President Joe Biden will crack down on private jets as part of his plan to raise taxes on the super-rich as he tries to win over voters angry with his management of the economy.
Biden will also propose that billionaires would have to pay a minimum of 25% in federal taxes on their income, while targeting the super-rich like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
Another person who will be affected by his plans is his 2024 rival, Donald Trump, who relies on his private jet, Trump Force One, to campaign across the country. Biden uses the military plane Air Force One for his trips.
The president wants “the rich to pay their fair share,” Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters in a conference call.
President Joe Biden will propose raising taxes on the super-rich as part of his State of the Union address
Brainard noted that the president “will fight for working people and middle-class families like those he grew up with in Scranton.” The President will continue to prioritize the middle class when he lays out his plan for the American economy.’
The broad tax increases are aimed at reducing the US deficit but also boosting Biden’s poll numbers ahead of the November election. Polls show Trump in the lead – by a narrow margin – with eight months to go until Election Day.
Voters give Biden low marks for his handling of the economy. And Trump has repeatedly criticized Biden for the high rate of inflation that has driven up food and fuel prices for consumers.
The president’s proposals will also affect some of his allies: John Kerry, his former climate advisor, uses a private jet. So do celebrities like Taylor Swift and Leonardo DiCaprio, who support the president.
Biden will propose raising the fuel tax on corporate and private jet travel and changing depreciation rules. The White House declined to say how much the fuel tax would increase.
Biden’s new tax plan will affect his rival, Donald Trump (above), who uses his Trump Force One private jet for campaign trips
Biden’s plan will also affect his followers, such as Taylor Swift (above), who uses a private jet
The president will also target corporations, proposing to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent.
Biden will lay out his plans in his State of the Union address Thursday night and next week when he releases his fiscal 2025 budget proposal.
Most of Biden’s tax proposals have little chance of being enacted. Even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress at the beginning of his presidency, Biden could not get the corporate tax rate raised.
However, the tax plans are expected to form a central part of Biden’s re-election campaign, in stark contrast to Trump, whose 2017 ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’ cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
Biden would use some of the revenue to pay for expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, which would help low-income families. And it seeks to permanently reduce health insurance premiums for those who receive their health coverage through the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
The tax rate increase also aims to reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade.
“Congressional Republicans want to further cut taxes for the rich and large corporations, while adding more than $3 trillion to the debt,” Brainard said.
“President Biden has made it clear which side he is on.”
The new taxes will likely hit the richest people in the US, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Billionaire Elon Musk has long criticized President Joe Biden
The proposals include Biden’s earlier calls to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from the current 21 percent, taking back half of the Republicans’ 2017 cut.
Biden now also wants to raise to 21 percent a 15 percent minimum corporate tax on companies reporting more than $1 billion in profits that he secured as part of the 2022 clean energy legislation.
Biden will also ask Congress to pass much stricter limits on business income deductions for executive compensation, capping them at $1 million for any employee.
Current law already prohibits deductions in the compensation of CEOs, CFOs and other key positions. White House officials said the new proposal would cover all employees with salaries above $1 million and raise more than $250 billion in new corporate tax revenue over 10 years.
Biden will also pursue deductions from business income for the use of corporate aircraft, an area that is already the subject of audits by the Internal Revenue Service.
This includes extending the depreciation period for corporate jets to seven years, the same as commercial jets, from the current five years, reducing annual deductions, an administration official said.
Biden will renew his ‘trillion-dollar tax’ proposal, which is actually well below that level. He imposes a minimum 25 percent tax on the income of those Americans with wealth over $100 million.
The average American worker will pay about 25 percent in 2022, the OECD reports. A White House investigation found that the richest people paid about 8 percent between 2010 and 2018.
Biden will pledge to extend Trump-era tax cuts for those earning less than $400,000, call for reinstating a COVID-era expansion of the Child Tax Credit that paid eligible families up to $3,600 a year per child, and increase a tax credit for low-wage earners. workers.
As consumers continue to struggle with high prices, Biden will also outline steps his administration is taking to reduce “corporate scams,” including additional “junk” fees, price gouging and reducing package sizes to conceal price increases.
The so-called ‘shrinkflation’ was lamented on Monday by the Sesame Street muppet, Cookie Monster, in a widely distributed publication on X’s social networks.
Following a move this week to cap credit card late payment fees at $8, Biden will also call for a crackdown on “exploitative” practices with brand-name credit cards, including the devaluation of airline miles and points.
