Demand Progress

Regardless of who comes out on top after the midterms, Elon Musk will still own Twitter. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. As long as we have oligarchs owning our media, it's going to reflect their interests: not those of everyday people.

Billionaires like Elon Musk privatize benefits but socialize costs by not paying their fair share in taxes like the rest of us. As their wealth balloons, so does their power — over our media, our democracy, our economy and our lives.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress it’s time to start taxing billionaires’ wealth! 

It’s no surprise that the majority of Americans support raising taxes for billionaires.² We’ve watched as billionaire wealth has ballooned — by as much as 62% — during the pandemic.³ Jeff Bezos made $70 billion; Bill Gates profited $18 billion; and Musk himself made $140 billion.⁴ Across the board, billionaires profited off the pandemic while millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet.

Yet the billionaire class pays less in taxes than most ordinary Americans.³ President Biden explained last year that the problem is that our tax code considers income but not wealth. Billionaires exploit the tax system by keeping their money in the stock market, where it’s “taxed at a preferred rate—if it’s ever taxed at all.”³

That needs to change. We need a tax on billionaires’ wealth so ordinary people aren’t forced to subsidize billionaires!

Sign the petition: Tell Congress it’s time to start taxing billionaires’ wealth!

Sources: 

1. New York Times, “Elon Musk Completes $44 Billion Deal to Own Twitter,” October 27, 2022.
2. Institute for Policy Studies, “U.S. Billionaires Got 62 percent Richer During Pandemic. They're Now Up $1.8 Trillion,” August 24, 2021.
3. White House, “New OMB-CEA Report: Billionaires Pay an Average Federal Individual Income Tax Rate of Just 8.2%,” September 23, 2021.
4. The Guardian, “Billionaires add $1tn to net worth during pandemic as their workers struggle,” January 15, 2021.