In America today, corporate greed and
corruption is destroying the social and economic fabric of our society,
where a small group of ultra-wealthy CEOs are making the decisions that
increasingly determine our economic, environmental and political future.
For too long, these greedy corporate CEOs have rigged the tax code,
killed market competition, and crushed the lives and power of workers
and communities across America. Year after year we’ve seen wages slashed
and thousands of workers laid off, all while the richest corporate CEOs
pay themselves huge bonuses. They got away with it through a broken
campaign finance system, where a few large campaign donations can get
you the ear of any politician.
Now Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in history, has brought this corporate corruption straight into the Oval Office.
Enough
is enough. With Bernie’s Corporate Accountability and Democracy Plan,
we will give workers an ownership stake in the companies they work for,
break up corrupt corporate mergers and monopolies, and finally make
corporations pay their fair share. When Bernie is president, we’re going
to put an end to the corporate greed ruining our country once and for
all.
Give Workers an Ownership Stake in Corporate America
In
America today, corporate greed is destroying the social and economic
fabric of our society and rapidly moving our nation into an oligarchy,
in which a small handful of multi-billionaires increasingly determine
our economic, environmental, and political future.
Today, the
richest 10 percent of Americans own an estimated 97 percent of all
capital income – including capital gains, corporate dividends, and
interest payments. Since the 2008 Wall Street crash, 49 percent of all
new income generated in America has gone to the top 1 percent. The three
wealthiest people in our country now own more wealth than the bottom
160 million Americans. And the richest family in America – the Walton
family, which inherited about half of Walmart’s stock – is worth $200
billion and owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the American
people.
While the corporate profits that presently go to a small
number of ultra-wealthy families are at or near an all-time high, wages
as a percentage of our economy are near an all-time low.
Instead
of using their massive profits to benefit workers and our society as a
whole, corporate America has pumped over $1 trillion into stock buybacks
to reward already-wealthy shareholders and executives since the Trump
tax plan was signed into law. Meanwhile, as the very rich become ever
richer, the average hourly wage of the American worker has gone up by
just 1 percent from where it was 46 years ago, after adjusting for
inflation. Since 1982, the Walton family has experienced a more than
10,000 percent increase in its wealth, while the median family in
America has less wealth today than it did 37 years ago.
The
reality is that today the executives and biggest shareholders of most
large, profitable corporations could not give a damn about the working
class or the communities in which our corporations operate. Those who
control these behemoth corporations have only one allegiance: to the
short-term bottom line. What happens to their employees, what happens to
the environment, and what happens to the community in which their firms
function matters very little. These are not really
American companies – they are companies currently
located in America at most, and increasingly aren’t even incorporated here but instead merely
selling
here. Tomorrow, if the economics made sense to them, they could be
located in China – and already they are incorporating in offshore tax
havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
This type of greed is not an economic model we should be embracing. We can do better; we must do better.
The
establishment tells us there is no alternative to unfettered
capitalism, that this is how the system and globalization work and
there’s no turning back. They are dead wrong.
The truth is that we
can and we must develop new economic models to create jobs and increase
wages and productivity across America. Instead of giving huge tax
breaks to large corporations that ship our jobs to China and other
low-wage countries, we need to give workers an ownership stake in the
companies they work for, a say in the decision-making process that
impacts their lives, and a fair share of the profits that their work
makes possible in the first place.
If workers had ownership stakes in their companies and an equal say on corporate boards:
- Corporations would be far less likely to shut down profitable factories in the United States and move abroad;
- CEOs would not be making over 300 times as much as their average workers; and
- Companies would be far less likely to pollute the communities in which workers live.
The
time has come to substantially expand employee ownership in America.
Study after study has shown that employee ownership increases
employment, increases productivity, increases sales, and increases wages
in the United States. This is in large part because employee-owned
businesses boost employee morale, dedication, creativity and
productivity, because workers share in profits and have more control
over their own work lives.
Employees in worker-owned companies are
not simply cogs in a machine owned by someone else. They play a central
role in determining what the company does and how it is run.
By
giving workers seats on corporate boards and a stake in their companies,
we can create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1
percent. Not only are we going to make it much easier to join a union
and much harder to misclassify workers through the Workplace Democracy
Act and increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. With this proposal we
are going to fundamentally shift the wealth of the economy back into the
hands of those who create it.
As president, Bernie will:
- Share Corporate Wealth with Workers.
Under this plan, corporations with at least $100 million in annual
revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet total,
and all publicly traded companies will be required to provide at least 2
percent of stock to their workers every year until the company is at
least 20 percent owned by employees. This will be done through the
issuing of new shares and the establishment of Democratic Employee
Ownership Funds.
- These funds will be under the control of a Board
of Trustees directly elected by the workforce. Employees will be
guaranteed payments from the funds equivalent to their shares of
ownership as equal partners in the funds.
- Workers will be
guaranteed the right to vote the shares given to them through this plan.
The funds will enjoy the same voting rights as any other institutional
shareholder and their shares will not be permitted to be transferred or
sold. Instead, they will be held permanently in trust for the workforce.
Dividend payments will be made from the Funds directly to employees.
- According
to the most recent statistics, 56 million workers in over 22,000
companies in America would benefit under this plan.An estimate based on
data from over 1,000 companies shows that directing 20 percent of
dividends to workers could provide an average dividend payment of over
$5,000 per worker every year.
- Democratize Corporate Boards.
Under this plan, 45 percent of the board of directors in any large
corporation with at least $100 million in annual revenue, corporations
with at least $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly
traded companies will be directly elected by the firm’s workers –
similar to what happens under “employee co-determination” in Germany,
which long has had one of the most productive and successful economies
in the world.
- When workers have a seat at the table, when they
are involved in the decision-making that impacts their jobs and their
work at the desk or on the shopfloor the results are clear – absenteeism
goes down, productivity goes up, and people stay at their jobs for
longer periods of time.
- When workers are respected on the job as
full human beings who help make decisions for a profitable company,
rather than being mere cogs in the machine, morale goes up. And workers
who sit on corporate boards will not vote to pay themselves poverty
wages or ship their own jobs to low-wage countries to further enrich
overpaid CEOs and a few wealthy stockholders.
- Require Federal “Stakeholder” Charters for Large Companies.
Under this plan, U.S. corporations with more than $100 million in
annual revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet
total, and all publicly traded companies must obtain a federal charter
from a newly established Bureau of Corporate Governance at the
Department of Commerce. This new federal charter will require corporate
boards to consider the interests of all of the stakeholders in a company
– including workers, customers, shareholders, and the communities in
which the corporation operates.
- In October of 1981, the Business
Roundtable, a group comprising the CEOs of most of the largest
corporations in the country, issued a “Statement on Corporate
Responsibility.” As journalist Ken Jacobsen documents,
“the Business Roundtable, which groups the CEOs of the largest US
firms, recognizes six constituencies – customers, employees,
communities, society at large, suppliers, and shareholders – as forming
the ‘web of complex, often competing relationships’ within which
corporations operate. It accepts the idea that ‘shareholders have a
special relationship to the corporation’ but doesn’t allow their
interests to trump all others.” Here is an excerpt from the Business
Roundtable statement in 1981:
- “Balancing the shareholder’s
expectations of maximum return against other priorities is one of the
fundamental problems confronting corporate management. The shareholders
must receive a good return but the legitimate concerns of other
constituencies also must have appropriate attention. Striking the
appropriate balance, some leading managers have come to believe that the
primary role of corporations is to help meet society’s legitimate needs
for goods and services and to earn a reasonable return for the
shareholders in the process. They are aware that this must be done in a
socially acceptable manner. They believe that by giving enlightened
consideration to balancing the legitimate claims of all its
constituents, a corporation will best serve the interest of the
shareholders.”
- This statement was rewritten in
1997, when the Business Roundtable adopted a statement that put
shareholder returns ahead of everyone else. This year, the Business
roundtable released empty words recognizing the error in admitting
corporations put profits and shareholder returns above everything else.
Empty words are not enough. This plan will ensure that corporations
conduct business in a fair way – a way that treats workers and the
communities in which businesses operate with respect. In order to
conduct business, a federal charter that ends the practice of putting
shareholder returns above everything and requires corporations to
conduct business in a way that takes into account the interests of all
stakeholders must be obtained.
- Ban Stock Buybacks.
Under this plan, large-scale stock buybacks will be treated like stock
manipulation, just as they were before 1982. This will be done by
repealing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s misguided Rule
10b-18. Since Trump signed his tax plan into law, corporations have
announced over $1 trillion in stock repurchases which provide absolutely
no benefit to the job-creating productive economy. These buybacks are
nothing more than stock price manipulation and must be treated as such.
- Require Firms that “Outsource” Production to Low Wage Countries or Automate to Convey Shares to “Laid Off” Employees.
Under this plan, the owners of firms that dispose of American labor to
take advantage of robots or cheap labor overseas will be required to
share the gains that they make through such practices with those whom
these practices harm. Champions of “globalization” and “automation”
often claim “everybody wins” through these practices, or that at least
the gains exceed the losses. If those claims are true, then the owners
of those firms can more than afford to share their gains with the
workers they displace. It is time to enable the owners of outsourcing
and automating firms literally to “put their money” – that is, their
ownership shares – “where their mouths are.”
- Establish a U.S. Employee Ownership Bank.
Under this plan, a $500 million U.S. Employee Ownership Bank will be
created to provide low-interest loans, loan guarantees, and technical
assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses through
the establishment of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) or Eligible
Worker-Owned Cooperatives. In order to be eligible for assistance under
this plan, the ESOPs or worker coops would need to be at least 51
percent owned by workers.
- Guarantee a Right of First Refusal.
Under this plan, workers will be given the right to buy a company when
it goes up for sale, is closing, or if a factory is moving overseas and
will receive financial assistance from the U.S. Employee Ownership Bank
to make that possible.
- Create Worker Ownership Centers.
Under this plan, worker ownership centers, modeled after successful
programs in Ohio and Vermont, will be established in every state and
regional center in the country. These centers will educate retiring
business owners and workers about the benefits of employee ownership. It
has been estimated that with education and financial assistance from
the federal government between 150,000 to 300,000 retiring owners of
small to mid-sized businesses could sell their companies to their
workers.
- Diversify Corporations. Under this plan, we will
develop rules to diversify corporate boards by ensuring a significant
portion of every board be comprised of people from historically
underrepresented groups (e.g. marginalized by gender, race, ethnicity,
religion, disability or sexuality). And we will require every
corporation to complete an annual report that gives the compensation,
gender, and racial composition of board and employees.
Shareholder Democracy
Today
in the United States, a tiny group of asset managers control most of
the votes in the economy. They control shares in corporations, which
control our workplaces, our pay, our security in retirement, and our
environment. The three biggest asset manager firms – BlackRock, State
Street and Vanguard – if combined would be the largest shareholder in
438 out of the S&P 500 largest corporations.
In each firm, there are just 10 to 20 people working in corporate
governance departments, who cast the votes on all corporate shares that
they control. Under
50 people control the votes in the American economy.
These
asset managers oppose labor unions and fair wages. They support
escalating pay for billionaire CEOs. They oppose action to end
discrimination at work and stop the gender pay gap. They
oppose meaningful action to combat climate damage. They oppose an end to corporate political spending, and billionaires buying elections, under the disastrous
Citizens United decision.
The voting power asset managers control comes from
other people’s money.
It doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to us. It comes from Americans
saving for retirement, in group and single-employer pension plans, in
401(k)s, in life insurance, and in mutual funds. But the share of
workers’ capital in the stock market has been shrinking since the 1980s.
Inequality has skyrocketed as workplace democracy and collective
bargaining have been attacked. This has meant a smaller slice of the pie
for American labor, and a growing slice for Wall Street. We need to
rebalance the share of income and wealth in favor of labor. We need to
give America a pay raise. We need to expand democracy in the workplace
and the economy.
As president, Bernie will:
- End
the monopoly of shareholders on voting rights in the American economy.
Every employee should be guaranteed the right to vote at work, and have a
voice in setting their pay, regardless of the kind or size of company
or firm they work for.
- Ban asset managers voting on other
people’s money, unless they are following instructions, just like we
banned broker-dealer voting in the Dodd-Frank Act.
- Guarantee the
right of every saver to elect representatives who set voting policy in
corporations, in multi-employer pensions, single-employer pensions, in
401(k) funds, and every other form.
- Organize sectoral pension
plans, with more bargaining power, that can ditch Wall Street asset
managers and take voting in-house, as we revitalize sectoral collective
bargaining.
Break Up Monopolies and Make Markets Competitive
Today,
we are seeing a level of corporate concentration not seen since the
Gilded Age. Over the past 40 years, nearly every single industry in the
country has become more concentrated. Monopolies and oligopolies rule
over every aspect of American life, from the
food we eat, the
beer we drink, the
airlines we fly, even to the
eyeglasses we wear. Without competition, these corporations are able to gouge consumers, extort suppliers, and stifle innovation.
At
the turn of the 20th century, Congress saw the need to restrict the
monopolistic and unfair practices of massive trusts and corporations.
The Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Federal
Trade Commission Act gave wide latitude for the federal government to
enforce anti-monopoly policy, recognizing the destructive nature of
unchecked corporate power. However, over the past several decades, the
federal judiciary and antitrust agencies have been hijacked by
right-wing, corporate-aligned ideologues who have made the failed
Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s idea of “consumer welfare” the
guiding principle for antitrust law. In implementing Bork’s far right
ideology, the Supreme Court has weakened laws put in place to protect
people from consolidation and monopolization and has left the economy to
be run by a few large corporations.
This has resulted in a new era of monopoly power. Concentrated markets have led to
lower wages
and less innovation. We are seeing large corporations stamp out fair
competition, excluding smaller rivals and raising prices for consumers.
These
large corporations are also able to create laws that benefit them, as
we’ve seen with companies like Amazon fight to pay no taxes in the
communities where they operate, while at the same time paying nothing in
federal taxes. Consolidation of large hospital systems has led to
higher prices and worse service. In agribusiness, Bayer controls a seed
monopoly that crushes small farmers, and Tyson Foods locks powerless
chicken farmers into exploitative contracts with no way out.
We
are seeing mega-mergers like the one between T-Mobile and Sprint, which
represents a gross concentration of power that runs counter to the
public good. Americans deserve affordable wireless access. This merger
will not only lead to fewer options and higher prices for consumers, but
it could lead to 30,000 jobs lost and reduced wages for thousands more.
Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox has created a conglomerate
that controls media in sports, in movie theaters, and on television.
Bernie
believes we need to rediscover the American tradition of controlling
corporate power and promoting fair competition through antitrust. He
will halt anticompetitive mergers, break up existing monopolies and
oligopolies, and appoint federal regulators ready to take action on
behalf of workers and consumers – not massive corporations. He will take
antitrust enforcement authority out of the control of the captured
judiciary and create markets that work for all, not just the wealthy and
well-connected.
Review All Mergers that Have Taken Place During the Trump Administration
The
Trump administration has been plagued by corruption and its approvals
of mergers and acquisitions have been no different. We have seen the
administration approve mergers after CEOs and investors spend hundreds
of thousands of dollars at Trump hotels, despite knowing that it will
result in thousands of workers losing their jobs. This is unacceptable
and under Bernie’s administration, these mergers will be reviewed and,
when necessary, undone.
Furthermore, over the past 40 years we
have seen a huge rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions
approved. We can see this has led to lower wages, stagnant growth and
innovation, and left our economy unstable. The Federal Trade Commission
must conduct a comprehensive study to investigate the impacts these
mergers have had on competition, our economy, and workers, and establish
new guidelines that restrict mergers and acquisitions.
As president, Bernie will:
- Have
the FTC conduct a thorough review of all mergers and acquisitions since
Trump took office and undo those that have created highly concentrated
markets, demonstrably caused harm to workers, raised prices, or reduced
competition.
- Have the FTC conduct a review of all mergers and
acquisitions from the past 40 years to set up new guidelines for
approval that will have a special focus on economic security, job
security, and competition.
- This report will also take a special look at behavioral data that companies collect and the relationship that information has with price discrimination.
- In
a Bernie Sanders administration, the FTC will break up corporations
that have accumulated dominant market share and are able to wield their
market power in anti-competitive ways.
Reinvigorate the Federal Trade Commission
The
Federal Trade Commission has failed its mission. Antitrust enforcement
has fallen to almost none in recent years. Under the Trump
administration, the FTC has shown deference to the largest, most
powerful corporations instead of fighting for workers and consumers.
When the FTC settled with Facebook for $5 billion over egregious privacy
violations, Facebook’s stock
rose, as investors knew it was a
slap on the wrist. Similarly, the FTC’s recent settlement with YouTube
over child privacy violations amounts to just three months of ad
revenue. Even as it has handled monopolists with kid gloves, it has
attacked the organizing efforts of workers and professionals, including
in the gig economy.
The FTC has lost its credibility as a
regulatory agency. A Sanders FTC will be reinvigorated. Bernie will
appoint commissioners who serve the public interest and will end the
revolving door of FTC commissioners and staff leaving to work for the
very same corporations they were previously in charge of regulating.
All
too often, decisions about mergers and acquisitions are determined by
judges, not expert regulators, and have to go through a complicated
legal system to be overturned. This is not how other nations approach
mergers and acquisitions. The Federal Trade Commission must be given the
authority to halt mergers and impose fines on companies that violate
FTC guidelines without long, costly, and ideological court battles.
Judges do not have the expertise to determine the economic and labor
impacts of mergers and the FTC, whose staff has the training needed to
make these decisions, must have the authority to approve or deny
mergers.
As president, Bernie will:
- Expand the authority of the FTC to allow it to impose administrative fines on companies and halt mergers without challenging them in federal court.
- Expand the authority of the FTC to review the non-coordinated effects of mergers by different entities in the same market or closely related markets.
- Produce an annual report on the impacts of mergers across markets or closely related markets.
- Explicitly grant the FTC full rulemaking authority, under the Sherman, Clayton, and Federal Trade Commission Acts, to establish rules for a fair, competitive marketplace.
- Repeal the additional rulemaking burdens placed on the FTC under the Magnuson-Moss Act.
- Repeal
the section of the Magnuson-Moss Act that states the FTC shall be
funded through appropriations, and clarify that the FTC will be granted
reasonable fees needed to carry out its duties.
- Ban the revolving door of personnel between industry and regulators.
Institute New Merger Guidelines
Guidelines
for approving mergers reflect pro-corporate ideology and should instead
account for the adverse effects mergers often have on workers,
consumers, and our economy as a whole. While mergers have historically
been great for large corporations, they have hurt workers by closing
down plants and reducing wages, and have hurt our economy and our
democracy by consolidating market power to a few actors who control
entire markets and industries.
The Federal Trade Commission will have the authority to approve or deny mergers, and will focus on people, not profits.
As president, Bernie will:
- Institute bright-line merger guidelines that set caps for vertical mergers, horizontal mergers, and total market share.
- Instruct
the FTC to produce a report to identify common practices that result in
anti-worker behavior, threaten competition, or engage in price
discrimination (this includes using behavioral data to get customers to purchase goods and/or services that they would not normally purchase at a price that is inflated).
- No
merger will be approved for companies that engage in the behaviors
identified by the FTC as harming workers, competition, or fair pricing.
- End institutional deference to the “consumer welfare standard.”
- Place a moratorium on mergers and vertical integration of large agribusiness corporations.
Ensure Fair Contracts
Corporations
and employers have an unprecedented amount of power over workers,
consumers, and suppliers. While corporations will argue that a signed
contract is freely agreed to, in reality there is often no choice but to
agree to the terms set by these corporate overlords. Corporations use
contracts to rob us of fundamental rights, such as the right to leave
for a better job and hold corporate wrongdoers accountable in court. An
estimated one in five workers is bound by a non-compete agreement,
ostensibly to protect trade secrets and prevent poaching of high-level
executives. Today, maids, hair stylists, and fast food workers are
subject to these clauses. An estimated 60 percent of major franchises
have non-compete clauses in their contracts, which drive down wages and
mobility.
Mandatory arbitration clauses prevent workers and consumers from having their day in court. In 1992, roughly
2 percent of the workforce were bound by mandatory arbitration. By 2000, that number had risen to
25 percent. Now, it’s 55 percent. Nearly
two-thirds
of workers making less than $13 an hour are subject by mandatory
arbitration clauses, including majorities of women, Hispanic, and
African-American workers. For consumers, mandatory arbitration takes
away the option for class-action lawsuits and helps corporations avoid
paying restitution for misconduct and fraud. The Supreme Court has
empowered corporations to use arbitration to deny us our day in court in
front of a jury of our peers.
Even understanding and signing a
contract is no defense when the contract includes a unilateral
modification clause, which stipulates the terms can be changed at any
time, for any reason. Consumers, customers, and workers are subject to
the governance of hundreds of pages of fine-print developed by
highly-paid lawyers for the purpose of shielding corporations and
cementing their market power. The Federal Trade Commission will use its
authority to prohibit unfair methods of competition and ban practices
that tilt the playing field.
As president, Bernie will:
- Ban mandatory arbitration clauses.
- Ban non-compete clauses.
- Ban unilateral modification clauses.
- Ban clauses that deny farmers and consumers the right to repair the equipment and technology they purchase.
- Instruct
the FTC to develop guidelines for anti-competitive exclusivity
agreements and ban practices that lock suppliers into unfair
arrangements.
Make Large Corporations Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes
For
more than 40 years, Wall Street banks, large profitable corporations,
and the billionaire class have rigged the tax code to redistribute
wealth and income to the richest and most powerful people in this
country.
The American people have had enough. They are sick and
tired of profitable corporations like Amazon, General Motors, Eli Lilly,
Chevron, Halliburton, Netflix and Delta making billions in profits, but
paying nothing in federal income taxes.
Working together, a
Bernie Sanders administration will end a rigged tax code and political
system that allows large corporations to shift their profits to the
Cayman Islands to avoid paying American taxes and to ship jobs to China
and other low-wage countries to avoid paying American wages.
If we
are serious about reforming the tax code and rebuilding the middle
class, we have got to demand that the most profitable corporations pay
their fair share in taxes.
End Corporate Tax Avoidance
One
of the biggest outrages in the tax code today is that many of the
largest corporations in the world are able to make billions in profits
and pay nothing in U.S. corporate income taxes. In fact, many of them
receive millions in tax refunds.
Between 2017 and 2018 Amazon,
owned by the wealthiest person in the world, made $16.2 billion in
profits. But not only did Amazon pay nothing in federal income taxes
over those two years, it received a tax
refund of $270 million from the IRS. And Amazon was not alone.
As
a result of the Trump tax giveaway to the rich, the number of large,
profitable corporations paying no federal income taxes doubled last
year. In fact, in 2018, 60 profitable Fortune 500 companies not only
paid zero in federal income taxes, they received a
net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion.
Corporate
tax avoidance did not begin with the Trump tax cuts, but it certainly
made a bad situation far worse. At a time of record-breaking profits,
large corporations actually paid $92 billion less in taxes in 2018 than
the year before – a drop of 30 percent.
In 1952, corporate income
taxes accounted for 32 percent of all federal revenue. But last year,
just 6 percent of all federal revenue came from corporate income taxes, a
five-fold drop over that time period.
According to the Office and Management and Budget, corporate tax revenues in 2018 were just
1 percent of GDP, tying the lowest points since the 1930s and less than half the average over the past 85 years.
The
reality is that we now have a tax code that has legalized tax dodging
for large corporations and includes a myriad of tax breaks, deductions,
credits, and tax avoidance loopholes that Bernie’s plan will end.
One
of the major reasons for this tax avoidance is that corporations have
been setting up thousands of shell corporations in the Cayman Islands,
Bermuda, and other offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes in the U.S.
This
situation has become so absurd that one five-story office building in
the Cayman Islands is the “home” to more than 19,000 corporations.
The
good news is that the overwhelming majority of the American people are
demanding that corporations pay their fair share of taxes. According to
the latest Gallup poll, 69 percent of the American people believe that
corporations are paying too little in taxes.
And a survey by the
Pew Research Center found that the fact that corporations do not pay
their fair share is the single issue about the tax code that
bothers them the most.
The
time has come to tell corporate CEOs and their wealthy stockholders:
You cannot have it all. You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in
this country go hungry and veterans sleep out on the streets. You can’t
continue getting tax breaks by shipping American jobs to China. You
can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens while
there are massive unmet needs in every corner of this nation. Your
greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of
America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans.
The Plan
As
president, Bernie will raise up to $3 trillion over 10 years by
repealing all of the disastrous corporate tax breaks enacted under
Trump, closing corporate tax loopholes, and demanding that large
corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
Of this revenue, $2
trillion will be used to help fund Bernie’s Green New Deal to combat
climate change, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure to make it more
climate resilient, and create millions of good-paying union jobs in the
process. The rest will be used to help create an economy that works for
all of us, not just the top 1 percent.
Under this plan, Bernie will:
- Restore the corporate tax rate to 35 percent from 21 percent.
- Ensure that corporations pay 35 percent by eliminating virtually all corporate tax breaks and loopholes.
- This
includes transitioning to economic depreciation for all investments,
which partially offsets the tax advantage of investing in automation
over labor.
- This includes further limiting the interest deduction to 20 percent of adjusted taxable income and tightening related rules.
- Eliminate the use of offshore tax havens by:
- Applying the same tax rate on offshore and domestic income and applying a per-country limit on the foreign tax credit.
- Eliminating
inversions by limiting interest deductions to 105 percent of a
corporation’s share of net interest expense over worldwide earnings,
treating companies managed and controlled in the US as domestic
corporations, and tightening the definition of inverted corporations to
ones owned by 50 percent of the same shareholders after a merger.
- Tightening
other rules including limiting treaty shopping; reforming the base
erosion and anti-abuse tax rate by lowering its threshold for
application, raising its rate to 17.5 percent, and excluding deductible
payments that give rise to includible US income; eliminating the tax
break for foreign derived intangible income (FDII), and denying foreign
tax credits for excise tax payments by oil, extractive, gambling, and
other companies.
- Requiring corporations with revenues
over $25 million to publicly disclose significant portions of their tax
returns and country by country financial information including earnings,
financial accounts, and tax payments in other countries.
- Eliminating
the 20 percent deduction on pass-through business income and requiring
large pass-through businesses to be subject to corporate taxes.
If this plan had been in effect last year, instead of paying nothing in federal income taxes:
- Amazon would have paid up to $3.8 billion in taxes.
- Delta would have paid up to $1.8 billion in taxes.
- Chevron would have paid up to $1.6 billion in taxes.
- GM would have paid up to $1.5 billion in taxes.
Minh Ngo
