VIDEO: How to Raise Revenue and Crack Down on Corporate Greed

Sarah Anderson, director of the IPS Global Economy Project, is one of the country’s leading experts on inequality and CEO pay. As the author of the long-running “Executive Excess” report series, she’s documented year after year how CEO pay and Wall Street recklessness have grown at the expense of ordinary workers and the economy.

And now Congress is listening.

“For too long, Wall Street has wielded excessive power to shape our tax code so their firms and executives can avoid paying their fair share and continue practices that benefit the few while putting the rest of us at risk,” Sarah told the Senate Budget Committee during a June 12 hearing.

Next year, many of Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will expire. Sarah recommended replacing those tax cuts with a number of fair tax reforms, including several “twofers” that would both generate significant revenue while cracking down on corporate greed:

• A tax on excess CEO pay, which would require corporations with huge CEO-worker pay gaps to either raise wages or pay up. “A recent poll found overwhelming support for this, including 77 percent of Independents and 71 percent of Republicans,” Sarah said.
• A financial transaction tax, a sales tax on unproductive short-term speculation that destabilizes the economy. This tax would “encourage long-term investment while generating new revenue.”
• A higher tax rate on wasteful stock buybacks, which corporations use to artificially inflate their stock price and executive pay at the expense of worker wages. “I think we should all be angry that corporations took their windfalls from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and blew $1 trillion on stock buybacks instead of on worker raises or innovation,” Sarah told the senators.

This was a historic hearing. You can watch Sarah’s full testimony here, read her written testimony here, and see a short clip below.