US President Joe Biden has given away trillions of dollars to American citizens, is preparing to give trillions more — and then to claw back some of that ‘free’ money.
A President who comes from Delaware, the state which is a kind of US onshore tax haven — companies that are incorporated in Delaware can pay a corporate tax rate of 0% — risks looking like a hypocrite if he clobbers people too much.
The US Congress listened on Wednesday evening this week as the President outlined his ideas as to how to fund his American Families Plan. This plan is the third big economic package since he took office, following his $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus plan in March and a proposed $2 trillion infrastructure bill, still fighting its way through Congress.
This third plan, called the American Families Plan (who would be so churlish as to oppose a plan for families?) proposes more generous child support until 2025, extra funds for universal pre-kindergarten schooling and community colleges, and other social welfare ideas; to pay for it the total capital gains tax for the richest Americans would go up to almost 44 %. The top rate of income tax would rise from 37% to almost 40%. Americans earning more than $1m a year would face the application of ordinary income tax rates to capital gains and dividend payments.
These ‘reforms’ would also hit private equity and hedge fund managers — easy targets one might think — by effectively eliminating the preferential tax treatment of their profits, or ‘carried interest’. At the moment, carried interest is taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than ordinary income, but Biden would equalise their tax treatment. The president is also considering taxing unrealised capital gains passed on to heirs at death. Taxes on capital gains and dividends are currently 20%; under Biden’s plans they would be treated as ordinary income, at a 39.6% rate.
The mere whisper of some of this on 22 April invoked an immediate response. The S&P 500 index fell 1%. Next day, Bitcoin fell below $50,000, leaving it almost $14,000 lower in value since it hit a record high the previous week. People were nervous that capital gains tax rises would hit their pockets, so they got out of some assets while the going was good. The gold price also dropped, from $1,793 per ounce at midday on 23 April to $1,774 by 3pm that day. US corporations are well-accustomed to finding tax loopholes — 60 years ago corporations paid around a third of federal tax revenues but today its just 10%. No wonder the US Treasury Secretary is keen to gain support for a global minimum corporate tax rate. Without that, much of the intended corporate tax take will still elude the Treasury.
The ‘wannabe’ FDR
In May 2020, New York magazine ran a feature on Biden under the title “Biden is planning an FDR-size presidency” — the FDR being Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the former Democrat President who in the 1930s faced the Great Depression and started many state-funded programmes to get America working again. FDR is either a US 20th century hero or a bogeyman, depending on whether you believe it’s the state’s duty to rescue a society or that such a rescue should be left to the free market.
Biden sees himself following in the footsteps of FDR; he told CNN in April 2020 that the challenge being faced by a Covid-wracked US economic collapse “may not dwarf but eclipse what FDR faced”. The financial sums are certainly much bigger — under Roosevelt’s New Deal US debts grew from $22 billion in 1933 to $33 billion by 1936. In those days, the word ‘trillion’ was hardly ever used. The devaluation of the US dollar can be felt in the ease with which we have moved from talking about ‘billions’ to ‘trillions’; a US Dollar today buys less than 5% of what it would in 1933.
Under the Biden American Families Plan, the tax rates on individual incomes below $400,000 would not increase. New and expanded tax benefits, including provisions for child care, first-time homebuyers, educational debt relief, retirement savings, health insurance, and long-term care insurance, could reduce taxes for average families. Those who will suffer will be corporations and those taxpayers with incomes of $400,000 or more. Individuals with incomes of more than $1 million would pay the same rate on investment income as on wages.
Will it work?
Raising taxes, especially on the ‘rich’, and spreading money and welfare on the ‘poor’ is a classically populist measure. Whether social engineering will make America ‘more equal’ (whatever that means) is an open question. FDR’s New Deal hired Americans to work on the improvement of their own country; as they worked for the government, so the government worked for them. Legacies of the New Deal can be seen all across the country, from bridges, tunnels, roads, schools and libraries to monuments, murals and sculptures. What the New Deal called for was a greater sense of rights and duties — the state funnelled money into work-creation schemes and the citizenry were called on the step up to the plate and reciprocate and work on behalf for the state’s projects. American society is very different today from 1933; will citizens today step up to the plate or just be happy to take the money?
Imposing more taxes on the ‘rich’ is no doubt politically popular but without addressing loopholes such as the Delaware get-out it will seem unbalanced. Biden has scarcely been in office more than 100 days; his intentions remain a work in progress, and will no doubt face stiff Congressional opposition. The dramatic loss of purchasing power of the Dollar since FDR’s time, however, shows no sign of halting.
