Washington — The Steward National Committee today released a tax framework intended to prevent large-scale automation from shrinking the federal revenue base as payrolls disappear from highly automated industries.
The framework treats automation as productive capacity. Companies remain free to automate, while federal tax policy continues to recognize the public revenue attached to productive work when the human payroll associated with that work disappears.
Under the framework, Congress would establish sector-specific methods for identifying automated productive capacity that directly substitutes for taxable human work. The resulting assessment would be designed to approximate the federal revenue treatment that would have applied if the same productive function were performed through ordinary compensated labor.
The SNC describes the objective as tax neutrality between human and automated production. Converting compensated labor into capital expense, machine utilization or autonomous compute would not reduce the effective contribution attached to the productive activity.
Revenue from the system would remain part of the general federal tax base, while separate Steward proposals would expand grants for skilled trades, human professional guilds, apprenticeship and craft industries.
The committee said Congress and Treasury would write the detailed thresholds, with human officials responsible for the rules and their administration. The proposal is expected to be introduced as part of the next federal revenue package.
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