- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
The Tax Justice Network said trillions could be raised with a ‘featherlight’ tax on the 0.5% of richest households, copying a current Spanish tax
Governments around the world copying Spain’s wealth tax on the super-rich could raise more than $2tn (£1.5tn), according to campaigners calling for the money to help finance the climate transition.
As a growing numbers of countries consider raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy, the Tax Justice Network campaign group said in a report that evidence from a “featherlight” tax on the 0.5% richest households in Spain could help raise trillions of dollars globally each year.
The Spanish government, under the socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, introduced a temporary “solidarity” wealth tax in late 2022, which is collected in 2023 and 2024, on the net wealth of individuals exceeding €3m (£2.6m). It is estimated to apply to the richest 0.5% of households.
That’s my point - I’m not making any profit from my ownership of the shares. If I were I’d pay tax on it. All I have a bit of paper which might be worth some real cash in the future. It would become a liability if I had to pay a simple wealth tax on it.
If I use the shares as collateral on a loan and they come good then I have to sell the shares to repay the loan (and pay tax on the sale). If they don’t then I suppose the loan company takes a loss, they’ll have factored that in on to the interest I pay. So probably won’t be so low interest
I completely agree on the economy but and happily pay all the tax I should. But ‘wealth’ is not a simple concept- it comes in many forms, it’s not just a pile of bags of cash with a fat bloke in a top hat sitting on. Even measuring it is hard. So taxing it is really hard and inefficient, which is completely glossed over in these kinds of campaigns
If the company is worth that much, it is likely that it will pay out. Having that amount of wealth gives you a lot of leverage, you have a large wealth under management, and banks can be sure you won’t default on your personal loans.
With regard to the murky value of speculative assets like real estate and private equity, there likely should be some tax-based disincentives to help prevent sky-high speculative valuations, like a land tax and/or a wealth tax. If the economy has too many speculative assets with inflated value, it allows banks to effectively dodge loan regulations, creates a self-fulfilling inflationary loop, and is destabilizing for the economy.
Furthermore, capital gains tax is taxed significantly less than labor in order to make assets more liquid, so a wealth tax would make up that difference.
A wealth tax prevents these loopholes where income is taken as capital gains or as security for loans and taxed less.
We aren’t taxing your profits. We are taxing you. That is the entire point of a wealth tax.
Personally, I wouldn’t tax all forms of wealth. I would ignore personal property, intellectual property, real property. I would only tax securities. I would drive the wealthiest among us to pull their excess wealth out of the securities markets.
I don’t have a problem with the richest among us acquiring all the luxury goods they could imagine. Want a mansion? Have 10. A yacht for every week of the year? Go nuts. Go put a bunch of carpenters and boatwrights to work.
The problem isn’t their consumption. The problem is their frugality: they aren’t buying those mansions, those yachts. They aren’t employing those carpenters and boatwrights. They are using their wealth only to purchase the means of acquiring more wealth.
Instead of buying the products produced by a factory, they are buying the factory itself, and taking a larger and larger share of its revenue.
The fact that we have nothing to systematically disincentivize this behavior is the root cause of economic disparity today. A wealth tax is a first real step in solving this problem.