Bernie Sanders unveils sweeping wealth tax, says 'I don't think that billionaires should exist'

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is out with a sweeping new wealth tax proposal that goes a step further than that of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Sanders Tuesday unveiled a proposed annual wealth tax that would apply to the approximately 180,000 households with a net worth above $32 million, The New York Times reports. For comparison, Warren's proposed wealth tax applies to the approximately 70,000 households with a net worth above $50 million.

Under Sanders' plan, a 1 percent tax would apply to net worth between $32 million and $50 million; that number would increase up to 8 percent for net worth over $10 billion. For single filers, the tax would begin on wealth above $16 million. Warren's plan calls for a 2 percent tax on net worth between $50 million and $1 billion and 3 percent on more than $1 billion, with the brackets being the same for married and single filers.

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Sanders in an interview with the Times said, "I don't think that billionaires should exist." While he said this wealth tax doesn't "eliminate billionaires," it "eliminates a lot of the wealth that billionaires have," which he says is "exactly what we should be doing."

The Times reports that had Sanders' tax been in effect since 1982, the net worth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, would be $43 billion rather than $160 billion as it is now. Had Warren's plan been in effect since then, his net worth would be $87 billion. Axios notes that with the proposal, which is "even more aggressive" than Warren's, Sanders is aiming to "remind voters that he's the original when it comes to progressive policy in the 2020 field."

Read more about Sanders' wealth tax proposal at The New York Times.