FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2017
CONTACT:
Carter Dougherty
carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org
(202) 869-0397
Take On Wall Street coalition submits proposal to Senate Finance Committee to fix rigged tax system
The Take On Wall Street campaign, a group of over 50 community groups, unions, consumer advocates and others — including Americans for Financial Reform, Communications Workers of America, Public Citizen, Institute for Policy Studies, and Americans for Tax Fairness — today called on Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch to adopt tax reform measures that would raise more than $1 trillion in additional revenue, and discourage dangerous Wall Street speculation by requiring the financial services industry to pay its fair share of taxes.
“Our tax system is rigged in favor of Wall Street and the extraordinarily rich, and the rest of us pay the price” said Luísa Galvão, a representative from the Take On Wall Street campaign. “Congress could change this by closing loopholes and restructuring tax policies to stop rewarding Wall Street manipulation.”
The Take on Wall Street campaign submission includes the following proposals to reform our tax system:
- Closing the carried interest loophole which allows billionaire Wall Street money managers to pay lower tax rates than nurses or construction workers
- Closing the CEO Bonus loophole, which allows corporations to deduct CEO salaries above 1 million dollars a year from their taxable-income as long as they call it ‘ incentive pay’
- Creating a Wall Street sales tax that would discourage short-term bets and generate billions in new revenue for services our communities need;
- Creating a small tax on the riskiest big bank borrowing to discourage future bailouts and raise revenue for important public services
- Closing the reinsurance loophole which allows hedge funds and certain insurers to transport money to untaxed foreign “reinsurance” subsidiaries
- Ensuring complex derivatives contracts are not used to avoid taxes.
In support of these proposals groups also submitted over 190,000 petition signatures from campaign members AFL-CIO, Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund, Citizen Action of New York, CPD Action, Daily Kos, People’s Action, People For the American Way, Progressive Congress Action Fund, Rootstrikers, and The Nation, calling for Wall Street to pay its fair share in taxes.
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