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“It is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 per cent of our population. . . . This is not only insane, it tells us the degree to which the billionaire class controls the Republican Party,” said Sanders, who introduced the plan with the support of Thomas Piketty, a well-known French economist on wealth consolidation. “Our bill does what the American people want us to be doing and that is to demand that the very wealthiest families in this country start paying their fair share of taxes.”

Photo by LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

The plan would raise $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires, but over an unknown period of time because it would take effect only once they die, according to Sanders’s staff. Over the next decade, the tax would raise $315 billion, policy aides said.

The senator’s push comes the week after Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has already announced her bid for the White House, released an “Ultra Millionaire” tax that would levy a 2 per cent annual tax on those with more than $50 million, as well as a 3 per cent annual tax on those with more than $1 billion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., also recently floated a 70 per cent marginal tax rate on those making more than $10 million.

Sanders supports both of those ideas, and in 2017 pitched a wealth tax on those with assets over $21 million as part of a suite of financing options for his “Medicare-for-all” health-care plan, according to aides for the senator. As a candidate in the 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders also called for a surcharge on estates worth more than $1 billion, a top marginal rate over 60 per cent, and a tax on certain Wall Street transactions.