April 10: 28 Patriotic Millionaires support the Buffett Rule at the White House

April 11: Elspeth Gilmore with our partner, Resource Generation, participates in panel hosted by Congressional Progressive Caucus

Click here to view video

April 13: Chuck  Collins interviewed on Buffett Rule

April 16: Chuck Collins: US News & World Report Buffett Rule Debate

April 17: Tax Day! Lots of Action around the country!

Pie Day video captures our campaign with Resource Generation in actions around the country in 1 min 32 seconds! RG Members in NYC: “Read All About It”.

Chuck Collins speaks out at “Stop the Pledge” Rally outside Grover Norquist’s office in DC.

Chuck Collins at Grover Norquist office: Stop the Pledge Rally

Ann Manning in Minneapolis:

Ann Manning standing with 99% in Minneapolis 2012

Our Voices Were Heard – April Actions is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

Chuck Collins Talks About His New Book, 99 to 1 (Video) is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

The focus of the worldwide Occupy protests is creating a world that works for 99% of people and businesses, not just the richest and most powerful 1%. But who are the 99%? Who are the 1%? How extensive and systemic is inequality in different areas of society? What are its causes and consequence? How is inequality changing in our world? And what can be done about it?

You can catch him on the road as he goes on a nation wide book tour.

See more about the book and the tour dates here.

If you don’t see your town on the list, you petition him to come here.

A new book on inequality by Chuck Collins: 99 to 1 is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

Taxing the Wealthy – TED Talk by Chuck Collins is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

First President Obama did what many rich liberals considered unthinkable, and kept Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans intact during the 2010 lame duck Congress. Then Obama took tax hikes off the table for a last-minute debt ceiling deal last month amidst a standoff by Republicans. For the 2,500 folks of high net worth who joined Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, it was like shouting into a gale of anti-tax hike rancor and indifference.

But Wealth for the Common Good co-founder Chuck Collins refuses to give up so easily. The great-grandson of meat magnate Oscar Mayer, Collins acknowledges taxes on the wealthy are off the table in Congress for now. But that doesn’t mean he’ll relent for a second.

“Public opinion has never been more behind our position that we need to restore balance in the tax code,” he says, “and 30 to 50 years of tax cuts for the wealthy should be reversed.”

In keeping with his mix of idealism and indignation, Collins has co-authored a report released Tuesday through Institute for Policy Studies, “Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging.” The report details how 25 of the 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives took home more CEO pay in 2010 than their companies paid in federal corporate income taxes.

“Instead of sharing responsibility for addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges,” notes Collins, who’s also an IPS senior scholar, “corporations are rewarding CEOs for aggressive tax avoidance.” Among them: International Paper Company CEO John Faraci, who received a 75 percent pay hike in 2010 to pocket $12.3 million. Meanwhile, International Paper received a $249 million federal income tax refund — largely thanks to lobbying efforts to have a wood pulp byproduct some eight decades old listed as an “entirely new biofuel,” the IPS report states.

While the IPS report lit up news and blog sites Tuesday, Collins and his allies have also reveled in a timely media flash point these last few weeks: a Warren Buffett op-ed that ran in the New York Times on Aug. 14, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.”

In that piece, Buffett repeated an oft-delivered message: that he, as a billionaire, gets taxed at a lower rate (17.4 percent) than his employees (33 to 41 percent). But his post debt-ceiling timing, combined with the platform he used, provided major encouragement to wealthy people fighting for higher taxes.

As for why anyone with plenty of money would want their taxes increased, Collins says, “Wealthy people want to live in a good society. They care about kids, they care about the environment, they bring their time and gifts to things they care about. Nobody likes taxes — nobody says, ‘Yeah, taxes.’ But if we don’t raise taxes, people realize they’re going to hurt kids, hurt the environment, and that’s going to be bad for society.”

“That’s a larger point that’s missed in the tax debate,” says Pat Dorsey, vice chairman and director of research and strategy for the Sanibel Captiva Trust Company. “People talk about high taxes and waste such as Medicaid fraud. But the larger point is what benefit do you gain from living in this society, where brain power and acumen can make you a lot of money?”

Dorsey thinks it’s too soon to tell whether Buffett’s outspokenness will spark lasting debate on higher taxes for the rich. Meanwhile, Collins and his allies have fixed their sights on Nov. 23  when a 12-member congressional super committee issues its recommendations on finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

“Now we just have to push as hard as we can over the next eight weeks,” says Agenda Project founder Erica Payne, who has worked closely with Wealth for the Common Good. “I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see the tax increases in there, because if the Democrats don’t have some sort of tax increase, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on them. “We’re not despondent at all.”

Yet some who side with Payne and Collins aren’t so fast to say the tide has turned. “It’s hard to foresee what’s going to happen during this Congress,” says Steve Wamhoff, legislative director of Citizens for Tax Justice. “We have a Republican party completely against any sort of revenue increase, no matter how common sense it is. But Democrats haven’t been the party of fiscal responsibility and tax fairness, either. To us, they really have to work a lot harder at corporate tax avoidance—and they certainly shouldn’t cave in again and extend the Bush tax cuts like they did at the end of last year.”

“I don’t have a good sense how this is going to play out,” says William G. Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There are so many scenarios and they’re all political, not economic. I’ve talked to a lot of people in terms of what the committee is going to do, and opinion is all over the place.”

For his own part, Gale authored “Buffett is Right: Raise Taxes on the Wealthy,” an opinion piece on CNN.com that came out a day after the billionaire’s editorial. “His op-ed raised the issue and helped put it in a public eye,” he says. “There certainly was a fury of discussion after it. I certainly think it was the right thing to do. But as for what the super committee does with it, we’ll have to see.”

Or, as Wamoff puts it: “We can imagine a scenario where the super committee fails to do anything. Doing nothing is the one thing Congress seems to do well. But we’re going to hear about proposals to raise revenue for a while. It’s impossible to believe those pressures will disappear any time soon.”

Millionaires in favor of raising their own taxes remain hopeful is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

Billionaire super-investor Warren Buffett has done it again. The Oracle of Omaha has made a bold and revealing statement about “taxing the wealthy.” In his op-ed in Monday’s The New York Times, Buffett wrote,“While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.”

Buffett revealed that his own effective tax rate — the percentage of his income that he actually pays — is far below his co-workers, thanks to how investment income is taxed at lower rates. Buffett pays an effective rate of 17.4 percent, whereas most middle and upper income individuals pay over 30 percent of their income. He revealed one of the dirty secrets of tax policy — the privileged treatment of income from wealth over income from work and wages.

We now need ten thousand more like Warren Buffett to speak up, people with incomes over $250,000 that know in their hearts that they should pay more.

Of course, we need an engaged public — people in the bottom 98 percent — to mobilize and press for tax increases on the wealthy before any further budget cuts. But enlisting the voices of wealthy people for the common good is a key part of the strategy to change the political dynamics.

The good news is there are already several thousand who have stepped forward and spoken up. Several hundred business leaders and wealthy individuals have joined Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, a joint initiative of the Agenda Project and Wealth for the Common Good. On June 7, the tenth anniversary of the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy, they issued a powerful video calling on Congress to let the tax cuts expire.

These folks, in the top 2 percent of income and wealth holders, eloquently make the case that they have benefited from the generations of public investments that made their wealth possible. They celebrate the fertile soil we have created together in U.S. society for business and wealth creation and believe they have an obligation to future generations to pay their taxes so that others have the same opportunity.

Almost 500 high-income taxpayers support the Fairness in Taxation Act, that would increase top tax rates on millionaires, generating an additional $78 billion in urgently needed revenue. This legislation would also tax both capital gains and wage income over $1 million at the same rates. It would eliminate the “carried interest” loophole that enables billionaire hedge fund managers to have their income taxed at a low 15 percent. This legislation would eliminate the economic distortions that come from taxing income from work at twice the rate as income from wealth and investments.

There are now thousands of business leaders and wealthy investors calling on Congress to stop aggressive tax corporate dodging. They point out that it is bad for business when companies like General Electric and Verizon pay no taxes — and force patriotic domestic companies to compete on an unlevel playing field.

In early July, Senator Carl Levin reintroduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. At a press conference Senator Levin was joined by spokespeople from Business for Shared Prosperity and the Business and Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse campaign. Rep. Lloyd Doggett introduced a version in the House.

Polls show that the public supports raising taxes on millionaires and closing offshore corporate tax shelters as part of getting our fiscal house in order. Yet the Tea Party Republicans have pledged to destroy the economy before raising taxes on their rich patrons. The bottom 98 percent needs to get organized — in mobilizations like the “Other 98 Percent” — to press for tax fairness. But it will enormously help the cause to have more of those who will pay these taxes step forward and speak up.

In our organizing work at Wealth for the Common Good, we share Warren Buffett’s view that many of the rich “love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them… Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.”

Polls show that wealthy people know the tax code is getting less fair and is out of balance. But many of them — like the population as a whole — don’t feel the intensity about tax fairness that they feel about other pressing matters such as education, children’s health, and ecological degradation. Very few people of any economic class feel passionately about tax fairness — to the point where we are politically engaged.

Now is the time for all of us to understand how important this tax debate is — and that everything we care about is under attack by the current drift in politics. We have to get real fired up about tax fairness.

Revenue must be on the table as part of debt and budget debates in the coming months. Congress must let the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy expire, increase top tax rates for millionaires, and eliminate aggressive corporate tax dodging.

Right now, our silence is consent to the status quo of budget cuts and unequal sacrifice. We need millions of ordinary citizens to speak up. And to compliment this, we need tens of thousands of our nation’s business leaders and wealthy individuals to speak out.

The alternative is austerity for everyone but the rich — and a growing economic apartheid in America.

Warren Buffett’s Call: Tax Wealth for the Common Good is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

The already-contentious dispute over tax policy promises to be even more polarized this year, with growing evidence of aggressive corporate tax avoidance, rising concern over our national debt and deficit, and the devastating impact of budget cuts at the federal, state, and local levels.

Everyone agrees we should reform the federal tax code, but there are widely divergent visions as to how.

The Business Roundtable, a private organization comprised of major corporate CEOs, advocates reducing the already loophole-ridden corporate income tax. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois calls for $144 billion in new taxes on the wealthy to trim down the deficit and reduce glaring economic inequalities.

Most lawmakers agree that our revenue system should be simple and fair and raise adequate revenue. Yet there is also recognition that the rules of our tax system should reflect deeper values and serve the larger common good. Just as “budgets are moral documents” — reflecting our most deeply held beliefs and priorities — so are tax policies. There is no such thing as a “value neutral” tax system.

Our present tax code values income from wealth, such as capital gains, over income from work and wages. It gives preferential treatment to the investment income of a hedge fund investor and taxes that income at a lower capital gains level of 15 percent. But we tax the earned wages of a doctor or a scientist at a top income tax rate of 35 percent.

Our present tax system gives advantages to global corporations over domestic businesses and small enterprises. Local businesses must compete on an uneven playing field with global companies that game the system, move income overseas, and pay little corporate income tax toward the public infrastructure, education system, and other public investments that we all depend upon. Our tax code offers larger incentives to mature extractive industries such as oil and natural gas than for activities that conserve resources, care for the earth, and catalyze new green enterprises. Our present tax rules do not reflect the widely held values of our society. Rather, they reflect the designs and worldview of powerful global corporations and wealthy individuals.

A tax code skewed to benefit the powerful is a huge impediment to progress. Our present tax rules freeze us into the economy of the past, rather than help us make a transition to a new economy rooted in ecological sustainability, good jobs, and greater social equality.

Conventional tax wisdom asserts that we should “tax the bads,” by putting a higher price on harmful activities. Hence the notion of “sin taxes” levied on liquor, tobacco, and now, with increasing ferocity, junk food. Taxing these items raises revenue to offset negative societal costs such as alcoholism, cancer, obesity, and poor health. But sin taxes, like any sales tax, are regressive, requiring lower-income households to pay a higher percentage of their income than do the wealthy.

What are the new “bads” of today? What behaviors should we discourage and encourage in the tax system of the future? There are three “bads” that our tax code should be redesigned to address, and in doing so support our transition to a more healthy and sustainable economy: 1) Extreme concentrations of income, wealth, and power that undermine social cohesion and a healthy democracy; 2) Financial speculation, such as the activities that destabilized our economy in 2008, and profligate consumption and waste; and 3) Pollution and the depletion of our ecosystems.

Creating a “Virtuous” Tax Policy
Any discussion of revenue must move in tandem with thoughtful reductions in unnecessary spending, including Pentagon spending that has little to do with our real security. The following proposals are aimed at taxing the “bads” and encouraging a more rapid transition to a new sustainable economy.

1. Taxing dangerous concentrations of income and wealth. A century ago, Theodore Roosevelt advocated for progressive estate and income taxes as a way to reduce the corrosive impact of concentrated wealth and power on our society. Today, extreme levels of inequality are undermining our public health, social mobility, and economic growth. Historically, tax policies have been one of the most important interventions to reduce inequality.

• Levy a progressive estate tax on large fortunes. At the end of 2010, Congress reinstated the estate tax on estates over $5 million ($10 million for a couple) at a 35 percent rate. Congress could close loopholes and raise additional revenue from those with the greatest capacity to pay. The Responsible Estate Tax Act establishes graduated tax rates, with no tax on estates worth under $3.5 million, or $7 million for a couple, and including a 10 percent surtax on the value of an estate above $500 million, or $1 billion for a couple. Estimated annual revenue: $25 billion.

• Institute a wealth tax. A “net worth tax” could be levied on individual or household assets including real estate, cash, investment funds, savings in insurance and pension plans, and personal trusts and can be structured to tax wealth only above a certain threshold. For example, France’s solidarity tax on wealth is for those who have assets in excess of $1.1 million.

• Create additional tax brackets for higher incomes. Under our current rate structure, households with incomes over $350,000 pay the same top income tax rate as households with incomes over $10 million. In the 1950s, there were 16 additional top rates over the highest tax rate (35 percent) that we have today. A 50 percent rate on incomes over $2 million would generate an additional $60 billion a year.

2. Taxing financial speculation. The economic meltdown of 2008 has had huge human costs in the form of unemployment, home foreclosures, and the destruction of private savings. The driving engine of the financial collapse, as recently articulated by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, was a bloated “shadow banking” system that encouraged speculative practices and risk-taking. Monies generated by these proposed taxes could fund proper oversight of the financial sector and consumer protection.

• Speculative trading now accounts for up to 70 percent of the trades in some markets. Commodity speculation unnecessarily bids up the cost of food, gasoline, and other basic necessities. A modest federal tax on every transaction that involves the buying and selling of stocks and other financial products would both generate substantial revenue and dampen speculation. Small investors could be exempted. Estimated revenue: $150 billion a year.

• Another distortion that encourages speculation is the advantaged taxation of income from wealth. Current law subjects most dividend and capital gains income — the income that flows overwhelmingly to wealthier Americans — to a 15 percent tax rate. The tax on wage and salary income, by contrast, can run up to 35 percent. With carefully structured rate reform, we can end this preferential treatment for capital gains and dividends and at the same time encourage average families to engage in long-term investing. Estimated revenue: $88 billion per year.

• End corporate tax dodging through overseas tax havens. Aggressive corporate and individual tax avoidance deprives our nation of revenue needed to maintain and modernize the infrastructure and services underpinning a strong economy. Responsible businesses and banks are hurt when other firms use tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. In using tax havens, companies such as General Electric and Citigroup, for example, shift their responsibility for taxes to the local appliance store or community bank. Estimated revenue: $37 billion per year.

3. Taxing the destruction of nature. Several tax interventions could have a positive impact on reducing the pace of environment destruction and could spawn new industries that are essential for our transition to the new economy. Instead of taxpayers paying indirectly for the huge social costs associated with climate change, pollution, and irresponsible consumption, these taxes would build some of the real costs of destroying nature into purchases.

• Perhaps the most critical tax intervention to slow climate change would be to put a price on dumping carbon into the atmosphere, from our transportation, energy, and other sectors. A gradually phased-in tax on carbon would create huge incentives to invest in energy conservation and regional green infrastructure. Proposals include a straight carbon tax or a “cap and dividend” proposal that would rebate 50 percent revenue to consumers to offset increased costs of some products and still generate $52 billion per year. We could also explore taxes on other pollutants, such as nitrates that are destroying our water supplies.

• Consumption of unnecessary stuff is filling our landfills and destroying our environment. A tax on certain nonessential goods, such as expensive jewelry and techno-gadgets, can be modeled after the European “Value Added Tax” and charged as a percentage of the price of the good. It could apply only to purchases that exceed a certain amount, such as cars that cost more than $100,000. Some states currently charge a luxury tax on high-end real estate transactions.

Objections to these proposals will be strong, along with howls of “class warfare” and “job killing.” Some will argue that government shouldn’t be in the business of “picking winners” in the economy. But the reality is, our current tax policy is picking winners every day. The tax rules are rigged to benefit the wealthy and global corporations at the expense of everyone else.

For several generations after the introduction of a federal income tax at the end of the 19th century, our progressive federal tax system was moderately effective in reducing concentrations of wealth. For example, during the 1950s, wealthy individuals paid significantly more taxes than they do today. Since 1980, however, we’ve lived through a “great tax shift,” as lawmakers moved tax obligations off the wealthy and onto low- and middle-income taxpayers, off corporations and onto individuals, and off today’s taxpayers onto our children and grandchildren.

There is a role for everyone in reversing these backward tax policies. Around the world, coalitions are coming together to push for financial speculation taxes, carbon taxation, and uniform rules to crack down on corporate tax dodging. Important business leaders and small business owners, workers, and consumers are advocating for greater fairness in the tax system. Together, we can press for real changes in the tax code that will help us make the fundamental shift required in the coming decade.

Chuck Collins is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business and civic leaders, wealthy individuals, and partners that promotes fair taxation to support public investment in a healthy economy. Check out the “listening project” at wealthforcommongood.org.

	Taxes and the Common Good. By Chuck Collins. Sojourners Magazine, April 2011 (Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 28)

Sojourners Magazine: Taxes and the Common Good is an article on Wealth For Common Good.

We’re chumps unless we force Congress to stop tax haven abuse.

Instead of cutting state and federal budgets, the United States should crack down on the corporate tax dodgers thumbing their noses at us.

Across the nation, states are making deep cuts that will wreck the quality of life for everyone to close budget gaps that total more than $100 billion.

But there’s a more sensible option. Overseas tax havens enable companies to pretend their profits are earned in other countries like the Cayman Islands. Simply making that ruse illegal would bring home an estimated $100 billion a year.

The next time you read a story about some politician bemoaning that “there’s no money” and “we have to make cuts,” just point to artful tax dodgers in our midst.

They include some of the banks that trashed the economy but gladly took our tax dollars to stay alive after the economic meltdown. Bank of America. Wells Fargo. Citigroup.

Goldman Sachs took a $10 billion taxpayer bailout but then gamed its effective tax rate down to one percent through what its shakedown-artist executives call “changes in geographic earnings mix.” Shame on them. Pay up.

See that FedEx delivery van go by on the roads you paid for? Pay up FedEx! Don’t pretend you’re not making billions in the U.S. Don’t lie and tell us you made all those profits on some island with more palm trees than people. We know the demand for coconut delivery isn’t that big.

These corporations are heavy users of our taxpayer funded public infrastructure and property rights protection systems. They use our regulated marketplace, call upon our law enforcement system and judiciary to remedy disputes. They’re protected by U.S. police forces and firefighters. They enjoy all the privileges and benefits of tax-paying citizens. They just don’t pay their fair share for them.

So, ExxonMobil: the next time your gas station erupts in flames, why don’t you call the fire department on the Cayman Islands? Or when someone holds up the joint, how about calling the Luxembourg police, since that’s where you claim your profits so you don’t have to pay the taxes you owe Uncle Sam.

Hey, Pfizer. Without our remarkable taxpayer-funded system of patents and intellectual property rights protections, everyone and their brother would be making Viagra and undercutting your sales of little blue pills. Pay up!

Those of us who pay sales taxes and have income taxes withheld from our paychecks will bear the brunt of state and federal budget cuts in schools, public transportation, and recreational facilities. Our most vulnerable family members and neighbors will suffer thanks to cuts in mental health services, elder care, and Medicaid.

Oh yes, and children. Arizona is cutting health care for 47,000 children. California, New York and Mississippi are cutting K-12 education funding. Hey, kids don’t vote. Nor do they have corporate lobbyists. An estimated 900,000 jobs will be cut, including teachers, firefighters, police officers, and medical first responders.

Boeing, you want another contract for a taxpayer-funded military jet? Well, pay up! Pay up General Electric, Mattel, Dow Chemical, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco. Yes, we know you pay some taxes. But look these children who are losing their health insurance and teaching aides in the eye. Tell them you’re paying your fair share.

These global corporations will complain that forcing them to pay their fair share of taxes will “kill jobs.” Let’s be clear: the patriotic businesses that currently pay their taxes and have to compete against these tax dodgers are the employers we want. It undercuts U.S. jobs for domestic banks, retailers, and manufacturers to have to compete against companies that can game the tax system.

The next time you’re waiting longer for a bus or train than you should, or someone you know can’t get timely mental health or drug treatment services, remember the tax dodgers. The next time your car hits a pothole or your kid’s teacher loses her job, remember the corporations that are using armies of accountants to lower their tax bills.

In a democracy, if we sit back and just grumble, we get what we deserve. We’re chumps until we wake up and force our members of Congress to stop tax haven abuse.

Huffington Post: Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers is an article on Wealth For Common Good.