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Jeff Bezos would owe about $ 2 billion annually in state income taxes under Washington’s proposed wealth tax, according to lawmakers.

Washington state lawmakers are proposing a 1% levy on assets over $ 1 billion as part of an effort to reduce inequality and make up for the state’s lack of income tax. Legislators say the tax would generate approximately $ 2.5 billion in revenue per year and would only apply to so-called non-intangible financial assets or investments such as stocks or options.

However, tax experts say the state’s wealth tax would depend on four megabillionaires who call Washington state home: Bezos, Bill Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and Steve Ballmer.

Jared Walczak of the Tax Foundation wrote that 97% of the tax revenue would come from these four billionaires. Bezos, who is currently valued at around $ 200 billion, would owe about $ 2 billion a year under the new tax. Gates, valued at about $ 135 billion, would owe about $ 1.3 billion, while Ballmer would owe about $ 870 million. Scott, Bezos’ ex-wife, would owe about $ 600 million a year.

With none of the Big Four holding an everyday corporate role in Washington, they could simply move to another state to avoid the tax, critics said. In fact, for their revenue estimate, state tax experts may have assumed that Bezos, who has just stepped down as CEO of Amazon, or one of the others, would leave as the total amount of taxes owed by the four billionaires exceeds the forecast of $ 2.5 billion .

Walczak said any of these people could move to a different state and make it their primary residence and still spend up to 182 days a year in Washington state and avoid the tax.

“This would not only thwart the property tax, but also rob the state of other income,” said Walczak. “These affluent residents still pay a disproportionate share of state and local taxes and contribute significantly to the local economy. Persecuting them would have dire consequences beyond the failure of a new tax.”

Proponents say wealth tax is necessary to bring fairness to the country’s most unequal tax system. Because there is no income tax and it increases state revenues from sales tax, property tax, and other taxes, low- and middle-income taxpayers pay a larger portion of their income in state taxes, they say.

Noel Frame, the state official who introduced the bill, said the low-wage earners pay 18% of their income in state taxes, while the top 1% pay 6% of their income in state taxes.

“We have a tax code that is completely unfair,” said Frame. “I just don’t think that’s acceptable anymore.”

Frame said Washington’s wealth tax by taxing financial assets avoids the problem of trying tax claims like art, real estate, collectibles, and other hard-to-value assets.

While the Big Four would bear the brunt of the tax, the state Treasury Department estimates that there are nearly 100 billionaires in the state who could pay the tax and spread the risk. Forbes estimates Washington has about a dozen billionaires.

Speaking of criticism that the state’s best billionaires could leave, she said that with the exception of Bezos, the rest of Washington’s billionaires are closely linked to him.

“The idea that they will just pick up and go is a cynical view and not backed by evidence,” Frame said, citing studies that said increasing taxes on the rich did not see a greater than expected increase in churn due Millionaires and high earners.

However, a concentrated tax on just a handful of mega billionaires could be different. Orion Hindawi, co-founder and CEO of Tanium, who recently relocated his family and business to Washington from California, said during an interview with the Washington Technology Industry Association that the state would lose its competitiveness if it levied taxes on the rich .

With remote meetings and online productivity, workers and managers are no longer tied to a city or state as they used to be. He said a wealth tax was viewed by his peers as “defamation”.

“The reality is that people in Washington state have flexibility that they didn’t have a year ago, and that is continued flexibility,” Hindawi said. High earners and flexible workers, he said, “are basically nation-states in their own right. They can move where they want, and that’s trivial.”

Bruce Springsteen starred in and narrated a two-minute Super Bowl ad for Jeep that featured far more Americana and scenery than any other vehicle.

Rob DeMartin for Jeep

Jeep’s Super Bowl commercial starring Bruce Springsteen was a decade in the making, according to Olivier Francois, an automotive marketing manager best known for convincing A-list celebrities to appear in such ads.

Every year since 2011, Francois said he had come up with an idea for a Super Bowl commercial by Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau. It became something of a tradition, although Francois believed there was little chance that this would happen.

Why Springsteen, who had never appeared in a commercial before? It goes back to the automaker’s former CEO Sergio Marchionne, who passed away unexpectedly in 2018. The Italian-Canadian businessman was a fan of the singer and regularly used his music at presentations and events to connect Springsteen’s personality with that of the company.

“What you are really seeing today is 10 years of history,” Francois told CNBC. “We started discussing Bruce – about Bruce, not him, about – with my old boss Sergio. … He loved Bruce Springsteen’s music.”

Francois, head of marketing at Jeep’s parent company Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), convinced Detroit rapper Eminem and musician Bob Dylan to star in the company’s ads. He even landed Oprah Winfrey for a voice over once. Last year, Francois convinced elusive actor Bill Murray to repeat his role from the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” for a Super Bowl commercial.

He said his “greatest regret” was unable to do the Springsteen commercial while Marchionne was alive. “My biggest regret today is that they never made it to meet. I always promised him that I would make a difference and I delivered a little too late,” said Francois.

Why now?

Francois first featured on Springsteen in a 2012 Super Bowl commercial titled “It’s Halftime in America,” which starred actor Clint Eastwood, another celebrity not known for appearing in ads or to commit to a product or company. The ad featured Eastwood as the national coach and urged the US to learn from the resurgence of the Detroit auto industry.

Francois referred to this year’s ad as the “successor” to this commercial as well as others such as a 2013 Super Bowl commercial called “Farmer”. Both were cinematic, country-specific ads with few actual vehicles.

In this year’s “The Middle” advertisement, Springsteen drives around in an old jeep and talks about a chapel in the center of the country called US Center Chapel in Lebanon, Kansas. He used the extremely small chapel as a base to talk about the country that must “meet here in the middle” before the ad ended with “To the ReUnited States of America”. A website and logos for Jeep followed, which will celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2021.

Bruce Springsteen (left) with Olivier Francois, Stellantis Chief Marketing Officer, while filming the company’s Super Bowl LV ad for Jeep.

Rob DeMartin for Jeep

In a press release, Landau said as soon as they saw the pitch they decided it was something they had to do.

“Olivier Francois and I have been talking about ideas for the past 10 years. When he showed us the design for ‘The Middle’, our immediate reaction was ‘Let’s do it’,” he said. “Our goal was to do something surprising, relevant, immediate and artful. I think that’s exactly what Bruce did with ‘The Middle’.”

Francois believes the message of the ad is in line with Springsteen’s beliefs and has struck the “right balance” between the company’s goal and that of the singer, who narrated a commercial for Joe Biden last year.

According to Francois, Springsteen was closely involved in creating the Jeep ad and worked closely with director Thom Zimny. He wrote and produced the original score for the commercial with another of his frequent collaborators, Ron Aniello.

The ad almost didn’t happen

According to Francois, the commercial with Springsteen almost never happened. After being turned down by the singer’s manager for 10 years, he had decided not to give Landau an idea for Springsteen.

“I think it’s the first year I haven’t asked an agency to crack an idea from Bruce Springsteen,” he said. “I think it took me 10 years to understand that it never happened. Of course I was wrong, but I thought so. And it was also an abuse of John Landau and Bruce’s time.”

Bruce Springsteen starred in and narrated a two-minute Super Bowl ad for Jeep that featured far more Americana and scenery than any other vehicle.

Rob DeMartin for Jeep

Until the Southfield, Michigan-based advertising agency Doner came up with the idea of ​​”The Middle”. After Francois contacted Landau in early January to say a happy new year, he decided to send him the advertising agency’s pitch. Francois said that after receiving the parking space, Landau believed it was “the right message”.

“Yes, he takes a position, but he takes a position for the middle,” said Francois. “It’s not liberal. It’s not republican. It’s just something that tries to stand up for the apolitical. The community.”

The news seems to have resonated with viewers. Since it was posted on YouTube early Sunday morning, the ad has been viewed approximately 24 million times. That’s roughly four times the combined viewership of other Super Bowl ads from General Motors, Toyota Motor, and online car salesman Vroom.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks as United States President Donald Trump listens during the daily meeting of the coronavirus task force at the White House on April 22, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

The Trump administration tried to suppress Covid-19 testing in the US last year by toning down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on who should be tested, a House panel said Monday .

In August, the CDC revised its Covid-19 testing guidelines to say that people who have no symptoms “don’t necessarily need a test” even after exposure to an infected person. The move has been widely criticized by public health professionals and politicians who said testing asymptomatic people is an important part of identifying and shutting down chains of spread.

Deputy Health Secretary Brett Giroir, who led the Trump administration’s testing efforts, vigorously denied allegations at the time that the White House had pressured health officials to change the guidelines.

The House Select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis released newly received emails Monday from a political official with the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that it was pressing for the new guidelines.

In the emails, former HHS scientific advisor Paul Alexander defended the change in testing guidelines and downplayed the importance of testing people without symptoms. He said it was “not the point of testing”. Alexander was brought to HHS by Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally who led the department’s communications last year, before leaving abruptly after accusing CDC scientists of the riot.

“Testing asymptomatic people for asymptomatic cases is not the point of testing because in the end we only reach low-risk asymptomatic people under quarantine and preventing the workforce from working,” wrote Alexander a day after the CDC changed the test instructions reported in an email to other HHS officials.

“Against this background, based on the prevailing data, it would be inappropriate to test schools and colleges / universities extensively. This will not allow them to reopen themselves optimally,” he added, defending the policy change.

In September, the CDC silently reversed the instructions, saying that anyone, even without symptoms, who has been in close contact with an infected person needs a Covid-19 test.

Rep. James Clyburn, DS.C., chairman of the committee investigating allegations of political influence in the country’s top health officials under the Trump administration, said in letters the CNBC wrote to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and the incumbent HHS Secretary Norris Cochran had directed that the emails are fresh evidence of political interference in the CDC under Trump.

The email, Clyburn said in the letters, “shows that political officials were involved in the decision to change the CDC’s guidelines and that the Trump administration changed the guidelines to reduce the number of tests and those Allow the virus to spread while the economy reopens quickly. ” . “

Clyburn added that the committee had requested more documents from the CDC and other agencies “to understand the full scope and implications of the Trump White House’s efforts to suppress coronavirus testing.”

Alexander is at the center of the ongoing investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s administration or his appointees have allowed politics to shape the nation’s response to the pandemic. In December, Clyburn posted a plethora of emails from Alexander and Caputo which, according to Clyburn, showed “a harmful pattern of political interference by administrative officials.”

sturti | E + | Getty Images

Tax competition between states to attract and retain businesses and residents has persisted for decades. The national migration pattern has generally evolved from cold northern states with high taxes to warm southern and southwestern states with low taxes.

Retirees who are no longer tied to a job or are raising children have been an integral part of the caravan of migrants heading south. However, for all but the richest, taxes are usually not the main factor.

“I think most retirees who move are about quality of life,” said Ryan Losi, CPA at Piascik in Richmond, Virginia. “The [lower] Taxes are the icing on the cake for them. “

The icing on the cake, however, is itself becoming the cake for a larger number of Americans. With tax rates expected to rise, government income, property and sales taxes are becoming bigger factors in deciding where to live and work for both individuals and business owners.

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Losi has had numerous calls from wealthy clients – especially business owners – since November to discuss a possible move to a low-tax country.

“I’m not talking about seniors,” he said. “These are people who will earn income for another 20 to 30 years.

“They see their states continue to raise income and corporate taxes, so they want to migrate elsewhere,” he added.

While taxes aren’t the only problem driving migration patterns, they are clearly a consideration.

Last year, California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York were the five states with the highest rates of outbound migration, according to the 2020 National Movers Study published annually by United Van Lines.

Four of these five states were classified by the tax foundation in the bottom five states in terms of the business tax climate in 2021. Illinois ranked 36th.

“High-tax countries are under more pressure today than they have been for a long time,” said Jared Walczak, vice president for state projects at the tax foundation. He said the pandemic and the generally positive remote work experience of millions of Americans over the past year are adding to the pressure.

“The growth of the remote work environment is an extremely big development,” he said. “Increasingly, people and businesses can choose where to settle.”

Most experts expect more people and companies to choose where to pay lower taxes. The relocations of well-known technology companies such as Oracle and Hewlett Packard from California’s Silicon Valley to Texas are just the best-known examples. Any business capable of operating remotely is likely to take its tax footprint far more seriously now.

“If a company is big enough and has offices across the country, it can assign people who work remotely to offices in low-tax countries,” said Walczak. “I think a lot more companies will want to offer their employees remote-friendly circumstances.”

This prospect is likely to keep many state tax administrators awake at night. Six states, including Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, have “convenience” rules that allow them to tax employees of companies in the state even if they do not live or work in the state.

Massachusetts, which has an income tax rate of 5%, introduced such a rule last year in response to the pandemic. It is currently being sued by the state of New Hampshire, which has no income tax and has attracted many remote Massachusetts workers.

The remote working problem is likely to lead to further conflict between state tax authorities. It will certainly challenge high tax countries that seek a faster-eroding tax base.

“High-tax countries are like aircraft carriers – they spin slowly,” Losi said. “If they see more migration, they will have a shortage of income and greater difficulty in funding their obligations. These states are in great trouble.”

Many are currently doing better financially than expected. This is in large part due to federal coronavirus relief packages, particularly state-taxed increased unemployment benefits and healthy property tax revenues and capital gains from the still buoyant property and stock market, Walczak said. 42 states tax capital gains.

He suggests that high-tax countries do not overreact when more residents leave the state.

“If they put taxes on those who are left, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ensure more people leave,” he said. “California and New York don’t need Florida or Texas tax codes to compete for residents and businesses, but they can’t go in the opposite direction.”