Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released a new plan to counter “corporate greed and corruption” that would raise the corporate tax rate and force companies to share power and profits with their workers.
Sanders’ proposal, which would face significant resistance from Republicans, is also meant to eliminate multiple loopholes in the tax code and stop the use of offshore tax havens.
To further ‘democratize’ corporate boards, corporations with at least $100 million in annual revenues and all publicly traded companies would have to have nearly half of their board of directors directly elected by the firm’s workers. Also, corporations with revenues over $25 million would be made to publicly disclose significant portions of their tax returns.
Sanders’ plan asserts that the main issue with corporations is that “the executives and biggest shareholders of most large, profitable corporations could not give a damn about the working class or the communities in which our corporations operate.”
Instead, his campaign said, “these behemoth corporations have only one allegiance: to the short-term bottom line.”
If the plan had been in effect last year, in 2018, Sanders’ campaign claimed, corporations such as Amazon, Delta, Chevron, and GM “instead of paying nothing in federal income taxes,” would each have paid between $1.5 billion and $3.8 billion.
A key part of Sanders’ plan is also to break up alleged monopolies and make markets competitive by reviewing all mergers that occurred during the Trump administration and giving the Federal Trade Commission new authority to police marketplaces and halt mergers.
Sanders, who considers himself a democratic socialist, has tumbled in the polls in recent months, in particular falling behind his rival and fellow senator Elizabeth Warren in many polls.
Although the two are often compared to each other as progressives on the left wing of the Democratic candidates, Sanders tried to differentiate himself on ABC News on Sunday saying that “Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I’m not.”
