Bernie Sanders unveils plan to raise corporate tax rate to 35% and ban stock buybacks

Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders campaigns at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders introduced a plan on Monday that would reverse President Donald Trump's tax cuts for businesses and return the corporate tax rate to 35% from its current 21%.

The Corporate Accountability and Democracy Plan would also eliminate many of the tax breaks and loopholes in the tax code and do away with off-shore tax havens.

The senator is also calling to democratize corporate boards, ban stock buybacks and diversify corporations.

The detailed plan includes these highlights, according to the campaign website:

Nearly half of the board of directors in any large corporation with at least $100 million in annual revenue, corporations with at least $100 million in balance sheet total, and all publicly traded companies would be directly elected by the firm's workers.

They would be required to consider the interests of all of the stakeholders in a company – including workers, customers, shareholders and the communities in which the corporation operates.

Large-scale stock buybacks would be "treated like stock manipulation" via repeal of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 10b-18.

Rules would be developed to diversify corporate boards "ensuring a significant portion of every board be comprised of people from historically underrepresented groups." And they would require every corporation to "complete an annual report that gives the compensation, gender, and racial composition of board and employees."

The plan "will give workers an ownership stake in the companies they work for, break up corrupt corporate mergers and monopolies, and finally make corporations pay their fair share," the Vermont independent's campaign website said. "When Bernie is president, we're going to put an end to the corporate greed ruining our country once and for all."