(Headline USA) Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., shot down President Joe Biden’s proposed billionaire tax this week, saying he would not support the tax on wealthy Americans’ unrealized capital gains.
“You can’t tax something that’s not earned,” Manchin said, according to The Hill. “Earned income is what we’re based on. There’s other ways to do it. Everybody has to pay their fair share.”
The White House unveiled a new proposal this month to impose a 20% minimum tax on rich Americans’ unrealized capital gains, which would raise $360 billion in revenue over a 10-year period, officials said. The tax would target any household with a net worth of $100 million or more.
“It would ensure that, in any given year, they pay at least 20 percent of their total income in Federal income taxes,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
Manchin has expressed disapproval for Biden’s past tax hikes.
“I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people,” Manchin said last year about a different version of the billionaire tax.
“There’s people that basically, they’ve contributed to society,” he said. “They’ve created a lot of jobs and invest a lot of money, and give a lot to philanthropic pursuits.”
Manchin’s continued opposition means Biden’s new proposal is dead on arrival if the White House does try to move forward with it.
Several tax experts have also expressed concern with Biden’s plan, saying that it would be difficult to implement and could trigger an economic setback.
“A lot of this proposal is aiming at people who are just slowly growing assets and not paying any tax because they’re not realizing any gain and are expecting to pass on wealth to their heirs or whomever without paying taxes on it,” Mallon FitzPatrick, a managing director at Robertson Stephens, said. “The mega, mega wealthy rely on that.”
