Bernie Sanders’ Wealth Tax Will Cost Jeff Bezos $9 Billion A Year, Bill Gates $8.6B

At its core, the plan to slash the scandalous income inequality gap in the United States proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is pure simplicity -- hit billionaires with an extreme wealth tax.

In fact, tax these people so much there won't be any billionaires left in the U.S. Millionaires are OK with the Bern, who is himself a millionaire. Sanders had a net worth of $2 million in 2017 and $2.5 million at the start of 2019.

Getting this job done will still be a problem even if Sanders gets to be elected as the 46th president of the United States in November 2020.

Sanders on Tuesday unveiled his proposal for an extreme wealth tax on billionaires that will see Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos -- the world's richest person -- pay $9 billion in taxes this year. It's not known how much Bezos paid in personal income taxes in 2018 but Bezos has a net worth of $109 billion, according to Forbes.

Amazon will pay $0.00 in federal taxes this year, thanks partly to Trump's tax cuts.

Under Sanders' wealth taxes, the top 10 richest Americans will pay a combined tax of $57.2 billion. This amount is equivalent to a tenth of the $576 billion U.S. military budget for 2019.

“I don’t think billionaires should exist,” said Sanders.

Sanders projects his tax will raise $4.35 trillion over 10 years. The U.S. federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2020 is projected to be $1.10 trillion. This means Sanders' billionaire tax will be more than enough to pay for the entire U.S. budget deficit into the 2020s.

Analysts noted that if Sanders' onerous taxes were implemented, American billionaires will lose half their wealth in 15 years.

Sanders' sliding scale of taxes escalates for wealth over $500 million, which will be taxed at 4 percent. Wealth over $10 billion will be taxed at a rate of 8 percent, or more than four times the highest wealth-tax rates European countries once imposed.

Here's what the some of the richest Americans will pay in taxes under Sanders' extreme wealth tax, as per CNBC: