Joe Biden wants wealthy, corporations to pay their ‘fair share’ in taxes: White House

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that President Biden wants wealthy individuals and corporations to pay their “fair share” in taxes as concerns increase on Capitol Hill about how to pay for new spending priorities in areas like infrastructure and climate change.

“His priority and focus has always been on people paying their fair share and also focusing on corporations that may not be paying their fair share, either,” Ms. Psaki told reporters at the White House. “So that remains his overarching approach, but there isn’t a package yet where we’re talking about pay-for yet.”

Ms. Psaki repeated Mr. Biden‘s pledge that people earning less than $400,000 per year won’t see their taxes increase under his tax proposals.

She said Mr. Biden has an attitude of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts that wealthier people are not “doing their part” in paying taxes.

Ms. Warren during the 2020 campaign introduced a “wealth tax” proposal that would impose a 2% tax on households’ net worth of more than $50 million and an additional 1% tax on a net worth of above $1 billion.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen motioned over the weekend that the administration is looking for ways to try to tame federal deficits like hiking taxes on corporations and wealthier individuals. 

Mr. Biden had campaigned on the increase of corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, raising the top individual tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, and increasing capital gains taxes on people who earn more than $1 million per year.

Republicans have said that they will oppose any efforts to roll back parts of the 2017 tax-cut law, which decreased the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cut individual tax rates across the board.