Biden to propose minimum tax on billionaires in budget

President Biden will propose a new 20 percent minimum tax on America’s wealthiest households as part of his fiscal 2023 budget, according to a White House fact sheet released on Saturday.  

The White House said that the “billionaire minimum income tax” Biden will propose would apply to the top 0.01 percent of American households, or those worth more than $100 million. More than half of the revenue raised by the proposed minimum tax would come from households worth more than $1 billion, according to the fact sheet.   

“President Biden is a capitalist and believes that anyone should be able to become a millionaire or a billionaire,” reads the fact sheet describing the tax proposal. “He also believes that it is wrong for America to have a tax code that results in America’s wealthiest households paying a lower tax rate than working families.” 

The White House estimates that the minimum tax, which was first reported Saturday by The Washington Post, would reduce the deficit by roughly $360 billion over the next 10 years.  

The new proposal would require wealthy households to pay 20 percent in taxes on their “full income,” including standard taxable income as well as unrealized income like gains from stocks. 

Such a proposal would need to be passed by Congress. 

Democrats in Congress have previously debated how to raise taxes on America’s most wealthy. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) unveiled a billionaire tax proposal last fall that would tax investment gains of taxpayers with assets exceeding $1 billion or income of over $100 million.   

Biden is expected to release his full budget proposal for fiscal 2023 on Monday, days after returning to Washington from a high-stakes trip to Europe that focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

Presidential budgets are not typically passed by Congress, but they send a signal of the administration’s priorities for the coming year. 

Biden has previously sought to increase taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations in order to offset costs of his domestic “Build Back Better” agenda. However, negotiations over the sweeping domestic policy proposal stalled late last year when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he could not support the House-passed version of Biden’s proposal.  

Biden is hoping to pass a scaled-back version of the original legislation but will need Manchin to be on board first.  

Updated at 6:03 p.m.