Disney heir and Emmy award-winning filmmaker Abigail Disney knows she has money, and is all for paying higher taxes to support efforts to close the wealth gap and fund improved education.
Specifically, she is all in on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (possible vice president pick for presidential hopeful Joe Biden) proposed ultra-millionaire tax. “Yes, I support it strongly,” Disney — estimated to have a net worth of more than $120 million — said on Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade. “I have seen the number of what it would bring in in terms of revenue. We need the revenue in the United States. We need it badly.”
Warren’s wealth tax has made waves among the well-to-do.
The tax would apply to those with a net worth of $50 million or more, which Warren estimates will touch 75,000 households or the top 0.1% in the U.S. Those households would pay an annual 2% tax on every dollar of net worth above $50 million and a 6% tax on every dollar above $1 billion. The plan projects it would raise $3.75 trillion in revenue per year to fund various social safety net programs.
Disney — also a well-known activist — isn’t paying lip service to Warren’s cause.
She is among more than 80 men and women worth seven figures that are part of a new group dubbed “Millionaires for Humanity.” The group recently signed an open letter asking governments to “raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently.”
“As COVID-19 strikes the world, millionaires like us have a critical role to play in healing our world. No, we are not the ones caring for the sick in intensive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances that will bring the ill to hospitals. We are not restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door. But we do have money, lots of it. Money that is desperately needed now and will continue to be needed in the years ahead, as our world recovers from this crisis,” the letter says.
Disney is hopeful such a tax would eventually get passed by lawmakers. Although she is concerned that a president Biden would pass on implementing the tax.
Says Disney, “I mean, Joe Biden for many years carried the interest loophole. We don’t know how much he is going to be able to resist the pressure from the high-dollar donors. That remains to be seen. I will be helping in any way I can. I genuinely believe we have as wealthy people — have not paid our fair share. We benefitted disproportionately by a high functioning legal system and infrastructure that works and things like that. But we need to cough up a little bit more to pay our fair share.”
That may include the Disney executive team, per Abigail Disney’s comments here.
This article originally appeared on Yahoo! Finance.
