If levied, the sum would be equivalent to only 2% of the nearly $13 trillion in wealth owned by the 2,700 billionaires globally, the research group hosted at the Paris School of Economics said.
Currently billionaires’ effective personal tax is often far less than what other taxpayers of more modest means pay because they can park wealth in shell companies sheltering them from income tax, the group said in its 2024 Global Tax Evasion Report.
“In our view, this is difficult to justify because it risks to undermine the sustainability of tax systems and the social acceptability of taxation,” the observatory’s director Gabriel Zucman told journalists.
Billionaires’ personal tax in the United States is estimated to be close to 0.5% and as low as zero in otherwise high-tax France, the Observatory estimated.
who would have thought that taxing the richest money hoarders would actually bring money back into the economy?
Actually it won’t because they will never let it happen.
Billionaires’ personal tax in the United States is estimated to be close to 0.5% and as low as zero in otherwise high-tax France, the Observatory estimated.
Billionaires benefit massively from the state apparatus, but refuse to contribute even as much as ordinary citizens.
Billionaires should not exist.
A proper billionaire tax would be to tax them until they are no longer billionaires
You’ve reached $999 999 999 in wealth! Congratulations you win the hoarding game.
To play again, just donate everything equally to the poorest 1 000 000 in your country.
Just think of all the fun you had in your first game, why not give it a second try?
Lol good luck with that.
If it doesn’t work, we can always just eat them instead.
That’s been my plan, knowing what parts are safe for eating, it won’t be long before us cannibals are smoking them out. Or, at the very least slow cooking lol
I love the principle, but I don’t think it is even legal in the US. The constitution only allows for income tax, and I don’t see that ever changing.
This article is discussing an income tax, not a wealth tax, which you correctly state would not be legal at a federal level without an amendment.
It’s hard to really interpret what the article is actually talking about though due to a lack of specifics. Billionaires do pay quite a lot of taxes (the top 1% of Americans pay 43% of all income tax revenue, for instance), and also pay a lot in consumption taxes, but due to the way their income is structured, a lot falls under capital gains and other taxes rather than standard tax on salary. Gains in assets contribute to net worth, but (correctly) are not taxed until those gains are actually realized. There are some loopholes in how those assets can be used as collateral for loans, but since those do still have to be paid back with interest, they do quite literally not represent net income. There’s a difference between aiming to close tax loopholes and simply trying to get more revenue from billionaires. Neither is necessarily a bad aim, but they’re not exactly the same thing. There’s also an important distinction to be made between taxing billionaires because they’re a useful source of revenue for important government programs and taxing them because you just think they’re icky and shouldn’t exist.
For those who want a deeper dive into the tax evasion problem (albeit mainly focused on the US), I recommend The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
Nice try, Zucman
Good luck in getting any money out of billionaires in taxes. They would just become untaxable for some new loopholes. Always assuming you could get to the point a law is passed to tax them in the first place.
It’s much too late once that money has been accumulated in one place.
Imagine if we didn’t have any more billionaires, how many trillions of dollars we could spend on us normals.
Ayyyy an actual reputable article that shows the approximate proper amount of total wealth owned by billionaires currently.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget included plans for a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01%, but that proposal has since fallen by the wayside with lawmakers in Washington preoccupied with government shutdown threats and looming funding deadlines.
If billionaires were taxed according. How would that help/hurt society in the next 100 years or so.
For example would many of today’s problems not be a problem if this has been happening all along?
Legitimate question here.
Depends who is spending it
Yes. This is why humanity desperately needs a global government, and I’m saying that without irony. The deep problems on how to govern such a thing still exist, though. We all know how easily democracy can be corrupted, for instance, so that’s clearly not the magic answer. The people who are currently powerful would actively resist such a thing, and since they’re powerful, they will be successful in resisting it.
An obvious route to such a thing would be using incredible amounts of violence against the currently powerful, and then this world government would be based on violence. Also not a good starting point.
We could just give the reins to AI at some point? Perhaps 99% of sci-fi writers writing about this outcome are just deluded and don’t know what they’re imagining. I volunteer to write and operate that AI.
I appreciate this post because it has Farnsworth energy. “How can we solve this problem? Incredible violence? …No, no… That’s too easy…”
That’s… a tiny sum. It wouldn’t even cover the current deficit which is 1.685 trillion
It wouldn’t even go towards servicing the debt, just making it grow slower
Still better than not collecting them at all
But you realize this is world-wide, not even just the US? Even if the US collects it, it would only be a fraction of this number. If the US collects it, but other countries don’t, then billionaires will become citizens of other countries for tax purposes
I was gonna say… This $250 Billion amount would barely cover any 6 month span of omnibus bills in US Congress.
Biden just proposed $105 Billion in spending on Ukraine/Israel/Border spending.
Doooo eeet.
I know this comment isn’t useful, but wouldn’t that be fucking nice. Never going to happen.
That enough to give Ukraine for a whole three months!
