Mark Cuban Proposes Higher Taxes for Companies That Don't Share Equity With Workers

For a billionaire entrepreneur who has frequently spoken about wealth inequality, Mark Cuban has long advocated ways to distribute corporate wealth more broadly among workers, Eleanor Pringle reported for Fortune.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is proposing higher taxes for companies that do not provide employees with equity on a proportional basis. [Photo: Gage Skidmore Flickr]

One of Cuban's ideas is to give employees company stock.

He said on a recent episode of the What It Takes podcast that he awarded stock to 330 employees of his media company, Broadcast.com, before Yahoo's $5.7 billion acquisition of the company in 1999.

Cuban said 300 of those employees became millionaires as a result.

Cuban also awarded equity and cash bonuses to employees of his first IT consulting company, MicroSolutions.

Now, Cuban has taken the proposal further, arguing that companies that do not share equity with their employees should face higher corporate taxes.

In response to a question on X about how he would reduce wealth inequality in the United States, Cuban wrote: “Increase the taxes of any company that doesn't offer equity to every employee on a pro rata basis to non-founder executives. If they get rich from the market, so do they.”

Cuban's proposal would effectively use the tax system to encourage companies to give employees a greater ownership stake in the businesses they work for.