Dems Unveil Plan to Crack Down on Stock Buybacks as Trump Tax Cuts Fuel $4.8 Trillion 'Bonanza'

A group of Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation to hike taxes on US corporations that buy back their own stock as a new analysis estimated that major companies have spent nearly 5 trillion on share repurchases since President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts took effect.The Democratic legislation, titled the Stock Buyback Accountability Act of 2026, would increase the current stock buyback excise tax from 1 to 4, a change that experts say would raise around 240 billion in revenue over a 10-year period and likely dissuade some companies from engaging in buybacks, which artificially inflate share prices and further enrich shareholders and executives.“After getting massive tax breaks from Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, giant corporations are turning around and delivering stock buybacks at record highs,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in introducing the new bill to rein in what they called corporate America's stock buyback bonanza.“It’s shameful that wealthy shareholders and executives are profiting while American families pay through the roof for groceries, gas, and rent, said Warren. This bill is an important step forward in making corporations pay their fair share.The legislation's release coincided with an analysis conducted by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), which found that 100 of the largest corporations in the US have spent a combined 4.8 trillion on stock buybacks in the eight years since enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law.Every time Republicans sweep an election they shower corporations with new tax breaks, and then corporations shower their wealthy shareholders and executives with new stock buybacks.Just 10 companies—Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Nvidia, and Visa—were responsible for more than 2 trillion of the 4.8 trillion in total buybacks since 2017, ATF noted. The group estimated that, had the Stock Buyback Accountability Act been in place over the past eight years, the federal government could have raised around 200 billion in revenue from the 100 big corporations examined in the new analysis.“The huge tax cuts corporations received from the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—which were supposed to be used to increase employee pay and business investment—have instead been wasted on trillions of dollars of stock buybacks,” said ATF executive director David Kass. “Stock buybacks widen economic inequality by making already wealthy shareholders even richer. We need the Stock Buyback Accountability Act now more than ever.”Stock buybacks were effectively prohibited in the US until 1982, as they were considered a form of market manipulation. Over four decades later, in 2025, stock buybacks by American companies surpassed 1 trillion—a record high.Every time Republicans sweep an election they shower corporations with new tax breaks, and then corporations shower their wealthy shareholders and executives with new stock buybacks, Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday. We need to dial up the tax on these buybacks, and if corporations decide they’re better off investing in workers and long-term growth, that’s a great outcome.”ATF noted in its analysis that the resulting rise in stock price created by a buyback is not taxed unless the stock is sold.With the top 5 of households owning 70 of all stocks, that is a big benefit for wealthy investors, who prefer the unrealized income which comes from buybacks to the traditional corporate dividends that are paid out and taxed on an annual basis, the group observed.