America's wealthiest added $195 billion to their fortunes in Biden's first 100 days

• Since Biden’s presidency started, the richest 100 Americans saw their fortunes grow by $195 billion.
• An analysis from Bloomberg tracked the gains and attribute them to a strong market, stimulus, and vaccines.
• But Biden has set out to tax the wealthiest Americans to offset infrastructure investments.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

President Joe Biden’s policies have been targeted at Americans who need an economic uplift, with everything from fresh stimulus checks, newly extended additional unemployment benefits, and tax credits that put more money into America’s poor and parents.

But there’s another prosperous beneficiary of Biden’s presidency so far: America’s 100 wealthiest people. According to a Bloomberg report, they’ve added $195 billion to their fortunes since Biden took office. From his election to his inauguration, they raked in $267 billion.

Over the last 13 months, as the pandemic has taken its economic toll, American billionaires have added $1.62 trillion to their collective net worths, according to a report from the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF). That report also found that the number of American billionaires has grown from 66 in 1990 to 719 today.

Bloomberg attributes the gains to a strong market, fast vaccine rollout (over 100 million Americans are now fully vaccinated), and the American Rescue Plan. 

Biden has proposed tax measures targeting the wealthiest

While the richest Americans saw gains under Biden, he’s making moves to tax them more heavily to offset the cost of his next big expenditure: an infrastructure package that encompasses everything from universal pre-K to affordable childcare and education. 

His current proposals include raising the income tax rate to 39.6% for the highest-earning Americans. He also wants to make the capital gains tax rate — which taxes assets like stocks at a much lower rate, generally around 20% — equivalent to that income tax rate for Americans making over a million dollars.

While that may not impact the stock market much, Biden’s proposals do have some wealthier Americans scrambling and calling up their tax and estate advisors. A report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that virtually all tax changes will be concentrated among the top 1% of Americans, who would see their taxes increase by an average of around $100,000 a year.

Also included in Biden’s plan: Stronger tax enforcement for America’s wealthiest, who have been found to be hiding billions from the IRS. Biden’s $80 billion investment in the IRS could bring in an extra $700 billion in revenue over 10 years, according to the Department of Treasury, and that’s still with hundreds of billions going uncollected.

In his address to a joint session of Congress, Biden highlighted the taxes in his plan and the investments they’ll offset.

“It’s time for corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of Americans to just begin to pay their fair share,” he said, adding: “I think you should be able to become a billionaire and a millionaire, but pay your fair share.”

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