2026's Hottest Trend Is Taxing The Super Rich And Giving The Rest Of Us A GD Break

Some plans are good, but others ... could use some work.

There was a time, it seemed, when a lot of Democrats were really trying to run away from the idea that they were in favor of taxing the rich. The Reagan-y narrative that it is practically a sin to “punish success” or “discourage the job creators” or that we’re “demonizing millionaires and billionaires” seemed to have simply become accepted “wisdom” in the US.

Then, a few people started saying it out loud, started suggesting that maybe things had gotten a little bit out of hand and that maybe millionaires and billionaires could afford to pay a little more in taxes so that the rest of us could stay afloat. They started pointing out that a few people have more money than they could ever spend, while nearly half of full-time workers aren’t even making a living wage and that maybe — just maybe — this hasn’t been working out so well.

Incredibly, the sky didn’t fall, and the world did not end. Quite the opposite, really. It got a lot of voters pretty excited about the prospect of the nice lives they could have if a few of their worst financial worries were taken off of their plate. People became less concerned about “rewarding laziness,” because obviously the problem could not possibly be that 44 percent of Americans are so bad at their jobs and so lazy that they do not deserve to make enough to survive. It had to be that 44 percent of the full-time jobs in this country simply do not pay a living wage and would not pay a living wage regardless of how hard people worked, which makes it not a character flaw but a problem in need of a solution.

And now, everyone’s getting in on it!

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As we discussed earlier this month, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, which would create a 5 percent wealth tax for billionaires that would fund healthcare and all kinds of other nice things for regular Americans. It’s a very good bill that would help fund a whole lot of things that we really need — like healthcare subsidies, housing and childcare.

Specifically, it would:

• Provide a $3,000 direct payment to every man, woman and child in a household making $150,000 or less — $12,000 for a family of four

• Reverse the $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act cuts in Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which are estimated to cause more than 50,000 unnecessary deaths

• Expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing for millions of seniors

• Build, rehabilitate and preserve over seven million affordable homes to eliminate the affordable housing gap and end homelessness

• Ensure no family pays more than 7 percent of their income on childcare

• Establish a $60,000 minimum annual salary for every public school teacher in America

• Expand Medicaid home health care for seniors and people with disabilities

Now, the Patriotic Millionaires — an organization for rich folks who think they should be paying more in taxes — have rounded up some pals in the government to introduce The Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, which would be funded by taxing millionaires (like themselves).

The bicameral legislation is being introduced by Van Hollen along with Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly (Arizona), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), Cory Booker (New Jersey), Andy Kim (New Jersey), and Rep. Don Beyer (Virginia). If that particular line-up of Dems makes you feel a tad suspicious … that instinct is not entirely wrong.

The bill would eliminate income tax or at least a significant portion of it for 130 million Americans. According to a press release from lead sponsor Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), it “eliminates federal income taxes for Americans who make under the median cost of living, $46,000. The bill additionally provides a significant tax break to individuals making between $46,000 to $80,500, with proportionally higher rates for heads of households and married couples.”

According to the summary, the legislation:

• Provides a Cost of Living Exemption (COLE) on federal taxes up to the cost of living for a single adult with no children (approximately $46,000 per year), with proportionally larger COLEs for heads of household (1.3x) and married couples filing jointly (2x).

• Phases out the benefit of the COLE at 175% of the exemption amount to ensure the benefit accrues exclusively to low- and middle-income Americans, which extends tax relief to 104 million adults and 26 million children. (Analysis by Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy)

• Transfers the responsibility to the millionaire class by establishing a surtax on incomes over $1 million for single taxpayers, 1.5 times that for joint filers: (Analysis by The Budget Lab at Yale)
  - A 5% surtax on any income over $1m single/$1.5m joint per year - 615,000 filers;

  - 10% surtax on any income over $2m single/$3m joint per year - 241,000 filers; -12% surtax on any income in excess of $5m single/$7.5m joint per year - 77,000 filers.

• Is deficit-neutral and only applies to federal income tax, not payroll or local taxes.

Well, the first good thing here is that they appear to have realized that going after the ultra rich is actually a good look after all. The room must be so loud on that that the noise has actually penetrated whichever deeply out-of-touch focus groups they’ve been relying upon. The second, obviously, is taxing the millionaires. We like that! More of that, please!

The not-so-good thing is the actual legislation itself, which still relies on ceding the aforementioned Reaganesque “taxes are bad and lowering them solves our financial problems” narrative to the Right. Because it doesn’t solve our problems. Sure, this will mean about an extra $4,000 a year for some people and who wouldn’t like an extra $4,000? I would like an extra $4,000! But, especially since we know Republicans would hack away at such a plan until the whole part about taxing millionaires was gone and only the tax cuts remained, it could end up hurting a lot more than helping.

We also have to point out that this will not actually do anything to directly benefit the least well-off in this country, as most of the bottom 20 percent of Americans already do not pay any federal income tax. That doesn’t mean that whatever is left of the working class and the middle class don’t deserve some help as well, but that can be better accomplished by actually spending that tax money on things that would provide relief in a more serious way.

Direct cash infusions to those Americans are extremely helpful on multiple levels because they allow them to immediately pay for basic expenses that they’ve been holding off on, which also provides an immediate boost to the economy. However, if you give that money to someone who does make close enough, enough or slightly more than enough to get by, they are more likely to save it. It’s not bad to save money, it’s responsible to save money, but it doesn’t help in the same way. Like, I said, I’d love an extra $4,000, but if you gave me an extra $4,000, I’d probably buy a new purse and a pair of shoes and put the rest away. Better the government should spend that money on things like child care, universal health care, free tuition at public colleges, and things that will do a lot more for both the economy and our collective welfare than would a minor improvement to my wardrobe.

Besides, I already don’t have space for the purses and shoes I own now.

What we really need, aside from these kinds of social programs, are ways to ensure that we don’t have a situation where half of us are making less than we need to get by in the first place.

That’s why it’s great that, also last week, Sens. Andy Kim (New Jersey) and Patty Murray (Washington) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) announced their intent to introduce the Fair Wages for Home Care Workers Act — which, according to a press release from Sen. Kim’s office, “would codify minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers in federal labor law, expand overtime protections to domestic workers, and address a longstanding injustice in our country—home care workers being unfairly excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act.”

This is, of course, a direct response to the Trump Department of Labor having rescinded a 2013 rule affirming home workers’ rights to a minimum wage and overtime pay, on the grounds that having to pay these people fairly was just too expensive for senior citizens who require at-home medical care. Now, someone who wasn’t a sociopath would have found a better way to address that particular problem — perhaps by joining the many other civilized nations with universal long-term care insurance. But no, the Trump administration went with “Eh, let’s just allow these people to work for peanuts.”

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Granted — none of these bills has a chance of passing right now, with the Republican majority in both chambers and all. There is nothing they like less than making the rich pay their fair share.

But that doesn’t mean that individual states can’t enact similar legislation on their own. By some crazy coincidence, the state of Washington recently introduced both a bill that would provide labor protections for domestic workers, and a bill creating an income tax (Washington is one of nine states that does not have any income tax) for those earning more than a million a year, with the proceeds going to assist families living in poverty.

Pushing bills like these nationally and passing them in the states where that is possible is the best free advertisement Democrats could ask for. It certainly looks a whole lot better than what the Republicans are doing for Americans — starting wars their children can die in and instituting insane tariffs that make things even more unaffordable than they would be otherwise. It also forces them to say “We actually think it’s fine that so many Americans do not earn enough to survive!” or “Yeah, we don’t think the lady emptying Nonna’s bedpan deserves that whopping $7.25 an hour.”

It’s a good move, and we hope to see more.

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