Biden to cut taxes for 50 mn middle class families

Washington, Sep 16 (EFE).- President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he will cut taxes for some 50 million middle class families, although he will raise them on the wealthiest Americans.

In a White House speech, Biden said that this will be an “historic” tax cut for the middle class, although he provided no details about exactly how his plan will work.

The president devoted a good portion of his speech toward attacking big corporations and the richest Americans, warning that “Big corporations and the super-rich have to pay their fair share of taxes.”

In that regard, he emphasized that the country is currently facing the option of continuing as it has up to now, with big corporations profiting “overwhelmingly” from the growth of the economy, or moving down a new road where everybody benefits.

“The data is absolutely clear: Over the past 40 years, the wealthy have gotten wealthier and too many corporations have lost their sense of responsibility to their workers, their communities, and the country,” Biden said.

The president said that in the past top company executives had received salaries some 20 times greater, on average, than their employees, but nowadays they earn 350 times more.

And he asked rhetorically how it could be possible that 55 of the country’s biggest corporations could have wound up paying zero federal taxes on their profits, adding that they earned some $40 billion during 2020 and yet paid nothing to the Internal Revenue Service.

“I believe we’re at an inflection point in this country, one of those moments where the decisions we’re about to make can literally change the trajectory of our nation,” Biden said.

“Are we going to take this moment to set this country on a new path that benefits everyone, including middle class and working folks?” he asked. “We need to make this country works for them, not just those at the top of the corporate ladder.”

“Let’s not squander this opportunity,” the president added.

Biden said that just as he had mentioned when he launched his campaign for president, he believes that this is a time of great potential for change, the time to get workers to return to the economy and to show Americans that the government works for them and not just for the big corporations and “those at the top.”

The president also said that calculations are that the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers currently evade paying some $116 billion in taxes each year and he intends to put a stop to this by devoting more resources to the Internal Revenue Service to review bank accounts.

Democrats on a House committee three days ago proposed a tax hike on the wealthiest taxpayers and for companies earning more than $5 million per year.

Democratic lawmakers hope that this tax hike will collect some $2.9 trillion over the next 10 years and pay for Biden’s ambitious social spending program valued at $3.5 trillion and which his party wants to approve in Congress before the end of this month.

A final draft of that spending plan still has not been made and several congressional committees are examining and discussing exactly what to include in it.

EFE