Because that is what this is.
Billionaires should face a minimum tax rate, according to a report which found some of the world’s mega-wealthy are paying little to no tax.
The EU Tax Observatory said most people pay a higher rate than the super-rich, who, it said, are able to use complex business structures for avoidance.
It suggested a minimum 2% tax rate on the world’s billionaires would raise $250bn (£205bn) a year.
You have it, we want it, so plan to take it. This is the robber baron mentality. If the super rich can find ways to avoid tax, more power to their elbow. I do the same in my own small way and so should everyone. Just because they have oodles of wealth it doesn’t mean that the various avaricious politicians and other state hangers-on across the world have the right to dip their fingers into their wallets. That’s just envy, greed, spite and theft.
Scum, the lot of them. Gangsters who use the veil of legitimacy to cover their theft.
I assume their definition of super-rich will miraculously exclude those who have amassed enormous wealth doing nothing but politics?
Plus there is a distinction to be made between income and wealth.
The typical example is an eighty year old widow living on a small pension but living in a house worth millions. Or possibly a farmer who owns many acres but derives only modest income from them.
Roll up to the tax office and offer them a pile of bricks and a window frame to pay your wealth tax, or a small parcel of land with no access, and it is clearly impractical. Start deferring tax until the death of the owner and the problems with realising the tax will persist – which indicates to me that the idea of a wealth tax is a bureaucratic nightmare.
“It suggested a minimum 2% tax rate on the world’s billionaires would raise $250bn (£205bn) a year.”
Will the money go towards making poor people less poor then?
We should have a flat tax. Everybody pays the same. No “allowance” loopholes. That’s the rate. That’s what you pay. The same rate as everybody else.
Indeed. However, too many people don’t understand that 20% of a million is more money than 20% of a thousand, hence they think that it’s unfair. Which is why flat taxes never get implemented.
I’ve always thought that there should actually be a maximum amount of tax any individual should pay. After all, surely if you tip in £10 million into the government’s coffers you’ve done your bit?
There are places that do exactly that, like the Isle of Man.
Presumably this is 2% of the total wealth, much of which might not be directly accessible or even in this (or any other single) country. So, “we think you are worth ten billion so send us 200 million each year”.
The only ones benefiting here will be accountants and lawyers.
I would love to be able to present fans of high taxes a breakdown of what the State actually spends our money on. I wager that essential services come a long way down the list of priorities. Behind buying Bentleys for African dictators and paying the soldiers that keep them in power. Behind subsidies for useless technologies like heat pumps EVs and wind turbines. Behind the cuts that go into the pockets of various politicians and hangers on. Behind all the fake charities and the grifters that run them. Then of course there will be interest on all the borrowing that is done because in about the last three decades there has never been a government that could balance the books.
They don’t seem to understand that net worth does not mean money in the bank. Just because someone like Bezos is worth 100 billion, it does not mean that he has 100 billion dollars in his bank account. The vast majority of his wealth is in the form of Amazon shares.
And a forced sale would drive the price per share down enormously.
Do I understand this correctly? The EU is taking it upon themselves to tell other (non EU) countries how much they should tax their millionaires?
Why not? The US did exactly that with the 15% Global Minimum Corporation Tax, because they were being screwed by the difference between Ireland’s 12.5% Corporation Tax and standard US Corporation Tax which were at 35% until recently. Indeed they have only reduced rates to 21% because of that global tax competition.
sorry, billionaires.
Of course, the bureaucrats and politicians that have set up over the years the Byzantine rules, regulations and laws that allow a rich person to hire the best accountants and lawyers to take advantage of the rules are NEVER to blame …
As pointed out above a flat rate tax on income is fairer but since when has fairness ever been relevant to those people?
I thought that socialism was all about fairness, have I got that wrong?
I think a flat tax with a cap is fair. When one considers that almost everything costs 20% more than it should do because of VAT (which is a great scam for a lot of businesses), NI 11%, income taxes around 25-40%, council tax, energy/green taxes/ air travel taxes, Stamp Duty, vehicle excise duty, insurance tax, fuel duty, CGT, inheritance tax, duty on ciggies/booze, the average Joe in an average lifetime will pay close to 70% of his income in taxes.
The most ridiculous thing to tax is work. Gov constantly bang on about fags and booze needing to be heavily taxed to act as a disincentive, but apparently this effect is not seen when taxing work.
The pound, in fact all the world’s major currencies with the possible exception of the Yen, are nothing but Ponzi schemes, are not money and will, sooner or later, collapse. I predict sooner.
I wonder if Joseph Robinette Biden Jr can afford the tax on the $400,000 he earns. I hope he’s as good at saving as his mentor Barack Hussein Obama II who can afford to pay $15,000,000 for a property that 90% of scientists agree will be underwater next week.
I understand he bought all the furniture from IKEA so he won’t waste too much money. Personally, although I’m no climate scientist, I bet he won’t get all the screws before he needs to order the pumps…
“…a property that 90% of scientists agree will be underwater next week.”
Actually they said it would be underwater last week, and it isn’t. Looks as though the other 10% of scientists were the ones that called it right.