Swanson -- How to Tax a Trillionaire
How to Tax a Trillionaire
If the U.S. government or state governments had a trillion dollars and a willingness to spend money on anything other than wars, and if they worked for us instead of for the oil companies, we could have solar power for almost every household in the country.
Even with little bits of a trillion dollars, we could have great things in the United States: free preschool for anyone who wants it ($35b), Medicaid for the uninsured ($214b), housing for everyone without ($29b). We could have great things for the world that would make the world love us: an end to world hunger ($93b), an end to extreme poverty worldwide ($318b). Or we could just give $2,868 to every man, woman, and child in the United States.
We could have such things by taking away a third of a $3 trillion military budget. And we could have a similar selection of wonders again the next year and the next year and the next year by simply not restoring that monstrous, murderous war spending. Or we could have it once by heavily taxing the wealth of those hoarding the most grotesque sums. After all, one person now has a trillion dollars, and rising, all to himself.
If we had an institution willing to do the decent thing and tax a trillionaire, there are a few ways it could do it — other than busting monopolies, taxing corporations, and otherwise avoiding trillionaires in the first place.
One would be to simply tax wealth. If you were to tax a trillion dollars at 99.99% the hoarder of that disgusting heap of lost opportunities would still have $100 million. There are some bills in Congress to take baby steps in that direction. The sadly inadequate “Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026” (S. 4246, H.R. 8085) would tax almost $30 billion, leaving a trillionaire with over $970 billion. The extravagantly named “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act” (S. 3956, H.R. 7767) would tax 5%, leaving $950 billion. Fair? Really? The stronger but still pathetic “Oligarch Act of 2025” (H.R.2912) would tax almost $79 billion, leaving over $921 billion. Even the “Donald J. Trump Tax Act of 2026” (H. R. 8316) — named for a proposal made by Trump in 1999 — would tax $142.5 billion, leaving $857.5 billion, or vastly more than any human being was hoarding in the year 2025. A Congress or a state government (I’m looking at you, Texas — aren’t you planning a brief moment of governance next January?) could do much better than this if it chose to.
In addition, or instead, we could find the decency to tax estates. The top estate tax rate in the much romanticized 1950s was almost 80%. Now it’s 40% — if actually enforced. In Congress, the “Strengthen Social Security by Taxing Dynastic Wealth Act” (S. 4196) — if someone were to give a trillion dollars away, upon their death or otherwise — would tax $449,999,880,800, leaving a gift of over $550 billion. We could summon up our remaining brain cells and get over the goofiness of being offended that oligarchs might posthumously suffer from a “death tax” and choose not to value royal dynasties over all the actually wonderful things we could have instead. Federal or state governments could find the nerve to represent overwhelming public opinion and tax the rich!
In addition, or instead, we could tax income much, much more progressively, and tax income that people sit on their rears and do nothing for as, or more, heavily than income people actually labor to earn. Even then-President Joe Biden and Senator Ron Wyden at least pretended to want to at least make sure that billionaires (and now trillionaire) not avoid taxes altogether or pay a lower rate than working people, as they’ve done since 2018. Biden’s scheme would have required people who own at least $100 million to pay an effective tax rate of at least 20% on their full income, including realized and unrealized gains. Wyden’s would have raised the tax rate to 23.8% for those whose net wealth either exceeds $1 billion or whose income exceeds $100 million for three consecutive years. The top marginal federal income tax rate in 1952 was 92%. The glory days of fascistic fantasy had an actual top income tax rate of 92%, and today it’s a dream to get something over 20%. Inequality of wealth in the United States has soared by every measure, and it’s terrible for us. We could slow the worsening of the problem by taxing excessive income seriously.
Some states have taken some small steps. The state government of Massachusetts has put in place an additional tax of 4% on taxable income in excess of a million dollars. The economy in Massachusetts hasn’t collapsed. Unemployment hasn’t soared. The devil hasn’t risen to impose a communist dictatorship. All the rich people haven’t fled to live in some less desirable state. In fact, none of the scare scenarios have come true. Instead, the state has simply raised $2.2 billion a year to put to use for the public good — dramatically more than had been predicted. In March 2026, Washington State put in place a new 9.9% tax on income above $1 million, expected to bring in roughly $3 billion to $4 billion a year, starting in 2029. Only Washington D.C. and these six states have a higher tax rate for the wealthiest than Massachusetts: CA, HI, NY, NJ, OR, MN. In the absence of a functioning federal government not focused on cage fights, wars, and environmental destruction, states should step up and do better than Massachusetts or Washington. Those of us who care about anything that costs money, or about not being ruled over by selfish creeps, are going to need to get much more active!
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