Elizabeth Warren says she’d be happy to sit down with Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates to explain her tax proposals to him after he expressed doubt about her plans to soak the rich.
“I’m always happy to meet with people, even if we have different views. @BillGates, if we get the chance, I’d love to explain exactly how much you’d pay under my wealth tax. (I promise it’s not $100 billion.),” the Massachusetts senator tweeted Wednesday evening, hours after Gates’ comments at the New York Times DealBook Conference.
“I’ve paid over $10 billion in taxes … I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes, but I’m glad to — if I’d had to pay $20 billion, it’s fine. But when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over. … I’m just kidding,” Gates said at the event.
“So you really want the incentive system to be there and you can go a long ways without threatening that.”
Gates, who has a reported net worth of $106.8 billion, according to Forbes, said he was fine paying his share but that Warren’s proposals could be too much for him and his fellow 1 percenters to take.
Gates added that he doubted that Warren — among the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination — would be willing to meet with him after her recent comments about billionaires, including Leon Cooperman, the founder of Omega Advisors, who recently clashed with her.
“You know, I’m not sure how open-minded she is or that she’d be willing to sit down with someone who has large amounts of money,” Gates said.
Warren’s tax on the rich is a proposed 2 percent annual levy on household wealth above $50 million and an additional 1 percent tax on wealth above $1 billion.
It would affect only about 75,000 US households and raise up to $2.75 trillion over a decade, she asserted.