Bernie Sanders: "Additional Tax on Companies Where CEO Pay Exceeds Employee Pay by Over 50 Times"

Senator Bernie Sanders [Photo by EPA Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Byunghee Park] "Let's impose additional taxes on companies that pay their CEOs more than 50 times the median employee salary."

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator (Independent, Vermont), introduced a bill based on this idea at a public hearing on the 17th (local time), according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

WSJ explained that the bill was a pledge Sanders made when he ran for president in 2020 and that he is now attempting to legislate it as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

WSJ also reported that both Democrats and Republicans oppose Sanders' idea, calling it unrealistic and costly.

At the hearing, Senator Pat Toomey (Republican), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, said, "Wages are rising," and "The government does not need to take radical measures."

Sanders said he hopes to first gain support from the public and that public consensus will pressure Democratic lawmakers to back the bill. He has consistently raised issues of labor and income inequality. He said, "I want to talk about the important issues facing working families," adding, "because I believe the U.S. is becoming a country monopolized by a few."

The bill proposed by Sanders targets companies with annual gross receipts exceeding $100 million. It calls for an additional 0.5% tax on the 21% corporate tax rate for companies where the CEO's pay is 50 times the average employee's, and an additional 5% for companies where it is 500 times.

At the hearing convened by Sanders as Budget Committee chairman, topics such as income inequality and labor unions were discussed. Amid Amazon workers' recent efforts to form a union, Sanders invited Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, to the hearing, but Bezos did not attend. Sanders announced plans to hold another public hearing on corporate taxes later this month.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.