Taxes

Corporate CEO: The Rich, ‘Including Me, Should Be Paying More’ In Taxes

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 18, 2011 at 10:30 am

Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris

Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength has been meeting with congressional leaders this week, continuing their push to raise taxes on the very richest Americans. “We want to pay more taxes,” said California millionaire Doug Edwards, a former marketing director for Google. “If you’re fortunate, and you make more than a million dollars a year, you ought to pay more taxes.” The group even told anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist that he should take his extreme positions and “move to Somalia.”

In a speech before the U.S. Council for International Business yesterday, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris joined the tax-me-more crowd, saying, “I can tell you the highest taxpayers, including me, should be paying more“:

“Come on, everyone over a certain threshold of money — and you can define what it is — but I can tell you the highest tax payers, including me, should be paying more,” Liveris said during a speech on Wednesday night…”Come on, we are underpaying for our future.”

CNN Money noted that “while his speech did garner applause a few times, his call to raise taxes was not applauded.”

Poll after poll has shown that the American people favor higher taxes on millionaires, while several ultra-wealthy citizens like Liveris, Edwards, and investor Warren Buffett have all said that they should be paying more to support the country. A survey by the Spectrem Group found that “68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income.”

We can’t lose sight of the fact that Liveris’ company, Dow Chemical, makes its money flaunting environmental rules and corrupting the EPA. But when it comes to taxing the rich, Liveris is on the right side of public policy, along with a majority of both his income cohort and the American people. In fact, the only ones adamantly standing against such an increase at the moment are congressional Republicans.
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