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Jill Stein on Tax Reform
Green Party presidential nominee; Former Challenger for MA Governor
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Rich should pay 55%-60% taxes, not 15% or 35%
Donald Trump: Under my plan I will be reducing taxes tremendously from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses. That's going to be a job creator like we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan.
Jill Stein: America wasn't meant to be an aristocracy. 22 billionaires have as much money as 50 percent of the US population. We need a progressive income tax, with the rich paying at least at the 55 to 60 percent level.
Hillary Clinton: What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy because they have made all the gains in the economy.
And I think it's time that the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share to support this country.
Source: Fox News 3rd-party coverage: First 2016 Presidential Debate
, Sep 27, 2016
Lower taxes for majority by cutting $2.3T military spending
Stein would root out the massive corruption in military spending. A failed attempt to audit the Pentagon during the Clinton administration found that $2.3 trillion of $7 trillion in transactions could not be justified, suggesting that up to 1/3 of DOD
expenses may be due to waste or fraud. "Today we must take seriously Dr. Martin Luther King's warning that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
By cutting dangerous military spending and making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, we can lower taxes for the vast majority of Americans, and ensure that our tax dollars go towards the things that actually improve our lives: jobs, education,
healthcare, and preventing climate catastrophe. We can simultaneously improve national and global security, with a foreign-policy founded on international law and human rights, not on maximizing profits for the weapons industry, " concluded Stein.
Source: 2016 presidential campaign website, Jill2016.com
, Apr 18, 2016
Increase inheritance taxes; use it as "Aristocracy Tax"
OnTheIssues: What do you think of the estate tax, or the "death tax" as the Republican call it?Stein: I'd call it the "Aristocracy Tax." We instituted an estate tax so we would not have massive inherited wealth so we would not have an aristocracy like
we left behind in Europe. Now wealth disparities are greater than ever in history--we have more than an aristocracy going on.
An aristocracy tax is only part of it--a couple can pass on $11 million in wealth before it's taxed--that's pretty outrageous--and it got codified under Obama--he made permanent the Bush tax cut on that aspect. We need to massively reduce the inheritance
gift--the aristocracy gift--and broader tax reform so we don't have such massive accumulation of wealth in the first place. We need to restore the inheritance tax and it should be progressive at higher levels of inheritance.
Source: Phone interview on presidential race with OnTheIssues.org
, Jul 6, 2015
Incomes rise for wealthiest 1% but their taxes have fallen
Q: What are your views on progressive taxation? A: It's outrageous that the wealth of the top 1/10 of 1% has risen in the past decade while their taxes are cut via capital gains. No one is even talking,
Democrat or Republican, about restoring the capital gains tax. The solutions even by progressive Democrats barely begin to scrape the surface of the problem.
Source: 2011 OnTheIssues interview with Jill Stein
, Dec 21, 2011
Fees and sales taxes hit lower and middle income hardest
What if we stopped hiking taxes and fees that target ordinary people and instead balanced the budget through fairer taxes?Beacon Hill has allowed the budget to be balanced by raising a number of taxes and fees that hit working people hard.
They have raised the sales tax, college tuition, MBTA fares, and tobacco taxes. By cutting aid to cities and towns, legislators have forced hikes in property taxes.
When all state and local taxes are considered, lower and middle income people in
Massachusetts are paying at twice the rate of the top 1% highest income bracket. This is not a fair system, and Beacon Hill has made it even more unfair with tax hikes over the past decade.
Jill Stein will fight any attempt to balance the budget
through tax or fee hikes that hit ordinary taxpayers. She will stand for the fairness solution--which means closing any budget gap by asking higher-income taxpayers to pay something closer to the rate that most people have been experiencing for years.
Source: 2010 Gubernatorial Campaign website jillstein.org, "Issues"
, Sep 29, 2010
Close tax loopholes & stop corporate welfare
We need to close existing tax loopholes and end the corporate welfare going to the wealthy friends of politicians. These favors give unfair and arbitrary advantage to industries with influence on Beacon Hill,
impeding competition and discouraging innovation. Closing these loopholes can easily generate a billion dollars in revenue - more revenue than is lost in giving low and moderate income taxpayers the tax break they deserve.
Source: Campaign web site, www.JillWill.org, "Issues"
, Oct 9, 2002
Replace "trickle down" with 50% tax cuts on lower incomes
The goal of our first administration will be to create a system in which the total tax burden is the same-as a portion of income-across the income spectrum. As part of this we will cut the income tax burden of low and moderate income people in half.
By putting additional income in the hands of lower income people, this tax cut will provide a stimulus to the economy. On the day I'm elected governor, the trickle down theory of economics is dead on Beacon Hill.
Source: Campaign web site, www.JillWill.org, "Issues"
, Oct 9, 2002
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