From We the People PA: (https://actionnetwork.org/groups/we-the-people-pennsylvania):
We’re excited to publicly launch the statewide Tax the Ultra-Rich NOW! (TURN) campaign this Wednesday afternoon in Philadelphia, calling on federal, state, and local officials to enact policies to make billionaires and near-billionaires start paying their fair share of taxes, and we need your support!
Sign the petition to Tax the Ultra-Rich NOW at https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tax-the-ultra-rich-now-3/!
During the first two years of the pandemic, while Pennsylvania workers and families struggled to make ends meet, our state’s 17 billionaires more than doubled their collective wealth—increasing from $28.4 billion to $58.5 billion (a 106% increase)—and paid little-to-nothing in federal taxes.
Americans for Tax Fairness recently analyzed data from Forbes and ProPublica and found that 26 of the richest Americans paid an average federal income tax rate of just 4.8% over six years (2013-18), and some of the wealthiest billionaires paid even less than that, including Jeff Bezos (1.1%), Mark Zuckerberg (1.1%), Charles and David Koch (1.3% and 1.4%, respectively), and Elon Musk (2.1%).
A report we released in July details how the ultra-rich are using their under-taxed wealth to elect January 6th insurrectionists and other right-wing extremists. Pennsylvania’s richest billionaire, Wall Street trader Jeffrey Yass, gave more than $28.5 million to far-right candidates running in 2022 primaries.
When the ultra-rich pay what they owe, our federal, state, and local governments are able to invest these resources in services that benefit all of us, like education, health care, and affordable housing. The recently-enacted Inflation Reduction Act and its historic investments in clean energy and lowering health care costs is fully funded by making wealthy corporations and billionaires pay something closer to what they owe—and no one earning less than $400,000 per year will pay a dime more.
As important as the tax fairness provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act are, we still have a long way to go to ensure that billionaires pay their fair share, which is why we are pleased to be working with allies in Philadelphia, across the state, and around the country to build a movement to Tax the Ultra-Rich NOW! And we can’t do it without YOUR support!
Sign the petition to Tax the Ultra-Rich NOW!
We’re inviting organizations, large and small, to join us in publicly supporting the campaign. If your group can lend its name to this effort, you can use our online form to do so.
Thank you so much for your support and your commitment to taxing the ultra-rich now!
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