Summary
Spain’s economy minister, Carlos Cuerpo, is urging G20 nations to support a global wealth tax on billionaires, targeting a 2% minimum tax on assets to raise $250 billion annually.
Backed by Brazil, France, and Germany, the initiative aims to fund climate action and green investments.
Cuerpo highlighted growing public demand for wealth redistribution, especially as climate crises worsen, like Spain’s recent deadly floods.
The proposal mirrors the global minimum tax on multinationals and seeks international coordination to overcome political resistance from wealthy elites and lobbyists.
Everytime we talk about taxing them, we hear “they’ll leave if we tax them!”
But they fucking won’t, and even if they do, it’s as simple as a “tax dodger law” when the wealthy enter the country.
There’s not many billionaires. If first world countries said if you have a billion in net worth, it now costs 100k/day in taxes to be in their country…
It’s not like the billionaires will really live in isolation. Hell, they won’t even really go thru with moving legal residence out of the country that made them a billionaire.
Either they move the permanent residence where they’ll actually spend their time, or they can pay the 100k/day to be there and not pay the taxes they should be.
Edit:
For America specifically, we have the “exit tax” already…
https://1040abroad.com/blog/exit-tax-explained-a-us-expats-guide-to-expatriation-tax/
It’s not the best, and it doesn’t stop millionaires from leaving, but it’s a big reason US Billionaires never renounce US citizenship, even tho we’re like the only country who taxes income from foreign countries.
This is also a proposed wealth tax not just an income tax, the US would probably do something like tax US citizen ultimate beneficial ownership of assets held which can be traded on US exchanges, so unless someone entirely divests there isn’t a legal tax avoidance strategy apart from the exit tax.
Honestly 2% on billionaires is too low imo. I’m in favor of starting lower and having a progressively increasing marginal wealth tax, like 1% on all assets over $10M, additional 1% on all assets over $100M, etc.
Also never understood the “they’ll leave if we tax them!” argument
If they stay and we keep tax laws minimal and unenforced or easily evaded … then billionaires don’t pay tax
If they leave … then billionaires don’t pay tax
All the incentive is there to just tax them because no matter what you do with them … they won’t pay tax … so its better to just give them a good excuse to leave because they are just a drain on the economy
“You owe us money!”
“No”
“Oh, okay”
And importantly, isn’t that the point of proposing a global wealth tax? Unless they plan on taking their wealth to Mars, they’ll be stuck paying in, were everyone to play along.
Yes, I know, wishful thinking, but that is the proposal.
Solid points all around.
Further, even if it would be largely ineffectual (which it won’t), we should make it inconvenient for billionaires to dodge taxes, just as some states make it inconvenient to obtain guns.
Yep.
It’s been a busy couple years, but the Panama Papers never really led to anything.
We know “they” are doing this, it’s not even an ambiguous “they” because of that story, we have names and evidence of the wealthy breaking laws to dodge taxes. But we just didn’t do anything because those people also tend to give a shit ton of money to both parties.
A single unimportant person got four years in the US and two lawyers got four months in Brazil.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/panama-papers.asp
But none of the wealthy dodging taxes was held accountable. Hell, the leaks named dozens of former and current world leaders… Why would they hold themselves accountable?
As much as I care about politics, we need to start coming to the hard realization that it’s just a distraction so the wealthy can stall till they can just buy robots instead of paying people.
That’s the clock for taxing the wealthy. The need for human soldiers and manufacturing.
If we don’t beat that clock, then humanity as we know it is fucked.