Thank you, Chairman Whitehouse, Grassley Ranking Member, and committee members, for the invitation to participate in this hearing. My call is Sarah Anderson, director of Global Economics at the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent think tank for action and action. founded in 1963. He also co-edited the Institute’s Inequality. org website.
When I first gave the impression before this committee, in 2012, our economy was still recovering from the currency crisis of four years earlier, which had thrown millions of Americans from their homes and jobs. In fact, the U. S. unemployment rate and the average household source of income didn’t return to pre-crisis levels until several years after that hearing. [1]
Congress and regulators have taken steps to protect our country from the greed of Wall Street, which was one of the main drivers of the 2008 crisis. But the monetary establishments continue to extract too much wealth from ruling families and funnel much of it into gigantic executive bonuses that inspire the highest stakes, and even monetary fraud. [2] And, as we saw with the wave of regional banking disasters in 2017, in 2023, reckless executives can still lead their corporations to ruin and be left with gigantic fortunes while relying on taxpayer cash to limit the damage. [3]
Much remains to be done to ensure that our monetary formula contributes to a healthy economy and focuses on long-term price creation rather than short-term assumptions that might simply increase CEO compensation but have little effect on the rest of us. We will read about a vital tool to advise Wall Street in this direction: tax policy.
Next year, the expected expiration of several provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 will lead to a primary fiscal debate in Congress. This is an opportunity to take a closer look at Wall Street and the following questions:
In my opinion, the answer to any of those questions is “yes. “
The recently passed legislation injects billions of dollars into public infrastructure and electric power, investments that will be a boon to Wall Street as more efficient transportation and telecommunications and a more sustainable energy source are the business environment for all. But the monetary sector, despite being one of the most successful economic sectors, does not contribute equitably to the prices of these important public investments, for complex reasons. Some of them are detailed below:
A recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy looked at the giant U. S. corporations that succeeded between 2013 and 2021. His employer’s 44 monetary firms had an effective federal tax rate on the average source of income of only 17. 7% over the 4 years. before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. After the law reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, the effective rate for those corporations fell to just 12. 5%. [4]
Two of the country’s four largest banks, Citigroup and Bank of America, paid only a 4% effective tax rate in the 2018-2021 period. These global megabanks have access to a wide variety of tax breaks and tax avoidance strategies, adding subsidiaries in infamous tax havens such as the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, two countries that do not levy any taxes on foreign corporate profits. [5]
The nature of the money sector facilitates offshore tax evasion. Transactions in the multibillion-dollar global derivatives market, for example, can be registered almost anywhere in the world to take advantage of low- or no-tax jurisdictions. Small businesses in U. S. communities have the option of hiding their profits in tax havens.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s provisions aimed at combating offshore tax evasion, “low-tax global intangible income” (GILTI), have proven largely ineffective. [6] The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 took an important step by introducing a minimum corporate tax of 15% for the most giant U. S. companies (those with profits that exceeded $1 billion on average over the past 3 years). As Economic Policy has pointed out, the minimum tax will not completely end offshore tax evasion, as it will only affect about 150 very gigantic corporations and will apply to global profits rather than individual countries. And it includes other exceptions and exclusions. [7]
Ideally, Congress would build on this progress by approving U. S. participation in the 137-country agreement that the U. S. Treasury Department helped negotiate in 2021 to create a global minimum tax. This tax is more aimed at preventing offshore tax evasion and would affect many more companies.
The tax code applies 0 sales tax to transactions in money markets, thus encouraging high-frequency unproductive trade.
Most Americans are used to paying sales tax when they buy a car, a winter coat, or a meal at a place to eat. But a Wall Street trader will not pay sales tax on his purchases of millions of dollars’ worth of stocks or derivatives. [8]
This duty-free technique has contributed to the explosion of algorithm-based high-frequency trading, which accounts for about a portion of the trading volume in the United States today. [9] The goal of this automatic trading is to create costs that still need to evolve at lightning speed to exploit microscopic value differences on other exchanges.
Many monetary experts, plus a former CFTC chief economist, have warned that high-speed trading diverts profits from classic investors. [10] Analysts at the Bank for International Settlements and the University of Chicago estimate that high-frequency investors earn up to $5 billion a year at the expense of global stock market players. [11]
As the conservative organization American Compass puts it, high-frequency trading “does nothing but divert capital away from more productive activities. “[12]
Financial executives enjoy huge profits thanks to the preferential capital gains tax remedy and the “deferred interest” loophole.
The highest tax rate on long-term capital gains (on assets held for more than a year) is only 20 percent,[13] while the highest rate for normal sources of income, such as wages and salaries, is nearly twice as high at 37 percent. . [14. ]
As Warren Buffett has pointed out, this enormous difference means that wealthy Americans, who derive the most from their source of income from the profits from their investments, pay a lower tax rate than millions of firefighters, nurses, small business owners, and teachers in our country. country.
In the third quarter of 2023, the richest 1% of Americans owned nearly a portion (49. 4%) of all stocks and mutual funds, while the poorest 90% owned only 13. 1%. [15] Financial executives are strongly represented among the wealthy investment class. In fact, Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans includes 134 billionaires whose wealth comes from the financial and real estate sectors. [sixteen]
Executives who work for gigantic investment budgets, i. e. , a personal equity budget, are in an exceptionally privileged position to capitalize on our tax code’s bias in favor of the source of investment income. Under existing rules, managers of those budgets pay the reduced capital gains tax. rate on “deferred interest” (source of income tied to a percentage of the fund’s profits). This source of income is well equivalent to reimbursement for controlling the investments of others, and critics have long demanded that it be treated as a source of income. for tax purposes.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 narrowed the deferred interest loophole by extending the required asset holding period from one to three years, but this has had a limited effect as the maximum personal equity budget has already held your assets for more than five years. [17]
The Bearing Interest Equity Act (S. 4123) would require deferred interest sources of earnings to be taxed at income source tax rates, which would generate approximately $6. 5 billion in profits over 10 years. [18]
Another proposal, the Closing the Pass-Through Interest Loophole Act (S. 3317), would tax deferred interest at source of earnings and also prevent fund managers from deferring taxes on salary-like sources of earnings. This bill: $63 billion in a decade. [19]
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has further strengthened the property investors’ privilege tax
Real estate investors have long enjoyed privileged tax status. In a detailed report, Americans for Tax Fairness experts describe how those investors can “delay, minimize, and even tax their winning investments while exploiting their losses to get gigantic tax deductions much more seamlessly. “than other investors. ” [20]
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 opened up several other loopholes for this segment of the money sector. The Maximum Cost: A last-minute update to the law that allows real estate investors to benefit from a new 20% pass-through deduction on business income. , even if it doesn’t match the profile of the “small business owner” the deduction was intended to serve. Real estate investors and liabilities in real estate investment trusts (REITs) will earn $28. 9 billion over a decade. [22]
Fiscal policy to discourage monetary activities that exacerbate instability and inequality and inspire activities that create long-term value.
Taxes can be a useful tool to inspire positive practices while also generating much-needed gains for public investment. Bipartisan tobacco taxes, for example, have helped reduce smoking rates, save lives, and lower physical care costs, while also expanding the profits from public fitness programs. Wall Street’s recklessness also poses a risk to public welfare. Congress would do well to use fiscal policy to extract more profits from the money sector and to inspire a greater focus on price creation and long-term stability than on unproductive assumptions in the short run and above the CEO’s highest compensation.
Reduce CEO overpay levels that create inequality and undermine corporate efficiency.
The currency crisis of 2008, when bankers in search of huge bonuses drove our economy into the abyss, is a dramatic example of how corporate wage practices can put us all at risk. In the three years before the crisis, the top five top executives of the 20 largest bailed-out banks had earned an average of $32 million in private compensation. [23]
Public Citizen took a detailed look at how monetary executives maneuvered to meet their bonus goals while leading the country to disaster. Official analyses of the crisis – and even Wall Street workers themselves – have identified payment practices as a significant contributing factor. [24]
Congress responded by demanding several executive pay reforms as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. But 14 years later, regulators have still implemented one of the most important: banning incentive payment structures that inspire “inappropriate” risks. Taking. [25]
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s recklessness continues. In a recent letter urging regulators to finalize Dodd-Frank wage regulations, Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Nydia Velazquez cited examples of ongoing wage-related banking crises, from last year’s regional banking disasters to the JPMorgan London Whale fiasco to Wells Fargo. Fake account scandal. [26]
The remuneration of the CEOs of primary banks also remains stratospheric. In 2023, total CEO reimbursement of the top 10 most sensible averaged $24. 2 million, and the average gap between the median CEO and staff salary was 254 to 1.
While the monetary sector examples are the most obvious, corporate America is replete with stories of outrageous executive payments that encourage behaviors that harm workers, communities, and the economy as a whole. At the Institute for Policy Studies, we’ve been documenting for decades how reckless practices have perversely rewarded CEOs for cutting jobs, falsifying accounts, accelerating climate change, and evading taxes. [27]
The American people need action to be taken against the excesses of the leaders. Poll after vote shows that most of all political tendencies view CEOs of large corporations as being overpaid, especially compared to their employees. [28] A Harvard Business School study found that Americans found that the correct CEO-to-employee pay ratio is no more than 7 to 1. [29] Last year, this ratio was close to 200 to 1. [30]
A May 2024 poll asked prospective voters about an imaginable measure by Congress: raising taxes on corporations that pay their CEO at least 50 times more than they pay their average employee. [31] Overall, 80% of participants supported the idea, totaling gigantic majorities in each political organization (89% of Democrats, 77% of independents, and 71% of Republicans). In swing states, 83 percent of the electorate was most likely to agree with the proposal.
Payroll taxes give corporations with huge internal disparities two options: 1) reduce their wage gaps or 2) face a larger bill from the IRS. A company with part of its workers earning less than $60,000, for example, restricts CEO pay to a maximum of $3 million. or increase workers’ pay to avoid higher taxes. In 2022, the average salary for S CEOs
By encouraging narrower wage gaps, such taxes would inspire practices that are harmful. Extensive studies have shown that excessive gaps between CEO and worker salaries impair corporate functionality by decreasing worker morale and increasing turnover. [33] A study by the Wall Street Journal and corporate governance firm MSCI also found that the most successful CEOs tended to have lower payouts than their peers. [34]
More than an indicator of high performance, CEO’s high salaries reflect a rigged corporate governance formula that allows the leaders of our toughest corporations to extract private wealth from workers, customers, and communities from their businesses.
An Act to Reduce Executive (CEO) Overpay (S. 3176/H. R. 6191): Imposes an excise tax on publicly traded companies and personal corporations that have a pay gap greater than 50:1 between the CEO and the average worker. Under the tax formula, the rate owed would be proportional to the extent to which the company’s pay ratio exceeds 50:1 and the CEO’s pay level. In other words, if a company has a giant pay hole, it will need to pay more taxes and if it also has an incredibly high pay from its CEO, it will owe even more. [35] Revenue estimate: If the bill had been in effect in 2022, it would have raised more than $10 million from a hundred Fortune U. S. corporations alone. [36]
Executive Director Tax Overpayment Act (S. 794/H. R. 1979): Links a company’s federal corporate tax rate to the length of the difference between its CEO and the average workers’ wage. The tax consequences would begin with 0. 5 percent emissions for corporations that pay their executives between 50 and a hundred times more than their average workers. The highest penalty would apply to corporations that pay their top executives more than 500 times their employees’ salary. Estimated revenue: 150 billion dollars in 10 years. [37] The CEO Responsibility and Accountability Act (H. R. 1284) imposes tax consequences for higher ratios.
As noted above, the tax-exempt technique followed by the U. S. government to trade in the money markets has fostered an explosion of high-frequency algorithm-based transactions that do not add any significant price to the genuine economy and siphon profits away from investors.
Even a small tax of just a fraction of a percent on any and all transactions in stocks, derivatives, and other monetary tools would curb unproductive assumptions in the short term while also generating significant revenues.
More than 30 countries, many of which have deep and developing money markets, such as the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and India, lately levy currency transaction taxes on specific asset classes. a vital source of annual profits for many countries, totaling some $4. 3 billion for the United Kingdom, more than $7. 5 billion for South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan and $1. 7 billion for Switzerland. In France, profits from a very limited transaction tax amount to about $2. 2 billion per year. [38]
Wall Street lobbyists claim that such taxes would hurt family investors and retirees, but the main targets would be the most sensible players in the money casino, those who have the capital to take advantage of high-frequency trading systems that hurt traditional investors. For maximum personal pension budgets and traditional bondholders and stockholders, the tax burden would be negligible, lower than the usual portfolio control fees. [39] A tax on monetary transactions would be “quite progressive,” concludes the Washington-based Tax Policy Center. [40]
Wall Street Tax Act (S. 2491/H. R. 4870): A 0. 1% tax on the fair market for stocks and bonds, as well as on payment flows under derivatives contracts, with exemptions for short-term debt and initial issuances. [41] Estimated revenue: $752 billion in 10-year profits. [42]
Wall Street Speculation Tax (S. 1990/H. R. 4119): Taxes of 0. 5% on stock market transactions, 0. 1% on bonds, and 0. 005% on the price of derivatives, with tax credits for Americans earning less than $50,000 and couples earning less. more than $75,000 per year and additional exemptions. Estimated revenue: about $220 billion per year. [43]
Other proposals come in a style designed by Lazard’s former head of investment banking, Antonio F. Weiss, and former Treasury official Laura Kawano, for a 0. 02% tax on stock, bond and derivatives transactions, with slow increases to 0. 1% over four years. [44] and another. through the experts of Hamilton’s task for a tax of 0. 03%. [45]
Supporters of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act claimed that the benefits of corporate tax breaks would accrue to staff in the form of pay increases. White House officials have estimated that U. S. staff could be expecting pay increases of at least $4,000 a year on average. . [46] Hundreds of U. S. corporations have promised similar bonuses to their employees. [47]
Instead, the Congressional Research Service found that corporations spent their tax profits not on staff increases but on inventory buybacks. [48] In total, U. S. corporations spent $1 trillion buying back their own inventory in 2018, the first year the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect. [49] S Companies
Massive spending after the tax cuts replaced the rules for buyback spending, and as the economy began to recover from the Covid pandemic, businesses began to break records again. While buybacks declined in 2023 due to recession fears, Goldman Sachs analysts expect a sharp increase this year and historic spending of more than $1 trillion by 2025. [51]
Share buybacks are a monetary maneuver that artificially increases a company’s earnings price according to a percentage, which in turn raises the price of executives’ salaries. Stock-based redemption (stock options, percentage unit functionality, limited according to percentages, etc. ) makes up the majority of the repayment of executive directors. The Economic Policy Institute found that stock-based rebate accounted for more than 81% of the average total rebate learned from CEOs of giant corporations in 2022. [52]
Spending the windfall gains from tax cuts and other gains on percentage buybacks diverts resources away from workers’ wages, R
As Natalia Renta of Americans for Financial Reform puts it, inventory buybacks are a prime example of “genuine economics at the service of money markets”—precisely the opposite of Wall Street’s role in supporting productive enterprises and the long-term investments necessary for a sustainable and equitable economy. . . [54]
Share buybacks were a manipulation of the stock market and were largely banned until 1982, when private-sector lobbyists effectively lobbied the SEC to legalize them. Members of Congress have filed several charges to reinstate this ban, adding the Rewarded Labor Act (H. R. 3694).
The Promoting Long-Term Incentives for Governance Now (ALIGN) Act (S. 790) would require executives to maintain inventory-based pay for at least 3 years and maintain their percentages for 12 months after a percentage buyback is announced. A 2019 SEC investigation found that within eight days of announcing a buyout, the most sensible executives sold an average of five times as many percentages as on normal days. [55] The Biden administration also took a first step toward government budget strength to discourage inventory buybacks by giving corporations the credit for offering subsidies to semiconductors if they agree to waive buybacks for five years. [56]
Share Repurchase Liability Act (S. four13): The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 introduced a 1% excise tax on corporate share buybacks. [57] This bill would increase this rate to 4%. The bill also includes an amendment to existing law to prevent companies from reducing their excise tax base by issuing new stock-based payments to senior executives. [58] Revenue estimates: The current 1% consumption tax is expected to raise $7. 4 billion over 10 years. [59] A 4% tax would be expected to generate $238 million in new profits over the next decade. [60]
For too long, Wall Street lobbyists have wielded superior force to shape our tax code in a way that allows this lucrative sector to pay far less than its fair share of all government and infrastructure spending mandated for a healthy economy. He effectively fought efforts to use fiscal policy responsibly to inspire Wall Street to focus on price creation and long-term sustainability rather than capturing wealth for a handful of elites.
The tax debate in 2025 will be an opportunity to address those issues, as a component of a broader overhaul of our tax code that will strengthen our country. Last month, more than a hundred civil society organizations (including my own) endorsed a letter urging Congress to adopt a new and ambitious strategy for tax policy that “supports public investment, recovers smart jobs from abroad, combats destructive concentrations of economic power, reduces poverty and racial disparities, improves health, and mitigates economic risks such as climate upgrading and an unsustainable fiscal path. ” [61]
The letter in particular calls on “families with high incomes (those earning more than $400,000 at home), incredibly wealthy and successful giant corporations, and Wall Street to pay a higher percentage of their source of income in taxes than if the provisions of the TCJA were simply allowed to expire. “
Maintaining the prestige quo – or returning to the pre-2017 tax code – will be appropriate if we are to satisfy the public investment desires of our time and counter our country’s vast economic and racial disparities.
Download the pdf version.
Remarks
[1] The unemployment rate in the United States was 4. 4% in May 2007. It did not fall to that point again until March 2017. The true median source of income for U. S. families was $68,610 in 2007 (in 2022 dollars adjusted for inflation). It only surpassed this point in 2016.
[2] Bartlett Naylor and Zachary Brown, “Inappropriate,” Public Citizen, September 9, 2022.
[3] FDIC, “Final Rule on Special Assessment in Accordance with Systemic Risk Determination,” November 16, 2023.
[4] Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Act,” May 2, 2024.
[5] See links to Citigroup’s reported subsidiaries and Bank of America’s reported subsidiaries.
[6] Steve Wamhoff, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “Unfinished Tax Reform: Corporate Minimum Taxes,” October 4, 2022.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Exchanges and dealers pay negligible transaction fees under Section 31 on the sale of stock to help pay for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s costs. On May 22, 2024, the rate increased from $8 for one and both $1 million shares sold. to $27. 80 for the remainder of the fiscal year to offset the fact that the SEC did not obtain its full-year credits until March 2024. The valuation of anticipated transactions remained stable at $0. 0042 for a round-trip transaction.
[9] Nasdaq. com, accessed June 6, 2024.
[10] Nathaniel Popper and Christopher Leonard, “High-Speed Traders Make Profits at the Expense of Ordinary Investors, Study Finds,” New York Times, December 3, 2012.
[11] Matteo Aquilina, Eric Budish, and Peter O’Neill, “Quantifying the ‘Arms Race’ of High-Frequency Trading: A New Methodology and Simple Estimates,” Financial Conduct Authority, January 2020.
[12] “Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers,” American Compass 2023.
[13] Taxpayers with a higher source of income (married couples with a source of annual gross income of more than $250,000 and other single individuals of more than $200,000) also pay a net source of income tax of 3. 8% on capital gains. Tax Policy Center, “Briefing Book, How Are Capital Gains Taxed?”
[14] Higher-income taxpayers pay a 0. 9 percent Medicare surcharge.
[15] Federal Reserve Distributive Financial Accounts, accessed June 6, 2024.
[16] Forbes Knowledge Analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies.
[17] “Key Elements of the U. S. Tax System,” Tax Policy Center, January 2024.
[18] Press release, U. S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, April 15, 2024.
[19] End the Deferred Interest Loopholes Act, Senator Ron Wyden.
[20] “Fair Taxes Now,” Americans for Tax Fairness, April 2019.
[21] Ibid.
[22] “Trump’s Tax Law Hurts Homeowners and Helps Real Estate Developers,” Democratic Staff Report of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U. S. House of Representatives, July 2018.
[23] Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, and Sam Pizzigati, “Executive Excess 2009: America’s Bailout Barons,” Institute for Policy Studies, September 2, 2009.
[24] Bartlett Naylor and Zachary Brown, “INAPPROPRIATE: Bank Scams Continue as Washington Fails to Reform Wages as Required by the 2010 Act,” Public Citizen, September 1, 2022.
[25] Letter to Regulators: Highlighting the Urgent Need to Implement the Key Rule on Executive Compensation, Section 956 of the Dodd-Frank Act, Americans for Financial Reform and Civil Society Organizations, May 9, 2024.
[26] Press release: “Van Hollen and Velázquez Urge Regulators to Crack Down on Risk-Inducing Executive Pay Schemes,” May 15, 2024.
[27] See the annual reports “Executive Excess” of the Institute of Policy Studies.
[28] Tanya Jansen, “Millennials and Gen Z Need to Know What Their CEOs Earn,” beqom, February 26, 2019.
[29] Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton, “How (More) Should CEOs Earn?A universal desire for more equal pay,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2014.
[30] Mae Anderson, Paul Harloff, and Barbara Ortutay, “CEOs Earned Nearly Two Hundred Times What Their Workers Made Last Year,” Associated Press, June 3, 2024.
[31] Data for Progress survey from April 19 to 22, 2024.
[32] AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch, accessed June 6, 2024.
[33] Page Inequality. org of the Institute for Policy Studies on executive directors’ payment resources.
[34] Theo Francis and Joann S. Lublin, “CEO Compensation Drops 4. 6%, Offers a Weak Reflection of Performance,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2016.
[35] Press release, “Whitehouse, Lee, and Ocasio-Cortez Introduce Legislation to Raise Workers’ Wages and Curb Compensation for Fugitive CEOs,” November 2, 2023.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Press release, “NEWS: Sanders and Colleagues Introduce Law to End Corporate Greed and End Outrageous CEO Compensation,” January 22, 2024.
[38] Günther Capelle-Blos angelesncard, “The Taxation of Financial Transactions: An Estimate of Global Tax Revenues,” Centre d’Economie de los angeles Sorbonne University Paris, May 10, 2023.
[39] Michael Edesess, “Vanguard Opposes a Wall Street Tax Advocated by Founder John Bogle, and the explanation is surprising. The financial transaction tax will not hurt major investors, but it will hurt merchants and large shareholders. “Marketwatch, September 3, 2020, and Dean Baker, “Financial Transactions Taxes: A Wall Street Levy that Will’t Affect Pension Funds,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, October 30, 2020.
[40] Leonard E. Burman, William G. Gale, Sarah Gault, Bryan Kim, Jim Nunns, and Steve Rosenthal, “Financial Transaction Taxes in Theory and Practice,” Tax Policy Center, January 2016.
[41] Press release, “Schatz and Hoyle Reintroduce Legislation to Tax Wall Street and Reduce Economic Inequality,” July 26, 2023.
[42] “Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2021 to 2030,” Congressional Budget Office, December 2020.
[43] James Heintz, Thomas Herndon, and Robert Pollin, “The Revenue Potential of a Financial Transaction Tax for U. S. Markets”, International Journal of Applied Economics, July 30, 2018.
[44] Antonio Weiss and Laura Kawano, “A Proposal to Tax Financial Transactions,” Brookings Institution, January 2020.
[45] Kimberly A. Clausing and Natasha Sarin, “The Next Fiscal Cliff: A Blueprint for Tax Reform in 2025,” The Hamilton Project, September 27, 2023.
[46] Brian Faler, “The $4000 Question,” Politico, October 12, 2017.
[47] Kathryn Kranhold, “Big Business Promised Wage Increases Following Trump’s Tax Cuts. What happened? NBC News, February 12, 2019.
[48] Jane G. Gravelle and Donald J. Marples, “The Economic Effects of the 2017 Tax Review: Preliminary Observations,” Congressional Research Service, May 22, 2019.
[49] Matt Egan, “Corporate America Distributes a Record $1 Trillion in Share Repurchases,” CNN. com, December 17, 2018.
[50] Press to S
[51] “Goldman Sachs expects U. S. buyback percentage to exceed $1 trillion by 2025,” Reuters, March 7, 2024.
[52] Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra, “CEO Pay Declined in 2022 but Has Increased 1,209. 2% Since 1978, Compared to a 15. 3% Increase in Typical Worker Pay,” Economic Policy Institute, September 21, 2023.
[53] William Lazonick, “Share Buybacks: From Retention and Reinvestment to Reduction and Distribution,” Brookings Institution, April 17, 2015, and Lenore Palladino, “Financing at Work: Shareholder Primacy and Stagnant Wages in the United States. “Wise Diaries, June 22, 2020.
[54] Natalia Renta, “Congress Takes a Historic Step to Tax Share Repurchases,” Inequality. org, August 10, 2022.
[55] Jerry Useem, “The Share Buyback Scam,” The Atlantic, August 2019.
[56] Sarah Anderson, “Companies that forgo inventory buybacks have a better chance of getting CHIPS grants. Let’s expand on this precedent,” Inequality. org, October 31, 2023.
[57] Natalia Renta, “Congress Takes a Historic Step to Tax Share Repurchases,” Inequality. org, August 10, 2022.
[58] Press release, “Brown and Wyden Introduce Legislation to Increase Share Repurchase Tax,” February 14, 2024.
[59] “Tax Fairness Reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Americans for Tax Fairness, September 13, 2022.
[60] U. S. Treasury, “General Explanations of Administrative Revenue Proposals for Fiscal Year 2024 – TABLES. “
[61] Fiscal Letter to Congress, May 21, 2024.