An exceptional year for wealthy Americans, at least in terms of their financial health, just got better.
If West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin votes against President Joe Biden’s signature economic package, as he said he would on Sunday, rich Americans will escape any tax hikes, saving the top 0.1% hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.
“To say my clients were celebrating is the wrong word to use,” said Steven Winter, a partner at BDO who primarily advises hedge funds and private equity firms. “It was a sigh of relief.”
Democrats had designed a $1.75 trillion bill aimed at narrowing the widening wealth gap by enhancing tax credits for children and low-income adults while raising revenue from the wealthy and corporations. The latest bill’s three most expensive items for the super-wealthy, including a surtax on incomes above $10 million, would raise more than $640 billion over the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
