<\/p>\n
Two cents is the kind of number nobody argues about. It is the change you leave in a tip jar, the rounding on a gas receipt, the coin most people would not bend down to grab.<\/p>\n
Stretch that same two cents across a fortune big enough to buy a midsize country, and it stops being pocket change. It turns into a fight.<\/p>\n
Here is how the system works now. Most Americans pay tax on what they earn, money that lands in a paycheck and gets taxed before it ever reaches the bank.<\/p>\n
The richest Americans do not live that way. Their money sits in stock, real estate, and private companies, growing quietly for years without triggering a single tax bill until they sell. Plenty never really sell. They borrow against it instead.<\/p>\n
That gap has been the quiet engine of wealth at the top for decades.<\/p>\n
Now one senator wants to tax the pile while it sits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is bringing back the wealth tax she made famous in 2020, and on June 3, she walked through the details on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”<\/p>\n
Where Warren’s two cents idea came from<\/p>\n
Warren did not invent the wealth tax, but she turned it into a slogan. During her 2020 presidential run, she answered nearly every spending question the same way. She had a plan, and it cost the rich about two cents on the dollar.<\/p>\n
The phrase stuck because it sounded almost reasonable. Two pennies. Who would miss two pennies?<\/p>\n
MoreEconomy:<\/p>\n
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The idea faded when her campaign did. It is back now for a simple reason. The people getting richest in 2026 are the ones building artificial intelligence (AI), and Warren has named them.<\/p>\n
She has pointed at Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI chief Sam Altman, arguing the gains from AI should reach ordinary households instead of a handful of founders, according to The Hill.<\/p>\n
Tech leaders have handed her the argument. Some have warned that AI could create a “permanent underclass,” a phrase Warren now repeats back to them, Axios reported.<\/p>\n
Warren’s “two cents” strategy is back, and billionaires know it.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg / Getty Images<\/p>\n
What the ultra-millionaire tax would do<\/p>\n
The bill has a name. It is the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026, and Warren introduced it on March 26 alongside Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Brendan Boyle.<\/p>\n
The mechanics are narrow on purpose. The first $50 million of any fortune is left alone. Above that line, the household pays 2% a year. Above $1 billion, the rate climbs to 3%, CBS News reported.<\/p>\n
There is a trigger most coverage skips. The rate on billionaires would jump to 6% if a national health insurance law ever passes, a summary of the bill from Quiver Quantitative indicates.<\/p>\n
Warren also tried to seal the exits. The bill adds a 40% “exit tax” on anyone worth more than $50 million who renounces U.S. citizenship to avoid it, according to CBS News.<\/p>\n
Sen. Warren’s proposed two cents tax plan: by the numbers0% on the first $50 million of net worth, 2% above it, and 3% above $1 billion, according to CBS NewsA jump to 6% on billionaire wealth if a national health plan becomes law, Quiver Quantitative explainsA 40% exit tax on those worth $50 million or more who renounce citizenship, according to CBS NewsRoughly 260,000 families affected, raising $6.2 trillion over a decade, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman noted, as reported by Reason$70 billion earmarked to rebuild Internal Revenue Service (IRS) enforcement, Quiver Quantitative confirmedWhat two cents costs a billionaire<\/p>\n
Two cents on the dollar sounds gentle. I ran it against the bill’s own thresholds, and the slogan is doing a lot of softening.<\/p>\n
Take a fortune of exactly $1 billion. The first $50 million is free. The next $950 million gets taxed at 2%. That is a $19 million bill, every year, on wealth the owner may never have sold a share of.<\/p>\n
Related: Jeff Bezos sends stunning message to American workers<\/p>\n
Push the fortune to $100 billion, the neighborhood several AI and tech founders now occupy, and my math lands near $3 billion a year. The tax repeats annually, so a fortune that stopped growing would slowly shrink.<\/p>\n
That is the entire point, supporters say. Wealth this concentrated tends to compound faster than any 2% nick can erode it, the economists who scored the bill argue, which is how they reach trillions in projected revenue.<\/p>\n
For the other 99.95% of households, the bill changes nothing. You file nothing different. That design is what lets Warren call this a tax on roughly 260,000 families rather than on the country.<\/p>\n
Why a wealth tax is hard to pass<\/p>\n
Popularity is not Warren’s problem. Surveys have shown majority support for taxing fortunes above $50 million. The problem is everything between an idea and a working law.<\/p>\n
Start with the Constitution. The Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Moore v. United States upheld one narrow tax but pointedly declined to say whether Washington can tax wealth that has only grown on paper. This leaves legal scholars split on whether a wealth tax would survive a challenge, according to Bloomberg Tax.<\/p>\n
History is not encouraging, either. A dozen wealthy nations once ran wealth taxes, and by 2024, only three still did, with most repealing them after valuation fights and capital flight ate the revenue, the Tax Policy Center explained.<\/p>\n
France became the cautionary tale. It scrapped its broad wealth tax after the rich moved money abroad and replaced it with a narrow levy on property that cannot flee.<\/p>\n
Cost is the last hurdle. An earlier version of the plan would raise less than Warren hoped and trim gross domestic product (GDP) by about 1.2% by 2050, as money that would have been invested flows to Washington instead, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model.<\/p>\n
What happens to the wealth tax next<\/p>\n
What strikes me about the timing is that Warren is not really aiming at this Congress. The bill carries 10 co-sponsors and has no clear path through a Republican Senate.<\/p>\n
She is aiming at 2028. Wealth taxes are spreading in the states, New York just passed a tax on luxury second homes, and Democrats eyeing the next presidential race keep circling the same anti-oligarchy message, according to Axios.<\/p>\n
For the ultra-rich, that is the part worth watching. The headline number probably stalls in committee. The quieter AI data center tax is the easier sell, and it could ride into law attached to something bigger.<\/p>\n
The first real wealth tax to pass anywhere is also headed straight for the Supreme Court. Two cents still sounds small, but the fight over it is only getting louder.<\/p>\n
Related: Elizabeth Warren has bold new plan to tax AI companies<\/p>\n
#Elizabeth #Warren #revives #cents #tax #ultrarich<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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