Billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon is OK with tax hikes on the rich, as long as the revenue goes where he thinks it’ll do the most good.
“Individuals earning the most can afford to pay more, and I have no problem paying higher taxes to address some of the fundamental challenges and inequities in our society,” the 62-year-old chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Wednesday in an emailed statement. He singled out expanding the earned income tax credit as a way to help those who “really need it.”
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York earlier this month floated the idea of raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent on income above $10 million. And Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, plans to propose a tax on Americans with more than $50 million in assets. The ideas have sparked a debate about how best to address a growing gap between rich and poor in the U.S.
This isn’t the first time Dimon has suggested wealthier Americans should pay more in taxes.
“We should have a progressive tax system (helping people on the lower end) that progressively taxes higher incomes, like mine,” he wrote in his most recent letter to shareholders. “And, of course, no one wants to think about their money being misspent.”
Dimon, who runs the nation’s largest bank, in 2017 said he’d trade higher personal taxes for lower corporate rates. The tax package passed later that year lowered U.S. corporate rates.
Currently in the U.S., the top marginal tax rate is 37 percent, which takes effect on income of more than $510,300 for individuals and $612,350 for married couples, according to the Tax Foundation.
