Bernie Sanders said on Friday that he would have a concrete proposal for an income tax rate on the highest earners "in two or three weeks."
The Democratic presidential candidate was discussing legislation he has introduced as a senator from Vermont that he says "would end this business of companies being able to store their profits in the Cayman Islands" and tax "Wall Street speculation," when he was asked to name his preferred tax rate on the upper echelon of individual incomes.
"We're working on that," Sanders said on a New Hampshire radio station. "Ask me that question in two or three weeks, I will give you a definitive answer. How's that?"
In late May, Sanders said that, under the Eisenhower administration, the top tax rate "was something like 90 percent," and said he didn't think that was necessarily too high a rate to reinstate.
In June, Sanders alluded to "a comprehensive tax package" his team was working on and said he suspected that it would, "for the top marginal rates, go over 50 percent."
In the interview on Friday, Sanders said that the plan to be released in the coming weeks would "ask the rich to pay a higher tax rate."
"In general, what I can tell you is that when Warren Buffett tells us that he pays an effective tax rate lower than his secretaries or lower than nurses, there's something wrong with our tax system," he said, after again refusing to give a specific number. "So yes, my proposal will ask the wealthiest people in this country, who, by and large, are doing phenomenally well right now, while the middle class is disappearing, yes, I will ask the rich to pay a higher tax rate."
