Corporate Responsibility
& Shareholder Reform

Increase the buyback excise tax from 1% to 12% (the ITEP revenue parity rate), phased over three years (4% → 8% → 12%). Before 1982, buybacks were largely prohibited as market manipulation — the bar for approval should reflect that history.

• Require a 2/3 shareholder supermajority for any buyback program
• Prohibit executives from selling shares or exercising options within 3 years of a company-initiated buyback
• Require companies to meet minimum workforce investment and wage growth benchmarks before executing buybacks
• Treat buybacks as dividends for tax purposes, eliminating their preferential treatment over other forms of worker and community investment
• Companies receiving federal contracts, subsidies, or bailouts face a complete buyback prohibition for 5 years after receiving public funds

Cap corporate tax deductibility of executive compensation at a 25:1 CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio. This does not cap pay — it removes the public subsidy for extreme inequality. If companies want to pay their CEOs 500 times their median worker's salary, they are free to do so — with their own money, not a corporate tax deduction.

• Executive equity awards must vest over a minimum of 7 years (up from current 3–4 year norms), with clawback provisions if long-term results deteriorate
• Tie compensation metrics to 5-year rolling performance: revenue growth, workforce stability, customer satisfaction, and product quality — not just stock price
• Mandatory binding say-on-pay (not advisory) with a 60% approval threshold — failure triggers automatic compensation committee restructuring
• Ban golden parachutes exceeding 1 year of base salary
• Require public disclosure of CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio on all public-facing corporate materials

Companies must discontinue quarterly earnings guidance — shifting analyst focus to annual and multi-year metrics. Annual reports must include 5-year and 10-year performance metrics alongside quarterly results. Mandatory reporting on workforce metrics (median wage, wage growth, turnover, benefits coverage) and product quality metrics (warranty claims, recall frequency, repair rates, customer satisfaction trends).

• Mandatory stakeholder impact reporting modeled on the EU CSRD — including environmental, labor, and community impacts with third-party assurance
• All reporting subject to the Universal Mandatory Duty to Act Standard: SEC enforcement obligated to investigate credible violations within 30 days; inaction defaults to action; 180-day disposition deadline; citizens may sue to compel action

Federal Right to Repair Act: products must be designed to be repairable; manufacturers must provide parts, tools, and documentation; planned obsolescence as a design strategy is prohibited. Mandatory Repairability Index on all electronics and appliances modeled on France's proven system — a 1–10 score on packaging and at point of sale.

• Warranty alignment: minimum 5-year warranty on major appliances; warranty periods must reflect actual expected product lifespan
• Shrinkflation Disclosure Act: any reduction in product size, quantity, or quality must be prominently disclosed on packaging for 12 months
• Software support minimums: minimum 5 years of security updates for products over $200; 7 years for products over $500
• Enforcement: FTC Product Quality Division subject to Universal Mandatory Duty to Act Standard, with authority to issue mandatory recalls and impose percentage-of-revenue fines

Full German codetermination model: workers elect one-half of board members at companies with 2,000+ employees; workers elect one-third of board members at companies with 500–2,000 employees; mandatory works councils with co-decision rights at companies with 100+ employees. Works councils have binding veto over working hours, overtime, safety, technology changes, and mass layoffs.

• Workforce investment floor: companies with 500+ employees must invest a minimum of 5% of annual profits in worker training and upskilling
• Profit-sharing mandate: companies with 1,000+ employees must distribute a minimum of 10% of annual profits to non-executive employees

Progressive capital gains tax by holding period creates massive financial incentives for investors to think like owners, not renters — rewarding patient capital and penalizing speculation that cannibalizes companies for short-term gain.

• 0–1 year: 40% — short-term speculation taxed as ordinary income; eliminates the advantage of high-frequency trading over long-term investment
• 1–3 years: 30% — medium-term holdings penalized relative to patient capital
• 3–5 years: 20% — baseline long-term rate encouraging multi-year ownership
• 5–10 years: 15% — patient capital reward aligned with long-term corporate health
• 10+ years: 10% — maximum long-term reward incentivizing investors to hold through economic cycles

Federal Plant Closing Accountability Act: advance notice increased to 12 months (up from 60 days under the WARN Act) for facilities with 100+ employees; mandatory good-faith transition support including retraining funding, severance minimums, and community economic adjustment grants. When the math changes, communities cannot be abandoned overnight.

• Local tax base protection: companies receiving local tax incentives that close or significantly downsize within 10 years must repay all incentives plus interest
• Environmental cost internalization: full-cost remediation bonds required before operations begin; communities are not left with cleanup bills
• Community impact assessment required before any closure, relocation, or major restructuring
• Procurement preference: federal contracting gives preference to companies that maintain domestic manufacturing and demonstrate community investment

Excessive pricing authority: the FTC is empowered to investigate and penalize excessive price increases in concentrated markets (CR4 > 60%) not justified by documented input cost increases. Profits drove 40–53% of inflation in 2021–23, compared to the historical norm of 11%. This is not supply-chain inflation — it is extraction inflation, and it has a remedy.

• Price-cost transparency: in concentrated industries, companies must publicly disclose the relationship between input costs and consumer prices annually
• Fines: percentage of annual revenue — minimum 5% of revenue for first offense, 10% for repeat violations — not flat fines that large corporations absorb as a cost of doing business
• Fine revenue allocation: all greedflation fine revenue directed to education funding and public broadcasting (consistent with Issue 30)

Create a Federal Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) charter available to any company that commits to stakeholder governance (board includes worker, community, and environmental representatives), transparent profit allocation, a maximum 50:1 CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio, minimum workforce investment standards, and third-party stakeholder impact audits. Voluntary — but creates powerful financial incentives for responsible corporate structure.

• PBC incentives: FDIC deposit preferences, federal contracting preferences, regulatory fast-tracks, and a lower corporate tax rate (15% vs. 21%)
• Third-party audit required for certification maintenance; profit allocation published annually
• Expands on Issue 20's benefit corporation provisions with federal standardization and meaningful tax and procurement incentives

The CFPB was born restricted. Despite being born hobbled, it returned $21 billion to over 200 million consumers, collected $5 billion in civil penalties, processed over 5 million consumer complaints, and took 350+ enforcement actions. We rebuild it in full force — and fix the original Dodd-Frank restrictions from the start.

Fix the original restrictions:

• Eliminate the auto dealer exemption — Dodd-Frank Section 1029 is repealed entirely; auto lending is one of the largest sources of consumer financial abuse
• Extend full supervisory authority to ALL financial institutions regardless of asset size — eliminate the $10 billion threshold that shields smaller predatory lenders
• Abolish the FSOC veto — 12 U.S.C. § 5513 is repealed; no council of bank regulators should have override power over the consumer protection agency
• Transition to a 5-member bipartisan commission with staggered 7-year terms — removable only for cause; no more than 3 from the same party; no single director who can be fired or captured to gut the agency
• Eliminate the cap on CFPB funding — the 12% Federal Reserve operating expense cap is removed; the CFPB determines its own budget with a $600M/year statutory floor indexed to inflation

Restore and expand enforcement:

• Restore all 22+ enforcement actions dropped by the Trump administration — over $3 billion in consumer harm went unaddressed; reopen every dismissed case
• Expand jurisdiction to cover Big Tech financial products (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Cash App, Zelle, crypto platforms), algorithmic lending, medical debt, corporate junk fees, and BNPL products
• Percentage-of-revenue fines: minimum 2% of annual revenue for first offense, 5% for repeat violations
• Anti-sabotage provision: no acting director, OMB official, or executive branch appointee may order the CFPB to cease operations, stop accepting complaints, or dismiss settled enforcement actions without a formal commission vote and 90-day public comment period
• Settled case protection: once a consent order or settlement is finalized, no subsequent administration may unilaterally vacate it — companies that agreed to pay consumers must pay consumers
• CFPB subject to Universal Mandatory Duty to Act Standard: credible complaints investigated within 30 days; 180-day disposition deadline; citizens may sue to compel action

Activist investor disclosure: any investor acquiring 3%+ of a company's shares must disclose within 24 hours (down from 10 days) and publicly disclose their intended strategy — preventing covert accumulation that enables destructive short-term activist campaigns before management or workers can respond.

• Minimum holding period for proxy voting rights: shares must be held for 1 year before the holder gains voting rights — preventing short-term activists from engineering destructive changes and selling before the damage is visible
• Institutional investor transparency: BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and other large institutional investors must publicly disclose and explain all proxy votes within 48 hours
• Pension fund fiduciary duty: explicitly includes long-term value — not quarterly returns — as the primary consideration; ban stock lending for short-selling purposes by institutional investors managing retirement funds