Sen. Elizabeth Warren has set her sights on taxing the ultra-rich if she’s elected president, but she’s made at least one thing easier for some of them: A one-click shortcut to see just how much they’d pay.
The Democratic presidential candidate on Thursday posted a “Calculator for the Billionaires” on her campaign website. “Some billionaires seem confused about how much they would pay under Elizabeth’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax,” it reads. “Don’t worry, now we have a calculator for that too.”
“Are you a billionaire?” it asks.
If you click “Yes,” it asks you to input your net worth to figure out how much her wealth tax would cost you.
Unless you’re Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates or Leon Cooperman, that is — they have “just click here” shortcuts which autofill their net worth.
Bloomberg was added to the list late in the day following reports that the billionaire former New York City mayor may be planning a presidential run. “Welcome to the race, @MikeBloomberg!” Warren tweeted.
Under Warren’s math, Bloomberg would pay $3.079 billion next year in wealth taxes. “Good news — you’ll still be extraordinarily rich!” the site says, noting his $52 billion fortune. “And if history is any guide, if you do nothing other than invest your wealth in the stock market, it’s likely that your wealth will continue to grow.” The site says the money will go toward education and health care for everyone.
Gates, who’s worth $107 billion, would pay $6.379 billion in taxes, and Cooperman — the hedge-fund manager who teared up on CNBC this week while defending billionaires — would pay $151 million on his $3.2 billion fortune.
If you’re not part of the 0.1%, the site lists a handful of mega-rich folks — including Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.42% CEO Jeff Bezos, Walmart Inc. WMT, +0.61% heir Jim Walton and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s family — and calculates what they’d owe under the wealth tax.
Gates, for one, has said he’s happy to pay his fair share of taxes, but he worries Warren’s plan goes too far. “When you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over,” he said Wednesday. In a tweet, Warren said she’d be happy to meet with the Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.14% co-founder “to explain exactly how much you’d pay under my wealth tax. (I promise it’s not $100 billion.)”
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