{"id":485,"date":"2019-12-10T16:01:51","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T21:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/10\/city-council-proposes-billionaire-tax\/"},"modified":"2020-01-28T15:34:06","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T20:34:06","slug":"city-council-proposes-billionaire-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/10\/city-council-proposes-billionaire-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"City Council Proposes Billionaire Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Bruce Andersen\/Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

TAKOMA PARK, MD – The City Council is preparing this week to adopt a first-in-the-nation municipal billionaire tax. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are taking the national discussion about addressing income inequality and putting it into action here,” stated the Ward 6 Council Member. “We\u2019re not worried about running the risk of alienating the ultra wealthy. Takoma Park\u2019s government isn\u2019t afraid of billionaires. Angry Sanders supporters, yes. But billionaires, definitely not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although no formal polling has been done on the issue, residents generally seem in favor of the proposal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs long as we\u2019re only targeting the truly wealthy, I\u2019m ok with it,\u201d said John Walters. \u201cSome people might think I\u2019m wealthy just because I own a million dollar home, buy $8 per cup coffee, and take most of my income in the form of capital gains. But I\u2019m not like those bloodsucking billionaires who are hoarding and wasting resources that the rest of us hardworking, regular Americans need. So, yeah, make THOSE guys pay more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

City officials hope the influx of revenue from a billionaire tax will allow them to reduce taxes on everyone else. \u201cWith more money in their pockets, people will be free to spend more on the stuff that Takoma Park residents really need, like education, health care, travel soccer league fees and organic Kombucha,\u201d said the Ward 2 Councilmember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After months of debate, a 27 hour long public comment meeting, the threatened intervention of wealth tax opponent and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and a last second disagreement about whether to set the top tax bracket at $10 billion or $15 billion, only one obstacle remains for the billionaire tax bill: the absence of any billionaires in Takoma Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to do this on a municipal scale because it\u2019s so easy for billionaires to live elsewhere,\u201d said the Mayor. \u201cWe only need one for all the city\u2019s fiscal issues to be solved, which is why we are prepared to spend an unlimited amount of money on our new LAB Agency, or Lure a Billionaire. Fingers crossed!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAKOMA PARK, MD – The City Council is preparing this week to adopt a first-in-the-nation municipal billionaire tax. “We are taking the national discussion about addressing income inequality and putting it into action here,” stated the Ward 6 Council Member. “We\u2019re not worried about running the risk of alienating the ultra wealthy. Takoma Park\u2019s government…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/takomatorch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/20191210_1559452199317813992973297.jpg?fit=1500%2C745&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPZSG-7P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}