The Daily Populous Wednesday June 26th, 2024 day edition
Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by Knightbuster

An international scheme to tax the wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires is technically feasible and could net up to $250bn (£197bn) a year in extra revenue, a new report says.

A study by the French economist Gabriel Zucman concluded that progress in finding ways to tax multinational corporations meant it was now possible to levy a global tax on individuals – even if not every country agreed to take part.

Zucman prepared the report after being invited by Brazil – which now holds the presidency of the G20 group of developed and developing nations – to examine ways of increasing the low levels of tax currently paid by the super-rich.

“There is overwhelming public support for this idea,” Zucman said at the report’s launch. “Ten years ago nobody believed 130 countries would support a minimum tax on multinationals. It was thought of as utopian.”

The report said billionaires were currently paying an average of 0.3% tax on their wealth – less than the rates paid by workers. Zucman said the average wealth of the top 0.0001% of individuals had grown by 7.1% a year on average between 1987 and 2024, increasing the share of global wealth of billionaires from 3% to 14%.

Describing his plan as a top-up to income tax so that billionaires paid an annual tax bill worth at least 2% of their wealth, Zucman said progressive taxation was a “key pillar of modern societies”.

International cooperation was needed to prevent a “race to the bottom”, he said, but it was not necessary for every country to sign up for the idea to get off the ground. The US opposes a global tax on wealth, although Zucman said Joe Biden’s budget proposal to tax America’s super-rich was consistent with his plan.

Zucman said valuing the wealth of billionaires would be relatively simple because most of it was held in the form of shares. His report said it could be enforced successfully even if all countries did not adopt it, by strengthening current exit taxes (levies on rich people taking their money to a non-participating jurisdiction) and implementing “tax collector of last resort”.

This would involve extending to individuals rules that allow participating countries to tax non-participating countries’ undertaxed multinationals.

The proposal will be discussed at next month’s G20 meeting of finance ministers in Rio de Janeiro.

Oxfam International’s interim executive director Amitabh Behar said: “This is a sensible and serious proposal that is in every government’s strategic economic interest. All G20 countries should support Brazil’s push to secure the first-ever global deal to tax the super-rich.”

Phil White, member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, said: “Zucman’s report shows that a coordinated, international approach to taxing the super-rich is the sensible and fair way to address the extreme concentration of wealth.

“Addressing billionaire wealth should be viewed as the initial step; if we aim to safeguard democracy from the corrosive effects of extreme wealth, then multimillionaires like me should also be prepared to pay more – and take pride in contributing their fair share.”

Extending the plan to those with wealth in excess of $100m (£79m) would raise an additional $100bn-$140bn (£79bn-£110bn) a year, Zucman said.

Josvan135 on June 25th, 2024 at 22:05 UTC »

Not getting into the ethics/whatever of this, but I have serious questions about the effectiveness of their described exit tax method of preventing wealth escape.

Why wouldn't the wealthy just leave with their wealth before it was implemented? It's not like this could be done in secret, they'de have a minimum year plus of warning and effectively unlimited resources to leverage in their escape.

Assuming it does get them, how would a one-time exit tax make up for the loss of 2% revenue per year? Is this tax 40-50% of total wealth?

RareCodeMonkey on June 25th, 2024 at 20:56 UTC »

Western societies were build on high taxes on corporate profits. The experiment of low taxes for the rich (trickle down economics) does not work and damages society.

It not just can be done, it will be done as is the only way that we can pay for a working society. Countries have been accumulating debt because the rich do not pay their share, this seems like a great initiative and the future.

Brytnshyne on June 25th, 2024 at 19:18 UTC »

> Proposal could net up to $250bn a year in extra revenue

A HUGE benefit globally which is only a small fraction of their wealth and won't change their lifestyle one bit.