When President Joe Biden came out with his plan to tax the nation’s superrich, I breathed a sigh of relief since my income is roughly $999,999,000 away from his proposed billionaires’ tax that he wants Congress to incorporate into next year’s budget.

Biden is asking Congress to approve the proposal, part of an effort to reduce the federal deficit over the next decade while at the same time funding new spending. The proposed tax on the ultrawealthy would affect fewer than 1% of Americans, but “eliminates the inefficient sheltering of income for decades or generations,” the White House said at a news conference announcing the proposal.

Under his plan, households worth more than $100 million would pay at least 20 percent in taxes on both income and “unrealized gains,” or the increase in an unsold investment’s value. Many of the superrich hold on to these investments for decades, meaning they’re never taxed, the administration said, citing fiscal statistics. More than half the revenue would come from those worth more than $1 billion.

The tax would apply only to the top one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans but would raise $360 billion that can be used to lower costs for families and cut the deficit, Biden said.

Based on the latest listing of billionaires by Forbes magazine, just two people among the 1.05 million residents of the five-county Times News area (Carbon, Schuylkill, Monroe, Northampton and Lehigh counties) fall into this rarefied category: Yuengling Beer’s Dick Yuengling of Pottsville and Jared Isaacman of Easton, CEO of Shift 4 Payments of Allentown. Forbes pegs Yuengling’s net worth at $1.4 billion and Isaacman’s at $2.3 billion.

In all, there are 17 Pennsylvanians who fall into the billionaire category, according to Forbes’ latest list issued earlier this month.

The other 15 are:

• Jeffrey Yaas, co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, $12 billion

• Victoria Mars, heir to the candy and pet food companies, $8 billion

• Michael Rubin, co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils (hockey team) and CEO of sports merchandising retailer Fanatics, $8 billion

• Mary Alice Dorrance Malone, Campbell Soup heiress, $3.6 billion

• Jeffrey Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, $3.5 billion

• Thomas Hagen, chairman of the board of directors of Erie Indemnity Insurance Co., $3.4 billion

• John Middleton, major partner of the Philadelphia Phillies and former owner of a tobacco company sold to Philip Morris’ parent company Altria for $2.9 billion in cash, $3.4 billion

• Thomas Tull, founder of Tulco LLC, an investment holding company, $3.4 billion

• Maggie Hardy Knox, owner of 84 Lumber Co., $2.9 billion

• Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, $1.9 billion

• David Paul, founder and executive chairman of Globus Medical, a medical device manufacturer, $1.6 billion

• Richard Hayne, president and CEO of Urban Outfitters, $1.4 billion

• Edward Stack, chairman and CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods, $1.4 billion

• Alfred P. West Jr., CEO of SEI investments, $1.4 billion

• Alan B. Miller, founder, chairman and CEO of Universal Health Services, $1.3 billion

Democrats have been pushing for such a tax since Biden was elected, promoting it as a way for wealthy taxpayers to pay their fair share. Last year, for example, ProPublica, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, whose goal is to produce investigative journalism in the public interest, published a bombshell report based on unreleased IRS files that showed multibillionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Rupert Murdoch paid little or sometimes nothing in income taxes.

In announcing the proposal, Biden said, “Now, I’m a capitalist, but … if you make a billion bucks, great, just pay your fair share. A firefighter and a teacher pay more than double the tax rate that a billionaire pays. That’s not right. That’s not fair.”

Of course, nothing in this discussion is ever so clear-cut; it’s a complicated issue, but most Americans feel that the superrich have been getting away without paying their fair share for a long time.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.