Medicare and paid leave are big sticking points as Democrats rush to finish Biden’s spending plans

But Manchin sees it as an additional, unnecessary government benefit in the bill, one that raises the overall cost of the legislation.

Another plan — to have banks report cash-flow information to the IRS for accounts with more than $10,000 in nonwage deposits — was dropped from the bill around midday Wednesday, CNBC’s Kayla Tausche reported.

But on Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, said the bank reporting plan was not being dropped, it was being “reworked” to apply only to people who make more than $400,000 a year.

The invisible line between individuals making under $400,000 a year and those making more than that is an important one to Biden. The president has repeatedly pledged that nothing in this bill would raise taxes on people “making less than $400,000 a year.”

Another late-breaking proposal, to tax the unrealized market gains of the very richest Americans – people reporting more than $100 million of income or holding more than $1 billion in assets – also began the day Wednesday on shaky ground, after several Democrats privately expressed opposition to it.

Manchin told reporters he thought the plan was “convoluted,” and its demise seemed all but assured.

Later in the day, however, Manchin insisted he was not opposed to singling out billionaires for additional taxes, he just preferred to call it a “patriotic tax,” not a “billionaire tax.”

“Everyone should pay,” he told NBC. “So if I was blessed to have all this money, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, if I get this tax accountant, I can get away from that.’ That’s not right. That’s not America. So I call it a Patriot, being a patriot or patriotic person.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden “supports the billionaire tax.”

But what exactly this meant wasn’t clear, especially after Neal said Wednesday afternoon the House and Senate were considering an alternative to the plan: a 3% surtax on individuals with incomes in excess of $10 million.

Still, the lead senator behind the original billionaire asset tax, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., insisted his plan wasn’t dead.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/27/democrats-firm-up-tax-plans-for-biden-social-spending-bill.html