A new Economic Policy Institute report charts a new path forward on tax policy amid growing backlash to the Republican reconciliation bill that cut health care and food assistance to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. 

In recent decades, the dominant strategy for many on the center–left has been to pair tax increases with spending increases for programs that lawmakers hope will be popular enough to justify the taxes. But part of the problem with this strategy is that it takes time for spending programs to become popular. This report suggests another strategy: First target stand-alone tax increases focused on ultrarich households and corporations. Once the public has more faith in the overall fairness of the tax system and sees it being actively used to address the corrosive inequality in the U.S. economy, future debates about taxes can happen on much more constructive ground. 

The report offers a range of policy proposals to raise taxes on the ultrarich, including:  

• Raising the top marginal income tax rate back to pre-2017 levels. 

• Taxing wealth at rates closer to those applied to labor earnings, such as instituting a wealth tax on the top 0.1%. 

• Imposing a high-income surtax on millionaires. 

• Restoring effective taxation of large wealth dynasties, such as converting the estate tax to a progressive inheritance tax. 

• Closing tax loopholes for the ultrarich and corporations. 

This policy agenda comes as new polling by Impact Research and Tax the Greedy Billionaires shows that likely battleground voters want to tax billionaires and support a variety of proposals to do so. 

“Donald Trump and Republicans have made crystal clear where their priorities lie with their so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’—not with working Americans, but with billionaires and big corporations. That bill amounts to a Great Betrayal. It raises costs for American workers, cuts vital programs for families, and explodes the national debt—all in service of making the rich richer,” said U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “I strongly support the core argument made in this paper that the wealthiest Americans must begin contributing more to our shared future, and we need to start by gathering a wide range of tax policy proposals aimed at doing so. This is about showing the American people where we stand and making sure our economy–and tax policy–reward hard work, not just accumulated wealth.”

Raising taxes on the ultrarich and corporations is necessary for both economic and political reasons. Economically, preserving and expanding needed social insurance and public investments will require more revenue. Politically, targeting the ultrarich and corporations as sources of the first tranche of this needed new revenue can restore faith in the broader public that policymakers can force the rich and powerful to make a fair contribution. 

“As damaging as the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy will be to tax fairness and economic outcomes, they might be even more damaging to the public’s confidence that tax policy can ever be reoriented to ensure that the ultrarich and corporations pay their fair share. It’s time to reverse these perceptions. If policymakers engage in a confidence-building set of measures to raise significant revenue only from the ultrarich, the public’s stance toward tax policy can be changed from being anti-tax to being willing to debate public sector expansions,” said Josh Bivens, EPI chief economist and author of the report.