Sponsor
Bernard Sanders
Senator · I-VT
Senator · I-VT
The bill aims to capture and share AI sector gains with the public via a Treasury-managed sovereign wealth fund and dividends while imposing structural remedies to curb AI conglomerates — but does so at the cost of new taxes, regulatory complexity, potential threats to private investment and innovation, and risks of political interference and uneven distribution.
Middle-class families and low-income residents could receive annual direct payments (up to 5% of the Fund's average market value), providing a new, recurring source of household income or social support.
Creates a Treasury-managed AI Sovereign Wealth Fund that would give the public equity stakes in large AI firms and the potential for long-term public returns and broader financial inclusion.
Requires governance prioritizing worker welfare, public safety, fair competition, and environmental sustainability and increases transparency through machine-readable disclosures of voting and commissioner conflicts.
Creating and capitalizing the Fund will likely require new taxes, excise fees, or redirected revenue and new reporting/penalty regimes, raising costs for taxpayers, consumers, and businesses.
A rapid structural-separation mandate (90-day divestiture window) could force costly divestitures and restructurings, disrupt integrated products and services, raise prices for customers, and strain regulatory capacity.
Redirecting corporate profits or extracting equity for a public fund may reduce private investment incentives, encourage offshoring, and slow AI R&D and innovation by removing cross-subsidization that funds long-term development.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Creates an AI sovereign wealth fund funded by a new excise tax on large AI firms, requires structural separation of covered AI companies, and directs annual distributions equal to 5% of the Fund's average market value.
Official title: Amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose an excise tax on systemically important AI activity, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 18, 2026 by Bernard Sanders · Last progress June 18, 2026
Creates an American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund in the U.S. Treasury funded by a new excise tax on "systemically important AI companies," to be managed by an Independent Commission and used to pay annual dividends to U.S. residents and to support health, education, housing, and environmental programs. The bill also requires covered AI firms to adopt a narrow "structural separation" corporate form and gives the Federal Trade Commission 90 days to enforce that separation for existing and newly qualifying firms. The text inserts a new chapter into the Internal Revenue Code to authorize collection of equity or other proceeds for the Fund and directs annual distributions equal to 5% of the Fund’s average market value (net of administration costs). The excerpt does not include operative tax rates, definitions, thresholds, or some implementation details, but it creates new tax and corporate-structure authorities and assigns administration and distribution rules for the Fund.