There is a smarter way to tax the rich
- California's one-time wealth tax still scares billionaires into fleeing—because 'temporary' is bureaucrat-speak for 'until we need more cash'.
- Corporate tax hike on 2% of firms could rake in $4 trillion—and the yacht-and-jet crowd gets zero say.
- Supreme Court hates wealth taxes more than a sunburned tourist; corporate tax is old reliable, legal since 1913.
- This plan taxes Zuckerberg's AI windfall, oil profits from Iran chaos, and that weird patent—without needing to pick winners.
- Trump's tariffs are a regressive circus; a corporate rate bump is the same populist theater, but with better math.
Brief Summary
A UCLA tax professor wants to skip the Billionaire Beauty Pageant—California's referendum on taxing yachts-as-assets—and just screw the corporate giants instead. The pitch: raise the federal corporate rate by 6-9 points on less than 2% of firms, targeting 95% of corporate taxable income, which the Penn Wharton Budget Model says yields $4 trillion over a decade. That's the same money as a billionaire income tax but without the constitutional migraine of taxing unrealized gains that would make Chief Justice Roberts clutch his pearls. The corporate tax is legally bulletproof, progressive in practice, and catches foreign investors and university endowments—so it's a triple shot of fairness without the escape-hatch issue of mobile billionaires fleeing to Monaco to save 5%. Plus, it can grab extra loot from future AI monopolies, Iran-war oil spikes, and any excess profit that doesn't have a lobbyist on speed dial.
Why This Matters
For the average reader, this isn't about tax law nerds—it's about who writes the final check for the national hangover. If the corporate tax is raised, you might not feel it in your 401(k) tomorrow, but it could steer trillions toward fixing potholes and Medicare instead of letting a 22-year-old with a failed social app buy a French chateau. It also means your boss won't fire you to fund a 'philanthropic' AI project—the taxman gets first dibs on the surplus. Politically, it's a scalpel versus the sledgehammer of tariffs, which just hike your flat-screen prices and make the Fed sweat. In short, this is the one tax even the Supreme Court can't kill—and it might just pay for the next decade without making you eat cat food.