For over a decade, I’ve been a tax attorney at some of the most powerful law firms on the planet. I’ve worked with billionaires, multinational corporations and private equity funds to minimize their tax bills. I spent eight months in Switzerland helping a bank that had been hiding American taxpayer accounts from the IRS.
All that to say, I understand how broken our tax system is, how the burden of funding our government continues to fall more and more on the middle class and the reforms needed to fix it. I’d bet that most of the folks in Congress know this too, but they don’t want to fix it because the people cutting large checks for their campaigns are the same people avoiding taxes.
Rich people get tax cuts, they use their newfound riches to buy compliant politicians, these politicians cut taxes for the rich. Rinse and repeat.
My mother was a waitress. She didn’t have health insurance. When I was 21, she got sick, lost her job and spent five days in a hospital. She left with a terminal diagnosis and a six-figure bill. The hospital hounded us for the money right up until she died a painfully short few months later. Then they sent a letter offering to settle the whole thing for $40.
Forty dollars.
That is not a malfunction. That is the system working exactly as designed, squeezing everything it can from working families with nothing, while the people with everything pay as little as the law allows and splurge on private jets, secret islands and bought-and-paid-for politicians.
That ends when I get to Washington.
The plan
Here is what I am going to do to fix our broken tax system when I’m in office:
Tax wealth
Millionaires and billionaires shouldn’t be able to hoard wealth and avoid paying their fair share. I will tax the hoarded wealth of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and the rest of their ilk and invest the revenue into healthcare, housing and infrastructure.
To anyone questioning the viability of a tax on wealth: have you ever paid property taxes? We already tax homeowners annually on the assessed value of their homes. Property taxes are a wealth tax by another name. If it’s good enough for a middle-class homeowner, it’s good enough for a billionaire hedge fund manager.
Eliminate the Social Security payroll tax cap
A union firefighter in West Valley City pays Social Security taxes on every dollar she earns. A CEO in Park City making $50 million a year stops paying into Social Security after the first $184,500 and then pays nothing for the rest of the year.
We are funding the retirement security of the entire country on the backs of working people. I will remove the cap, tax the rich more, and fully fund Social Security for generations.
Tax employers who underpay their workers
We shouldn’t shame welfare recipients; we should shame the employers who refuse to pay their employees a living wage. Walmart and companies like it should shoulder the cost of such safety nets, not the public. I will impose excise taxes on any employers who fail to pay their employees a living wage.
Restructure housing tax policy
The mortgage interest deduction currently delivers its biggest benefits to people buying million-dollar homes. I will convert it into a refundable tax credit for renters instead of a handout to folks with a vacation property.
Simplify tax filing
The IRS already has most of the information millions of Americans spend countless hours and dollars every single year reentering into forms. More than 45 countries prepopulate tax returns for their citizens.
We don’t do so because the tax preparation industry spends tens of millions lobbying Congress to keep you confused and stuck paying TurboTax and others like them hundreds of dollars instead of enjoying a spring afternoon in April.
Voters have a choice to make
Progressive voters in Utah’s First Congressional District have a choice: send someone to Washington who has read about the rigged system and posts pretty words about fixing it, or send the person who spent over a decade inside it and knows how to turn it upside down.
I am not interested in incremental platitudes from career politicians who have spent years in office without passing meaningful legislation or from candidates who have spent years voting against Utahns’ interests.
When I’m in Congress, we are going to tax the rich and rebuild America.