More than 100 members of the global super-rich called on Wednesday for governments around the world to “tax us now” to help pay for the pandemic response and tackle the gulf between rich and poor, reports Reuters.
Issue with the tax system
The group of 102 millionaires and billionaires, including Disney heiress Abigail Disney, said the current tax system is rigged in their favor and needs to be rewritten to make taxation fairer for hard-working people and restore trust in politics.
“As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair,” they said in an open letter published on Wednesday. “Most of us can say that, while the world has gone through an immense amount of suffering in the last two years, we have actually seen our wealth rise during the pandemic – yet few if any of us can honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes.”
About permanent wealth taxes
The super-rich signatories, who brand themselves as “patriotic millionaires”, called for the introduction of “permanent wealth taxes on the richest to help reduce extreme inequality and raise revenue for sustained, long-term increases in public services like healthcare”.
“Restoring trust requires taxing the rich,” they said in the letter, published as world leaders and business executives meet for a virtual Davos World Economic Forum. “The world – every country in it – must demand the rich pay their fair share. Tax us, the rich, and tax us now.”
The group, which also includes Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist who made an almost $1bn fortune from an early bet on Amazon, said an annual “wealth tax” on those with fortunes of more than $5m (£3.7m) could raise more than $2.52tr.
Benefits of this wealth tax
That would be enough, they said, to “lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty; make enough vaccines for the world and deliver universal healthcare and social protection for all the citizens of low and lower-middle-income countries (3.6 billion people).”
The proposed tax would see those with more than $5m pay 2%, rising to 3% for those with more than $50m and a 5% rate for dollar billionaires.
Taxing the UK’s wealthiest 119,000 people at these rates would raise an estimated £43.7bn, a year, according to an analysis by campaign groups Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and the Patriotic Millionaires.
Gemma McGough, a British entrepreneur and founding member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, said:
“At a time when simply living will cost the average household a further £1,200 a year, our government cannot expect to be trusted if it would rather tax working people than wealthy people. If they do anything in the next few months, they should do this: rather than raising national insurance, tax the rich – tax us – instead.”
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Source: Reuters
