Hillary Clinton said Saturday that she will offer a new plan later this month to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
In a statement, Clinton reiterated a plan to at least impose the benchmark “Buffett Rule,” named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who famously called for a tax policy that makes him pay a higher tax rate than his secretary.
“As president, I’ll do what it takes to make sure the super-wealthy are truly paying their fair share,” Clinton said in a statement Saturday. The statement responded to an Internal Revenue Service release of tax data showing the 400 wealthiest U.S. households paid an average tax rate of just under 23 percent in 2013, Bloomberg Politics reported.
Buffett’s plan, pushed for years by Democrats, would set the minimum effective tax rate for people with income of $1 million or more per year at 30 percent.
Clinton has suggested recently that she may seek an even higher rate.
“I want to go even further,” Clinton said in December while campaigning with Buffett, who has endorsed her, in his hometown of Omaha, Neb.
Clinton and Buffett don’t agree on everything. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, like many corporations, has invested in firms that have undergone corporate tax inversions, merging with overseas firms to reduce domestic tax bills. Clinton has faulted that practice as “gaming the system. ”
Buffett was ranked as the third richest person in the world by Forbes in 2015, with a net worth at the time of $72.7 billion, putting him behind only Bill Gates and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
Buffett supported President Obama elections as well.
Buffett, known as the “Oracle of Omaha” for his stock-picking prowess, has predicted that Clinton will win this presidency this year.
“I will bet money on it,” Buffett said of Clinton’s chances in 2014. “And I don’t do that easily.”
