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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.
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When you see a bunch of comments suggesting ideas that make it obvious the commenters don’t hold any grasp on economics or finance whatsoever.
Most of it is populist catchphrases without any thought behind it.
Or even how to levy taxes?
There’s a reason billionaires pay the least tax - because it’s legit hard to do.
It’s not as though no one has thought of a wealth tax before. It’s that no one has been able to figure out how to do it.
Obviously, you can only tax the wealth you can identify and value, and therein lies the problem.
Here is a conspiracy theory for you. This bullshit is pushed by the people not wanting meaningful reform. Just like oil companies try to distract with Carbon capture.
“We need this simple reform.” "No, we need Communist revolution! Eat the rich!”
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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
Research from Oxfam published this year found that the boom in asset prices during and after the Covid pandemic meant billionaires were $3.3tn – or 34% – wealthier at the end of 2023 than they were in 2020.
It is crucial to ensure that our tax systems provide certainty, sufficient revenues, and treat all of our citizens fairly.”
The levy would be designed to prevent billionaires who choose to live in Monaco or Jersey, for example, but make their money in larger economies such as the UK or France, from reducing their tax bills below a global agreed minimum.
The original article contains 767 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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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?
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sure, force them to realize gains by taxing unrealized gains that have gone unrealized for a certain amount of time
Try 90%, and they’d still have obscene wealth afterwards.
Exactly, 10% of a billion dollars is one hundred million. That’s more than enough to live a cushy stress free life without ever working again if you’re not an idiot blowing it all on dumb shit.
That puts you in the same net worth bracket as a lot of celebrity actors and musicians.
if you’re not an idiot blowing it all on dumb shit
I’d argue that 100 Million, if invested with like 5% annual growth, would be enough even if you’re an idiot blowing it all on dumb shit
0.018 Billions is 3.000 a month for 500 years.
Not what people think usually.
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.
2?? Dont stroke em too hard you might get a rash
It’s infinity billion times more than 0
2% per year on all weath (not just income) above 1bn. Seems good to me.
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.
If taxation were done properly there would be no billionaires. They are a symptom of a broken tax system.
So, I’m assuming you are in support of a 2% wealth tax?
Sorry if I sound paranoid, just checking. Tone is hard to convey in text.
2 percent for those who would dip below a billion.
Just make a billion dollars a hard limit. Once you achieve that wealth, you aren’t allowed anymore. If it’s because of stock values, then any shares after you hit a billion are distributed among employees (including “contract workers” who they pretend aren’t employees).
If it’s in cash money anything over a billion goes to the government.
If it’s in real estate properties are seized and sold at auction according to the land use. For housing, it’s only sold to individual people who will use the property as a sole homestead. For small offices it’s sold to businesses with a single location.
If it’s art it’s donated to a museum in the art’s place of origin.
So what I am hearing: buy shit in a different country than the one you are running, where you can’t tax it. No investment and jobs for your economy.
Also, how do you determine the value of an ltd? Not all companies have shares and share price.
Twitter is a private company. Has been since Musk bought it and took it private.
And yet, we can still calculate that its value has fallen substantially since that happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/02/x-twitter-stock-falls-elon-musk
First of all, the article clearly states Fidelity owns shares, hence it is not fully private. Second of all, you are talking about the assessment of the company that holds the shares. Are you suggesting an honor system where everyone estimates their own wealth?
Private companies can still sell shares. They’re just not publicly traded.
Ok, technically you are right although since Fidelity is publicly traded, it is a somewhat special case IMO. That is what I meant by it not being fully private. If it was owned ultimately by an individual, there would be no reason for such disclosure.
More importantly, this does not change my argument about it being a self reported value.
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Private companies are valued all the time, typically it’s by calculating a multiple of EBITDA, with some variations for particular industries
More like a symptom of a broken broad economic system. In all forms of capitalism, it is a given that much wealth accumulates in the few. It’s a system where resources are distributed based on capital, and capital is a resource, and it’s a system where those with more capital have more voting power both economy-wise and politics-wise. There is no such thing as a capitalist economy that has even wealth distribution long-term, it was quite plainly a system created for the sole purpose of keeping those with power in power – this isn’t an exaggeration, the guys who basically created/popularized modern capitalism and are the basis for all the writings and philosophy of the “founders of capitalism” were post-french revolution aristocrats who wished to push a system where they could keep their power instead of having it taken while also not having their heads chopped off.
Even with the best taxation capitalism can offer, there is no solution to the capitalist problem. It’s a system that requires there to be suffering underclasses and carefree upperclasses. It requires an immoral social hierarchy to exist. The systems that reduce the damage of this innately bad hierarchy while still maintaining it (welfare corporatism, for example) are incredibly unstable over the long-term and inevitably result in a populace that want to tear it down. The people who receive the most benefits from welfare & social safety in a capitalist society are often the ones that are the quickest to tear it down (them, and the elite) and guide us back to right-wing feudalism.
Billionaires might maybe go away if we “properly” tax, but there is only so much you can do to patch up a fundamentally broken system. The countries with the most wealth equality and highest wealth taxes also happen to be countries with a ton of megacorporations and/or billionaires… Switzerland, Scandinavian countries, Finland, Germany, Australia all have the highest wealth equality while all being on the top 15 for billionaires per capita excluding extremely small nations. Plus those countries have a tendency for alt-right movements to pop up, a few even more by proportion than the US…
TL;DR capitalism bad socialism good eat the rich
Alternative proposal. Billionaires should pay an annual 75% tax on any income and any wealth in excess of 1 billion.
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.
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?
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.
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.
When you get to 1 billion your wealth resets but you get exclusive skins
So they’ll be playing on a higher difficulty?
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Same difficulty everyone else plays, which yeah it’s a lot higher than theirs
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.
Alternative alternative proposal: being billionaire shouldn’t be possible. There should be a wealth cap.
Cap all personal wealth to 2³²-1.
Whoops, used a signed 32 bit value and it went negative.
A wealth cap tax…I could get behind that.
1 billion of what currency? How do you account for inflation?
USD seems the general assumption (not like - pre-zero chopping Turkish Lira) and that level of wealth is far above a reasonable amount for one person to control.
Two percent? Yeah fuck that, how about they pay their fair share instead?
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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.
Also, if you did go and try to tax 75 to 90 % like so many say, that means trillions and trillions of liquid money would have to exist from nothing to cover the collective tax burden, which didn’t exist, thus all the stock value collapses, taking retirement funds with them.
Have to be measures that recognize the partially fictional facet of some of these net worths while not letting them off the hook at the same time.
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.
Fuck that. Eat the rich, eat the rich!
say G20 ministers
Kind of a misleading headline. That’s not the G20. That’s three countries that are in the G20.
Until we get politicians who will spend it properly and actually help the people there’s no point. We collect enough taxes now to have everything we need but they squander it on bullshit. Let’s get better representation then raise taxes. 30 trillion in debt is shameful
the raw number of debt is nothing to build a conclusion on. you always have to see it relative to other values like the GDP of the US, which was 27.3 trillion in 2023 Statista. that’s an okay ratio.
