Brian Galle has been keeping busy this past year.<\/p>\n
Galle, a UC Berkeley School of Law professor who teaches courses on taxation and nonprofit organizations, has overseen two projects designed to reign in the power of the ultrarich.<\/p>\n
The first, a book titled \u201cHow to Tax the Ultrarich,\u201d proposes reformed taxation of the ultrarich\u2019s investments and inheritances at the federal level. The second, a statewide ballot initiative called the California Billionaire Tax Act, seeks to make it on the ballot in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look around, you might say, \u2018It seems like billionaires might be in charge of a little bit too much\u2019 \u2014 they made (up) 20% of all campaign expenditures last year, they\u2019re half of the U.S. Cabinet and they seem to own all the media companies,\u201d Galle said. \u201cSo you might think we need to do a better job taxing megamillionaires and billionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Galle, the reason the ultrarich don\u2019t pay their \u201cfair share\u201d is because our tax system doesn\u2019t capitalize on rare moments to tax them.<\/p>\n
Galle\u2019s book, published by the Roosevelt Institute in January, proposes a new form of a retrospective, realization-based tax on incredibly wealthy households called the Fair Share Tax, or FAST. The FAST adds an interest-like extra tax on taxpayers who hold their assets for long periods, being imposed at sale like the current capital gains tax.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re giving billionaires this choice about when to pay tax, and they\u2019re mostly waiting,\u201d Galle said. \u201cNow they do occasionally sell some stuff, or they draw some salary, and so we have some moments where we tax them; the problem is we\u2019re not doing enough with those few moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to the book, Galle also worked with Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West on the California Billionaire Tax Act, a statewide ballot initiative that proposes an emergency tax on billionaires to restore $100 billion in state healthcare funding lost to federal cuts.<\/p>\n
The proposed 5% tax on Californians worth more than $1 billion would not only go toward healthcare costs, but would also fund state public education and food assistance programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t fill that $100 billion hole, it\u2019s going to be more expensive for all California business owners to make payroll and to hire people,\u201d Galle said. \u201cAs someone who\u2019s about to go out into the California economy, you want it to be more affordable for your future employer to be able to give you health insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal has caused a recent stir in California politics. Gov. Gavin Newsom came out against the proposal, claiming the tax would drive out key business contributors to the state\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
Galle rejected this fear, saying he is not concerned with capital flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason billionaires are rich is mostly because they have big, complex businesses that they\u2019re closely tied to, and it\u2019s hard to just walk away from that and go somewhere else,\u201d he said. \u201cToday, California has a bigger share of million-dollar earners than before they raised taxes, so it seems like California\u2019s good at attracting and creating millionaires, notwithstanding the tax rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal will have to collect nearly 900,000 signatures to make it on the November ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian Galle has been keeping busy this past year. Galle, a UC Berkeley School of Law professor who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[74243,66108,101430,457,101432,143,145,144,101429,101431,83502],"class_list":["post-222053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-brian-galle","tag-california-billionaire-tax-act","tag-fair-share-tax","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-how-to-tax-the-ultrarich","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-roosevelt-institute","tag-service-employees-international-union-united-healthcare-workers-west","tag-uc-berkeley-school-of-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}