FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 27, 2025 

CONTACT: Jarice Thompson, jarice@ourfinancialsecurity.org

Thirty Groups Call on Senate to Make Wall Street Pay Its Fair Share

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Wall Street investor class benefits from tax breaks and lax oversight in the Big Brutal reconciliation bill. The legislation guts consumer protections and eliminates critical programs that people rely upon just to enrich billionaires and Wall Street tycoons. The Senate has other options that would avoid slashing basic support for working families.  

Today, Americans for Financial Reform and 29 other labor, community, consumer, investor, civil rights, economic justice, and other groups sent a letter urging Senators to end some of Wall Street’s most egregious tax giveaways. These gaps in the tax code not only enrich the ultra-wealthy and encourage tax dodging, but also fuel financial predation, economic inequality, and corporate abuse. “Raising taxes on Wall Street firms to make sure they pay their fair share could reduce or even eliminate the need for cuts to critical programs that protect families,” the letter states.

The letter identifies commonsense approaches like increasing the tax on stock buybacks, eliminating the overly generous business interest deduction used by private equity firms, closing the carried interest loophole, and imposing tax penalties on corporate landlords that buy up housing stock. These measures have broad-based support — even the president has called for closing the carried interest loophole — and deserve a vote on the Senate floor. 

“The Senate must vote to end the massive tax giveaways for the ultra-wealthy and finally start forcing Wall Street to pay its fair share,” said Oscar Valdés Viera, private equity and capital markets policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. 

Currently, the tax code essentially subsidizes and encourages Wall Street predation and extraction. As the letter concludes: “Wall Street billionaires and private equity titans have gotten rich from generous tax loopholes that have subsidized predatory takeovers that have led to mass layoffs, hospital closures, rent hikes, and bankruptcies, and fossil fuel extraction that harms workers, communities, and the planet. We urge the Senate to close these loopholes to make Wall Street pay its fair share instead of cutting programs that benefit everyone.”

The letter was signed by 20/20 Vision, Accountable.US/Accountable.NOW, Action Center on Race and the Economy, AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, Americans for Financial Reform, Center for Economic Justice, Communications Workers of America (CWA), Community Change Action, Maine People’s Alliance, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, National Employment Law Project, National Women’s Law Center, New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center, OLÉ Education Fund, Open Markets Institute, Oregon Consumer Justice, Oregon Consumer League, Partners for Dignity and Rights, People’s Action Institute, Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Public Citizen, Public Justice Center, Rise Economy, Take On Wall Street, The Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, Transparency Task Force, United Auto Workers, United for Respect, and West Virginia Citizen Action Group.

AFR previously sent a letter to the Senate detailing a longer list of options to close tax loopholes that reward Wall Street and private equity firms at the expense of communities nationwide.  

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