminate EPA and OSHA (and the departments of Energy and Education, et al)

In a democracy, even very poor people have power thru the various agencies and regulatory bodies that their votes got politicians to create, and push those politicians to maintain.

In a plutocracy, people who don't have the money don't have the power.

Today's Debunkment

Actually, a blast from the past.

It starts out with a good explanation of the Marginal Tax Rate Increase, and the Wealth Tax.

AOC proposed an increase to 70% for anything over $10M in a year:

• So you pay the usual 37% on everything up to $10,000,000.00 (that's 37% assuming your clever tax accountant can't jigger up a way to exempt it)

Warren's proposal of a Wealth Tax:

• 0% tax on anything up to $50,000,000.00
• 2% on everything over that

Sorry not sorry, but I'm not going to believe you'd be plunged into destitution if we forced you to live on 63% of $10M, plus 30% of another $10M.

You can't live on $750,000 a month? You're gonna have to scrimp? Maybe give up HBO?

Give it a fuckin rest.

Robert Reich: