Bloomberg Proposes $5 Trillion in Taxes on the Rich and CorporationsFormer Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York unveiled a plan on Saturday that would raise an estimated $5 trillion in new tax revenue from high earners and corporations, a proposal that would almost certainly raise his personal tax bill but is less aggressive than those from his most liberal rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The proposal includes a repeal of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for high earners, along with a new 5 percent “surcharge” on incomes above $5 million per year. It would raise capital gains taxes for Americans earning more than $1 million a year and maintain a limit on federal deductions of state and local tax payments set under the 2017 law, which some Democrats have pushed to eliminate.
For high-earning owners of businesses that are not organized as corporations, it would repeal a tax deduction granted by the Trump tax cuts — and it would partially repeal Mr. Trump’s income tax cuts for corporations, raising their rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. Before 2017, the top corporate rate was 35 percent.
But the plan notably does not endorse the so-called wealth tax favored by several of the more liberal candidates in the race, like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Such a tax has gained popularity among voters, but Mr. Bloomberg’s advisers believe it could be ruled unconstitutional — a concern shared by some progressive legal experts.
