Brazil, Germany, Spain and South Africa sign motion for fairer tax system to deliver £250bn a year extra to fight poverty and climate crisis
The world’s 3,000 billionaires should pay a minimum 2% tax on their fast-growing wealth to raise £250bn a year for the global fight against poverty, inequality and global heating, ministers from four leading economies have suggested.
In a sign of growing international support for a levy on the super-rich, Brazil, Germany, South Africa and Spain say a 2% tax would reduce inequality and raise much-needed public funds after the economic shocks of the pandemic, the climate crisis and military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.
They are calling for more countries to join their campaign, saying the annual sum raised would be enough to cover the estimated cost of damage caused by all of last year’s extreme weather events.
“It is time that the international community gets serious about tackling inequality and financing global public goods,” the ministers say in a Guardian comment piece.
Can we be specific and say “2% of their purported assets valuation must be paid in liquid cash annually” so they can stop loopholing taxes to oblivion?
Oh look, all of the sudden corporate entities are paying taxes instead of saying “oops yeah we broke even before bonuses.”
Alternative proposal. Billionaires should pay an annual 75% tax on any income and any wealth in excess of 1 billion.
Alternative alternative proposal: being billionaire shouldn’t be possible. There should be a wealth cap.
A wealth cap tax…I could get behind that.
Cap all personal wealth to 2³²-1.
Whoops, used a signed 32 bit value and it went negative.
That isn’t how it works though. Nobody is collecting billions in wages. They receive stock which isn’t counted as taxable income until sold.
Sure, that’s why I also suggested a wealth tax.
But 75 percent wealth tax can’t work, because that would require more liquidity to happen than exists. The attempt would utterly destroy most retirement funds in the process. Wealth tax sure, but need to be realistic about the scale of “money” actually possibly in play.
It’d probably deflate a bunch of overvalued stocks in the process of liquidation which would be healthy for the economy overall but, you’re correct, it would cause short term shocks to retirement and other managed funds.
No, long term there would be no economy. Wealth cannot be taxed. Humans tried that since ancient Roman times, never worked.
Uh, why not 99%, and you get a framed certificate congratulating you for winning capitalism?
I’m kinda happy with 75%, maybe we could bump it up to 90 or so but at 75% wealth and revenue taxation billionaires would need to multiply their pot by 16x every year to maintain their wealth… that’s pretty unrealistic do everyone north of a billion would quickly trend to a billion - that number should ideally be lower (I think ten million or a number like that is a perfectly reasonable effective wealth cap) but that was the reference in the article.
100% on all wealth above, say, a quarter of a billion dollars and all income that would bring you above that threshold.
Nah dude. If they hit a billion dollars, you take all their wealth, reset them back to level one, put a star next to their name and tell them to do it again. They’ll appreciate the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with a second run.
Sorta like New Game Plus but without the plus? I like it!
It’d be hilarious to hear shit heels like Elon Musk talk about how they “earned” their wealth and then be completely unable to do it again.
When you get to 1 billion your wealth resets but you get exclusive skins
So they’ll be playing on a higher difficulty?
Same difficulty everyone else plays, which yeah it’s a lot higher than theirs
They said different, not darker
Alternative proposal: While your net worth exceeds some function of GDP, laws do not protect you. Find a way to offload those stocks, or keep your head on a swivel.
All registered securities (stocks, bonds,etc.) should be taxed at 75% per year. Natural persons are exempted from the tax on their first $16.7 million, with a progressive schedule up to the full tax rate at $1 billion in value.
Securities are not sold to pay the tax. A percentage of each security held by the ultra-wealthy taxpayer is transferred to the IRS. IRS liquidators sell off the shares in small lots over time, so that liquidated shares comprise no more than 1% of total traded volume.
1 billion of what currency? How do you account for inflation?
Two percent? Yeah fuck that, how about they pay their fair share instead?
A two percent wealth tax is actually a better idea than a lot of people here seem to think.
If you have $100B, you’d have to pay $2B every year that you hold that much wealth, and you’ll have to pay it in cash.
This would produce a lot of annual recurring tax revenue, and it would incentivize billionaires to hoard less paper capital if they don’t want to constantly be forking over billions in taxes.
The tax is beneficial, and so is the way around the tax.
Though we also need to tax their income more too.
I pay way more than two percent and I live paycheck to paycheck, that’s fucked up.
2% of Wealth (not income) annually. I’m no expert but if that includes unrealized gains then that is SIGNIFICANT.
They’ll have to sell of their stocks to get that 2% to cash, which has the added benefit of lowering the stock’s value. Next year, we’ll bump it to 3% to make up the difference. Rinse, repeat.
Absolutely 100% this. We need a global effort so they can’t just move to some tax shelter.
2% is also cheap IMO, nobody needs to have that much money.If the developed world set this up, even if they moved money to a tax heaven, they’d have nothing to spend it on.
reality check: not going to happen
2% what the…. My income above 50k is taxed 48% i think. Wtf 2%
ah, but imagine if you have 128Billion dollars, more than the GDP of many countries
Wealth tax is different from income tax. Once you’ve received your income it becomes wealth, and it is not taxed unless you use it. Wealth tax would mean that your money in the bank is taxed periodically.
Which is clearly necessary, and companies know it.
Open any MMO built and organized around a player economy (designed by a for-profit corporation) and you will see they know that individual wealth can upset the balance of the game.
They set maximum currency values, or they charge you periodic taxes for existing in the server.
When people are being honest about wealth, we all know the concentration of wealth in the extreme fucks up the system for everybody.
And video game systems do not even have a scarcity problem like the real world.
That’s your income not your net worth, 2% of your net worth would be taking the value of all your cash + stocks/investments/businesses + assets like cars/homes/land/collectibles/jewelry/etc and taxing 2% of that value.
Your income shouldn’t be your net worth unless you’re honestly spending every dime of every check
A lot of us are poor enough where we sorta have to just to survive.
So what about people paying more in taxes than their net worth is?
Not super relevant to the convo, everyone pays taxes based on income, the proposal is to make rich people ALSO pay on net worth, not all people. For most people the effort of doing a net worth assessment isn’t worth the tax income
Each respective country should just appropriate the billionaires assets as no single person should have a net value higher than any single country
Billionaires should pay 100% tax over $999,999.99 of personal wealth.
Some people still get to be wealthy. Problem solved.
So I understand the ultra-rich’s way of doing business now is to never realize gains but rather take loans against a percentage of their unrealized gains (backed of course, by the unrealized gains themselves) and spend that money rather than ever make any income. Does anybody know of any good ideas to handle that type of scenario?
Forfeited shares held as collateral for a loan should require paying a capital gains tax if you default on the loan.
sure, force them to realize gains by taxing unrealized gains that have gone unrealized for a certain amount of time
Fuck that. Eat the rich, eat the rich!
What about billionaires paying a 50% tax until there are no more billionaires?? I like that a lot more!!
On top of a wealth tax, there should be a fraction of a percent financial transaction tax. It would have no effect on the average consumer, but a lot of effect on the investor class.
It’s weird to think I can be given stocks and have to pay real taxes for the value of those taxes. But somebody who starts a business and owns a large number of shares never has to pay taxes on those shares even though they got them when they were worth $0 and now are worth possibly billions.
Often times those shares can be used as leverage for a loan providing the shareholder with the quality of life of a billionaire without ever paying the taxes on earning the billions.
This feature of taxes ONLY benefits the super wealthy and everybody else just has to pay taxes for every dollar of wealth earned.
You only pay taxes when it comes in as “income” or when you sell it. You can hold onto stocks without being taxed on it indefinitely.
Stocks as collateral needs reform.
Often times those shares can be used as leverage for a loan providing the shareholder with the quality of life of a billionaire without ever paying the taxes on earning the billions.
How are those loans repaid?
Why not 20%? It’s not like they need all that money.
Nope there is no reason anyone should have a billion dollars.
Such a shortsighted view. How do you expect us to get out much-needed class of Trillionaire God-Rulers if you make life so difficult for those hardworking Billionaires?
to be clear...
/s
Meanwhile every Party of the current German government, as well as the opposition former conservatives now far-right populists and the fascist party are furiously rejecting wealth taxation.
I don’t buy it for Germany, because the government leading social democratic party has been focusing exclusively on income taxation and blocked any advances towards reimplementing wealth taxation over the past 26 years of which they only were 4 years not in the government.