Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Suggests Super Wealthy be Taxed Up to 70% to Fund ‘Green New Deal’
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat with Anderson Cooper for an upcoming 60 Minutes interview set to air this Sunday, a portion of which has been released as a promotion. In the released segment, Ocasio-Cortez reveals how exactly she suggests paying for the environmental agenda known as the “Green New Deal” — with remarkably higher tax rates for the super wealthy.
Ocasio-Cortez suggests in the clip that in her esteem, people should be doing more to pay their “fair share.” When Cooper pressed on how she could possibly pay for the deal, she pointed to the progressive tax rate system in the 1960s, explaining that if you earn 0 to $75,000 a year, you would only pay 10% or 15% in income tax.
She continued:
“But once you get to the tippie tops, on your $10 millionth, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60% or 70%. That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate. But it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more.”
Cooper replied that she was proposing a “radical agenda.”
“If that’s what radical means, call me a radical,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez Tax Plan Creates 82.7% Top Income Tax Rate for New Yorkers
In an upcoming 60 Minutes interview, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will call for federal income tax rates of up to 70 percent as part of a proposal to create vast new government spending programs.
The current top federal income tax rate is 37 percent, so the Ocasio-Cortez plan will nearly double the tax rate for the top bracket.
New York State has a top income tax rate of 8.82 percent while New York City has a top rate of 3.876 percent. So under this proposal, her constituents would pay a top combined income tax rate of 82.7 percent:
Federal income tax rate: 70.0%
NY state income tax rate: 8.82%
NYC income tax rate: 3.876%
TOTAL: 82.696%
New Yorkers would not be the only ones suffering under the Ocasio-Cortez plan. California taxpayers would pay a top rate of 83.3 percent (70 percent plus the California rate of 13.30 percent).
In addition to this high income tax rate, taxpayers would remain impacted by other taxes including payroll taxes, taxes on capital gains income and dividends, and the death tax.
Further, while Ocasio-Cortez has not released details of any other tax hikes to pay for her plan, this would likely not be the only income tax increase if she had her way. For instance, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed a $2 trillion 2.2 percent payroll tax on all families and a $10 trillion 6.2 percent payroll tax on all businesses as part of his socialized healthcare plan.
Ocasio-Cortez compares herself to Lincoln, FDR: ‘Call me a radical’