Senator Bernie Sanders is proposing to tax some profits of the largest U.S. corporations as much as 95% in a
“We cannot allow big oil companies and other large, profitable corporations to continue to use the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and the specter of inflation to make obscene profits — by price-gouging Americans at the gas pump, the grocery store or any other sector of our economy,” Sanders said in a
Sanders said that Chevron would have owed an additional $12.9 billion in taxes under his proposal, based on the oil company’s profits last year. JPMorgan would have owed an extra $18.8 billion, he said.
Companies would pay the current 21% corporate tax rate on earnings up to the amounts they recorded before the pandemic, and then have to pay a 95% rate for profits above those levels. The total tax is capped at 75% of a company’s income in a single year. The levy would only apply to corporations with at least $500 million in annual revenue.
The proposal from Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, is highly unlikely to become law anytime soon in a Congress where Democrats have slim majorities. However, he points out that similar windfall taxes have been used in the past, including during both World Wars, and a levy specifically for oil and gas companies was in the tax code during the 1980s.
