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WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 24: U.S. President Joe Biden listens during a Quad Leaders Summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2021 in Washington, DC. The four leaders are expected to discuss a range of topics including climate change, Covid-19 vaccines and a free and open Indo-Pacific ocean region.
United States President Joe Biden expressed his support on Friday of the idea to tax rich people, urging wealthy Americans to "step up and pay" their "fair share" of taxes amid reports that the Democratic official himself owes the IRS up to $500,000.
Democratic officials, led by the president himself, proposed paying for a pending $3.5 trillion social spending bill through an IRS crackdown on tax cheats. The bill would raise taxes on higher incomes and businesses across the country.
Raising Taxes on Wealth Americans
"We have to rehire some IRS agents, not to try to make people pay something they don't owe, just to say, 'Hey, step up. Step up and pay like everybody else does'," Biden said during a speech at the White House. The Democrat added that it was about time for people to pay their fair share of taxes.
However, it was reported that Biden avoided paying Medicare taxes on speech and book-sale income in 2017 and 2018. He was able to do this by conducting a dubious accounting tactic that many rich people used to keep themselves from paying for federal health programs, the New York Post reported.
Chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, Rep. Jim Banks, criticized Biden's proposal to raise taxes by $2.1 trillion despite skirting his payroll taxes himself. The official said that the Congressional Research Service report, which detailed the Democratic president's avoidance of Medicare taxes, used "S corporations."
The documents wrote that while Biden and his wife, Jill, earned more than $13 million on speaking fees and book sales, less than $800,000 of the total was counted as salary. On the other hand, the White House defended the president by saying that the salaries Biden earned were "reasonable."
Biden's $3.5 trillion bill aims to support child care, education, and health care. The Democratic president calls for targeting tax avoidance while raising taxes on high-income bracket residents to help pay for the massive legislation, Fox News reported.
Biden's Avoidance of Paying for Medicare Taxes
One of the bill's measures was proposed by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden and aims to change the way that the federal government taxes earnings on assets such as stocks and bonds. The idea focuses on wealthy Americans, whose fortune is primarily based on investments rather than salaries.
The income that many people get from those assets, which are classified as capital gains, is currently taxed at a far lower rate than regular wage income. The United States has a marginal tax rate ceiling of 37% on income while capital gains are only taxed a maximum of 20%.
In an interview, Wyden said that one of his priorities in the negotiations was to make it clear that billionaires and exceptionally wealthy Americans were not exempt from the general proposition that other workers experience every year, which is to regularly pay taxes. President Biden echoed the official's sentiments on Friday, expressing his support of the proposal during a press conference. The idea is similar to the Democratic leader's idea of raising capital gains tax to 43%, which is more than double of the original rate, Business Insider reported.
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