Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled yet another bold policy for her 2020 presidential campaign Thursday with a new plan that aims to offset tax loopholes and exemptions exploited by the largest and most profitable U.S. corporations.
“Our corporate tax code is so littered with loopholes that simply raising the regular corporate tax rate alone is not enough.”
—Sen. Elizabeth Warren
“Some of the biggest corporations in the country make huge profits but pay zero federal corporate income taxes on those profits,” the Democrat from Massachusetts explained in a Medium post about the proposal. “Our corporate tax code is so littered with loopholes that simply raising the regular corporate tax rate alone is not enough.”
To ensure that major corporations are paying their fair share, the Real Corporate Profits Tax would impose a 7 percent tax on American companies for all annual profits beyond $100 million—which would have applied to about 1,200 public firms last year, according to Team Warren.
The presidential hopeful, in February, vowed to build her campaign on “ideas and principles” rather than through “fancy receptions” and “big money fundraisers.” Her new tax plan follows detailed proposals to establish universal childcare in the United States, help family farmers who are struggling to compete with Big Ag, and break up tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
Her latest announcement comes shortly before Tax Day, and as a new analysis reveals that under the “GOP tax scam” that President Donald Trump signed in late 2017, twice as many corporations are paying no taxes compared with previous years—despite making billions of dollars in profits.
“If you’ve already filed your taxes this year, chances are you paid more than a lot of the big corporations,” Warren pointed out in a series of tweets Thursday morning.
Outlining the need for the new tax, Warren explained that “there are two sets of rules for reporting a company’s profits.”
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